134 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
hitherto done,* under despotic governments,, which 
placed them beyond the pale of civil society, and which 
not only gave them neither encouragement nor protec- 
tion, but authorised the lowest of the fiscal officers to 
take their lives without trial ; considering themselves 
a proscribed and contemned race ; ignorant to a de- 
plorable degree ; believing in witchcraft, blindly obe- 
dient to the orders of their chiefs, subject to extraor- 
dinary privations, and constantly exposed to danger 
from their fellow-creatures, and from the ferocity of 
the wild beasts with whom they shared the forests, 
the Bhills have in consequence become the enemies of 
order and peace. They have cherished predatory ha- 
bits as the means of subsistence ; and receiving no 
mercy or consideration, they have sought, from na- 
tural impulse, to revenge the wrongs they have sus- 
tained. Time has interwoven their habits of life and 
feelings with their superstitions, until they actually 
believe that they were created to prey upon their 
neighbours. f I am Mahadevas thief/ is the common 
answer of a Bhill detected in a crime ; and his pro- 
mise of amendment is usually so qualified as to period, 
that it seems more like a truce than a pact of perma- 
nent good conduct. Nevertheless, from what has oc- 
curred since this tribe became subject to the British 
government, we may anticipate a gradual, and ulti- 
mately a complete, change in their character and con- 
dition. The men, though habituated to a life of ra- 
pine, are not sanguinary ; and the females of the tribe, 
who possess great influence over them, are of kind 
* See a paper in vol. i. of the Transactions of the Asiatic 
Society. 
