164 The " Kols" of Cliota- Nagpore. 



and Gangpore, inhabited by Ooriah -speaking Hindoos, to the east 

 and north the Bengalee pergunnah of Dhulbhoom and district of 

 Manbhoom, and north and north-east the Hindee district of Lohar- 

 daggah, and it is occupied by a race totally distinct by descent, 

 custom, religion and language from any of the three. A people on 

 whose smiling country covetous eyes have often been directed, but 

 into which no one ever attempted with impunity to intrude. 



It is impossible to say when the Hos first entered Singbhoom ; but 

 as we find that the Chota-Nagpore Moondahs more and more assimilate 

 to the Hos, as we approach Singbhoom from Chota-Nagpore, we may 

 safely infer that the Hos came originally from that country ; and this 

 is their own tradition. They appear to have brought with them and 

 retained their system of confederate government by Purhas, but in 

 Singbhoom the word now used to express it, is Pirhi or Peer. Thus 

 the Colehan is divided into Pirhis, each under a Mankee as chief of 

 the Pirhi, and each village having its Moondah as headman. 



According to their own tradition, the Hos displaced a nation of 

 Jains settled in the eastern parts of Singbhoom, some remains of 

 whom are still extant, and a nation of Bhuyahs from the western and 

 southern parts, driving them out of, and appropriating to their own 

 exclusive use, the richest part of the country. From these early times, 

 probably more than 2,000 years ago, they have proudly held the 

 country they acquired ; and, in my humble opinion, they have the 

 right to say they never submitted to rulers of an alien race, till they 

 were forced to do so by the power of the British Empire. 



At the commencement of the present century, Singbhoom was only 

 known to the British Government as a country under the rule of 

 certain Rajpoot chiefs, all of one family, whose independence, when we 

 first occupied the Orissa Provinces, Lord Wellesley promised to respect. 

 After the final cession of all the surrounding districts in 1819 these 

 chiefs, occupying a territory that embraces the Colehan, voluntarily 

 submitted to the British Government, and immediately sought the 

 assistance of that Government in reducing the " Hos" to submission, 

 asserting that the Hos were their subjects then in rebellion ; but they 

 admitted that for fifty years they had exercised no authority over 

 them, and I find no proof that the Hos had at any former period ever 

 submitted to them. It is not pretended that they were conquered; 



