272 P. N. Bose — Ohhaitisgar : notes on its tribes, sects and castes. [No. 3, 
overgrown with jungle; but, extensive tanks and ruins testify to its 
former grandeur. Nineteen kings of tlio Hailiai line had preceded 
Siiradeva, but all that is known about them is of the vaguest charac- 
ter. Surrounded by bai-riers of high hills on all sides, Chbattiagar 
entirely escaped the Muhammadan invasion, and the Haihai dynasty ruled 
undisturbed till the middle of the eighteenth century when the country 
came under the sway of the Bhonslas of Nagpur. 
Of less antiquity than the Haihai bansi rulers of Ratanpur were the 
Gond kings of Garha Mandla, Lanji and Chanda. The western portion 
of Chhattisgar, included in the zamindaries of Sahuspur-Lohara, Gandai, 
Dhundi-Lohara, &c. belonged to one or other of these dynasties. 
In 1818, Chhattisgar came under the superintendence of British 
officers ; and in 1854, on the lapse of the province of Nagpur to the 
British Government, it was formed into a Deputy Commissionership with 
head quarters at Raipur. Since then a separate Deputy Commissioner- 
ship has been established for Bilaspur. 
§ 2. General remarks on the tribes &g. 
I have left out the higher Hindu castes. Brahmans, Rajputs, Kayaa- 
tbas and Beniyas ; the Muhammadans too and such castes as Dhobi, Mehter 
&c., who are chiefly met with in towns, have been omitted from these 
notes as they do not present any special features of interest, being 
settlers from Northern or Western India. Even of the specially 
Chhattisgari people, these notes do not pretend to be exhaustive, as 
they treat of those only with whom I came into personal contact. In 
thus restricting myself I hoped to have avoided errors into which second- 
hand information often leads,* and to have attained correctness by 
sacrificing completeness. 
The people, ns elsewhere in India, may be broadly divided into 
Aryan and non- Aryan, or, perhaps less logically into Hindu and Abori- 
ginal. Either of those methods of classification would answer well 
when we have to deal with such well-marked Aryan or Hindu castes, as 
Brahmans, Kdyasthas, and Beniyas, on the one hand, or such well 
marked non-Aryan or Aboriginal people as the Jungly Gonds on the 
* I tn.-iy illnstrato this by an instance, which will be referred to later on. The 
Central Provinces Gazetteer (to which I am greatly indebted) describes the caste 
of Halvas to bo distillers j and Sherring quotes this description in his great work 
on “ Hindu Tribes and Castes,” (Vol. II, p. 147). I did not, however, come across 
a single Halva who was a distiller j and I was told, that there was no sneh Halva in 
Chhattisgar or anywhere else. There is, however, a clan of the Telis called Halias, 
who are distillers by profession. It is this similarity of name which probably led 
to the confusion. 
