182 Kavi Raj Sliyamal Das— The Mind tribe of Jdjpur. [No. 3, 
The evidence of the Mews having been the original inhabitants of 
Me war is borne by the facts given below. 
(1) Me war is a compound word composed of Mew and Ar 
and means a land of shelter to the Mews. 
(2) Mewal is still the name of a tract (forming part of Mewar) 
which shows that at some period or other its fastnesses formed the dwell¬ 
ing-place of the Mews. 
(3) Mewat a compound of Mew and At— ^Tcf, the name given 
to the part of the country where they are now found, evidently proves 
it to be the place of their advent from other parts and that they are 
not the primitive inhabitants (the children of the soil). 
The connection between the Mews and the Minas is quite clear on 
the following grounds : — 
(1) The Mews, as well as the Minas, live, not so much in villages 
as in congregations of separate houses or huts which are called Pals by 
both of them. 
(2) The names of the various clans among them are found to cor¬ 
respond. 
(3) The appearance of the Minas living in Mewal at the present 
day differs from that of the Bhils, while it closely resembles that of the 
Mews. 
A number of the Mews who took up their abode on the northern 
borders of Mewar [when the tide of emigration of the tribe flowed 
towards what is now called Mewat,] are called Mers or Mairs [a term 
which is commonly used in Rajpiitana for border* or boundary] or 
the border people, and the part of the country adopted by them for 
residence is called Mairwarra up to date. 
(1) I fancy that these Mers intermarried with the Gujars for a 
second time, when the latter left the southern and advanced towards 
the northern poidion of Mewar, and it may be, as the bards would have 
it, also with the Rajputs, preferring the Kherars for their habitation ; 
at this stage they resumed their name Mina, the original designation 
of their family. 
(2) Moreover the fact of the Minas of the Kherars being the 
result of a union between the Gujars and the Mews, is confirmed by the 
following similarities between them and the Gujars : 
(a) Similarities in appearance and customs. 
As the Aryan Hindus perform funeral obsequies to the manes of 
their forefathers in the dark half of the month of As win (Asaj or 
Kuar), in the same way, both the Minas and the Gujars perform the 
* Mer or Mair does not signify a hill, as mentioned in J. De La Touche’s Settl. 
Rep. p. 38 and in Capt Rowlett’s Kerowli Gazetteer. 
