231 
1877.] V. A. Smith.— Notes on the JBhars of Mundelhhand. 
the Kols so late as the year 1730 A. D., when a battle took place between 
Dalil Khan, a son of the Subahdar of Allahabad, and the Bundelas, the lat¬ 
ter being assisted by the Kols, with whom Dhanuks, Kanjars, and Kanrers 
are said to have been associated. 
The foregoing details show the gradual manner in which the aborigi¬ 
nal* * * § tribes have been supplanted. 
The interesting question as to the nature of the religion of the Bhars 
was raised by Mr. Sherring,f and has since been discussed by Mr. Carnegy. 
The former gentleman came to the conclusion that the Bhars were Bud¬ 
dhists ; and the latter arrived at the somewhat ambiguous result that the 
“ god-neglecting, caste-disregarding race” which formerly held Eastern 
Audh were the Bhars. J Mr. Sherring’s arguments and the plates of Bhar 
sculptures, published in illustration of his essay, seem to me to prove that 
the religion of the Eastern Bhars was Jain rather than Buddhist, and the 
facts which I shall now mention are I think sufficient to raise a presump¬ 
tion that the Bhars and other aborigines of Bundelkhand during a period 
of at least two or three centuries professed Jainism, though perhaps not 
exclusively. It may well be that in earlier times they were Buddhists, for 
the close relation between the Jain and the Buddhist faith and the high 
antiquity of the former are only now beginning to be perceived. 
A tradition is current at Mahoba that many years subsequent to the 
conquest of that city in the reign of Shihab-uddin§ (1202-3 A. D.), Ajaipal 
and Bhar and others, seven brothers who were Jains and Jogis and great 
magicians, became rulers of the country : Ajaipal conquered Ajmir, but Bhar 
held Mahoba, and so oppressed the Musalmans that they invoked the aid of 
Malik Shah who came from the west, and after a bloody contest slew Raja 
Bhar and his fourteen sons, whose wives then burned themselves without 
the aid of fire, the place where they sacrificed themselves being pointed out 
to this day as the Ghaudah Marti hi sati, i. e., the burning-place of the four¬ 
teen queens. 
Mauza’ Bharwara in pargana Panwari-Jaitpur is said, according to 
the local tradition, to have been founded by Raja Bhar of Mahoba|| and 
to have been occupied by Lodhis in 1300 Samvat ( = 1213 A. D.) : as illus- 
* I use the word ‘ aboriginal’ as a convenient term, but as I have hinted above 
some of the so-called aborigines may themselves have moved from their original seat. 
t In the essay already quoted, p. 228. 
t J. A. S. B., XLV, Pt. I, 299. 
§ Mr. Blochmann, in J. A. S. B., XLIY, Pt. I, p. 277, proves the correct date of 
the conquest. 
|| A tradition is quoted in X. W. P. Graz. I, pp. 406-7, to the effect that a temple 
at Dadhwa Manpur G-arrampur in pargana Badausa of the Banda District was the trea¬ 
sury of the Bhar Rajas of Kalinjar, whose descendants continued to use it until a 
recent date : this is the only reference I know to Bhar Rajas of Kalinjar. 
