W. H. P, Driver— The Sohors. 
32 
[No. 2, 
age are tattooed (by £ Malar ’ women) on tlieir foreheads and temples, 
never elsewhere. 
Regarding the dead. —The rich burn and the poor bury their dead. 
Dead people turn into ghosts, and these live chiefly near their burial- 
grounds. When a person is dying, all the ghosts in the neighbourhood get 
round his deathbed, and dance and make merry, for a new £ muah ’ or 
ghost is about to be born to them. People on the eve of death can see 
such ghosts, and then they know their time has come. The ghosts 
of people who die a natural death are quite happy, and do not molest 
the living. 
The Sohors or Savaras. 
History and traditional references. —The Savaras (a numerous sec¬ 
tion of the Kolarian race) are the southernmost of any of the abori¬ 
ginal tribes who still speak a Kolarian language, and they have 
maintained their distinctive title from very ancient times. There 
is an inscription cut on the rock at Girnar in Gujerat from which 
we learn that Rudra Dama (one of the Sail kings about 300 B. 0.) 
conquered the Savaras and other wild tribes; and the Savaras are 
also referred to in the Puranas as a wild tribe in the south-east. 
Ptolemy mentions the Sabarae, and Pliny speaks of a tribe of Suari. 
Martin in his History and Antiquities of Eastern India, says that a 
large tribe of Siviras are traditionally reported to have existed and 
flourished in Shahabad and Bihar contemporaneously with the Cheros, 
but there are none in those districts now. However Sherring in 
his £< Tribes and Castes of India” states that a tribe of £ Seoris ’ 
who were in former times much mixed up with the Bhars, Cheros, 
Kols and Kharwars, were once established in Ghazipur and Mirzapur, 
and that a few are now to be found in Central India. ££ These people 
much resemble the Gipsies of Europe. Their women wear a tartan 
dress and offen have a kind of horn projecting from the forehead as an 
ornament. They live in light and easily-moved booths made of grass 
and reeds, are fond of intoxicating drinks, and eat the flesh of swine 
and oxen. They procure wives for their young men by kidnapping 
female children, and live principally by jugglery, coining false money 
and theft.” 
Mythological and Historical references. —It is difficult to say whether 
these £ Seoris ’ are a branch of the Savaras of the south or not. A Maha- 
bharata legend says that the Savaras were created from the excrement 
of the wonder-working cow ££ Nandini,” which belonged to the hermit 
‘Vasishtha,’ who employed them to punish a Kshattriya king named 
