229 
1877.] V. A. Smith —Notes on the Bhars of Bundelhhand. 
juraho was a Brahman. About 800 A. D., the Chandel dynasty arose and 
ruled in Kalinjar, Khajuraho, and Mahoba, but the inscriptions which give 
us the names and lineage of the rulers tell us nothing of the ruled. Chand 
in his account of the Chauhan and Chandel war (in 1184 A. D.) gives us a 
glimpse of the subjects of the Chandels in his list of the warriors of the 
Chandel prince Parmal; the list names Isur Das Lodhi Bhupal, two Gonds, 
a Baghel, a Gahlaut, and others, but in what I have read of Chand’s poem 
I have not found any mention of the Bhars. Famous though the Chandel 
dynasty is for the great embankments and splendid temples constructed 
under its auspices, I believe that, even in its flourishing days, the country 
was but very partially cleared, and was chiefly inhabited by sundry hill 
tribes, who owned indeed a certain allegiance to the Baja, but yet lived for 
the most part free of control, and indulged with little restraint in their 
hereditary propensities for fighting and plunder. According to the census 
returns of 1872, the Chandels in the Hamirpur District number only 656, 
and, although they were undoubtedly once much more numerous than now, 
I do not believe that they ever colonized the country in large force. In 
the Mahoba pargana the Chandels are zamindars, I think, in only two vil¬ 
lages ; in the rest of the district I do not know of their holding a single 
village, and the local* traditions of the many villages in every pargana 
which I have examined, in no case mention the Chandels as the former 
owners of the soil, but everywhere we find traces of Gonds, Ivols, Bhils, 
Bhars, Kachhis, Ahirs, Chamars, and other low caste and outcast people as 
the original occupiers of the land. 
I believe then that the Chandels were simply a small clan who sup¬ 
plied the members of the ruling dynasty and much of the 'personnel of the 
local court, but who never supplanted the tribes that were in occupation 
of the soil previous to the rise of the dynasty. But the Bhars and Gonds 
and their fellows have now disappeared, or have at least lost all tribal indi¬ 
viduality, and can no longer be identified under the old names, and other 
races are lords of the soil. In other parts of India a similar transfer of 
the land seems to have occurred, but there the history of the change is 
obscure and the details unknown; here, however, the outlines of the revo¬ 
lution can be clearly traced, and even some of the details can still be vividly 
presented. 
Whatever may be the truth with regard to eastern Audh, where Mr. 
Carnegyf with apparently considerable reason, doubts the reality of the 
fact of a Bajpiit conquest, there is no doubt that in the Hamirpur District 
the Bhars, Gonds and other early occupiers of the soil, were in compara- 
* For some of this local information I am indebted to notes made by natives em¬ 
ployed by Mr. W. Martin, C. S., and to his contributions to the N. W. P. Gazetteer. 
f J. A. S. B., Yol. XLY, (1876), p. 297 seqq. 
