112 
ON THE OEIGINAL INHABITANTS 
being mostly mountaineers, are called in Kanarese Koracaru 
or Kuruciyar, and a Bhil woman or Koravanji is known in 
Sanskrit as Bhilld str'i or Pdrvateyi.''^ Koravanji is also the 
name of a girl whom Arjuna is said to have married when 
he stayed in the Rairataka forest.'^ 
Cairns, cromlechs and stone platforms testify on the tops 
of hills to the presence of the Bhils. Clay horses are, as in 
Southern India, dedicated to the gods. If images of horses 
are deposited near or on the tops of hills, the souls of the 
dead are supposed to shorten their journey to heaven by 
using them. 
Though of a wild and unmanageable disposition and 
much addicted to thieving, the Bhils can, when they have 
once been won by kind and just treatment, be easily turned 
into useful and trustworthy servants, soldiers, and land 
labourers. Some of their villages show superior cultivation. 
In Nimar and elsewhere they fill the post of hereditary 
and that both cannot be regarded as one nation '^FJii/Uitae-GondaU^' (IX, 
p. 151) or as " leaf-clad Savaras " {XXI, p. 93) : that the country of the Ko>id- 
ali is nowhere described as Fars Fhidlitartan ; and that the Sabaras are in 
the Brhatsamhita, IX, 15, 29, and XXXII, 15, not respectively described 
as " Savara savages," "savage Sabaras and Pulindas," and of "various 
tribes of Sahara savages," for we find there in the text dvikdnchabarasudrdn 
(IX, 15), scibarapulindapradhvanisakaro (IX, 29) and Tangatia-Kalmga-Vaiiga- 
Dmviddh Sabards'ca naikavidhdh, the Sabaras mentioned, but nowhere as 
Sahara savages. The Sdhitya Darpana mentions the different dialects, by 
whom they should be spoken, and indicates that the language of the Abhiras 
and Sabaras shovild be used by those who gain their living by wood and 
leaves; i.e., most probably by wood-cutting and leaf-gathering (Abhiri 
Savarl capi kasthapatropajndsu). We meet here the Sabaras in connection 
with patra. 
Bishop Caldwell advocates in his Comparative Qrammar the derivation of 
Jihil from bil, arrow, as he says on p. 464 : " Bfiillas, probably Billas, from 
the Dravidian vil, iil, a bow, bowmen." The Bettigoi are also cjUed Bittoi, 
Bittioi, and Bittigoi. Compare Lassen, vol. I, p. 113 (SS). and Sherring, 
vol. II, p. 128-9, 384, 291-300, 326; III, S1-S4. 
" See Dalton, pp. 264, 284, 430 and 439. Compare also " An Account 
of the Maiwar Bhils," by Mr. T. H. Hendley, Foipal Asiatic Journal, vol. 
XLIV, pp. 347-388. 
The marriage is mentioned in a Kanarese ballad. A commentary of 
the BhilrutacauipQ goes also b thi- name of Koravardmtyam, 
