The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India
Chapter 249 : The Kohlis were the builders of the great tanks of the Bhandara District. The most imp

The Kohlis were the builders of the great tanks of the Bhandara District. The most important of these are Nawegaon with an area of five square miles and a circ.u.mference of seventeen, and Seoni, over seven miles round, while smaller tanks are counted by thousands. Though the largest are the work of the Kohlis, many of the others have been constructed by the Panwars of this tract, who have also much apt.i.tude for irrigation. Built as they were without technical engineering knowledge, the tanks form an enduring monument to the native ability and industry of these enterprising cultivators. "Working," Mr. Danks remarks, [531] "without instruments, unable even to take a level, finding out their mistakes by the destruction of the works they had built, ever repairing, reconstructing, altering, they have raised in every village a testimony to their wisdom, their industry and their perseverance." Although Nawegaon tank has a water area of seven square miles, the combined length of the two artificial embankments is only 760 yards, and this demonstrates the great skill with which the site has been selected. At some of the tanks men are stationed day and night during the rainy season to see if the embankment is anywhere weakened by the action of the water, and in that case to give the alarm to the village by beating a drum. The Nawegaon tank is said to have been built at the commencement of the eighteenth century by one Kolu Patel Kohli. As might be expected, Kolu Patel has been deified as Kolasur Deo, and his shrine is on one of the peaks surrounding the tank. Seven other peaks are known as the Sat Bahini or 'Seven Sisters,'

and it is said that these deities a.s.sisted Kolu in building the tank, by coming and working on the embankment at night when the labourers had left. Some whitish-yellow stones on Kolasur's hill are said to be the baskets of the Seven Sisters in which they carried earth. "The Kohli,"

Mr. Napier states, [532] "sacrifices all to his sugarcane, his one ambition and his one extravagance being to build a large reservoir which will contain water for the irrigation of his sugarcane during the long, hot months." Each rates the other according to the size of his tank and the strength of its embankment. Under the Gond kings a man who built a tank received a grant of the fields lying below it either free of revenue or on a very light a.s.sessment. Such grants were known as Tukm, and were probably a considerable incentive to tank-building. Unfortunately sugarcane, formerly a most profitable crop, has been undersold by the ca.n.a.l- and tank-irrigated product of northern India, and at present scarcely repays cultivation.

4. Agricultural customs.

The Kohli villages are managed on a somewhat patriarchal system, and the dealings between proprietors and cultivators are regulated by their own custom without much regard to the rules imposed by Government. Mr. Napier says of them: [533] "The Kohlis are very good landlords as a general rule; but in their dealings with their tenants and their labourers follow their own customs, while the provisions of the Tenancy Act often remain in abeyance. They admit no tenant right in land capable of being irrigated for sugarcane, and change the tenants as they please; and in many villages a large number of the labourers are practically serfs, being fed, clothed and married by their employers, for whom they and their children work all their lives without any fixed wages. These customs are acquiesced in by all parties, and, so far as I could learn, there was no discontent. They have a splendid caste discipline, and their quarrels are settled expeditiously by their panchayats or committees without reference to courts of law."

5. General characteristics.

In appearance and character the Kohlis cannot be said to show much trace of distinction. The men wear a short white bandi or coat, and a small head-cloth only three feet long. This is often scarcely more than a handkerchief which tightly covers the crown, and terminates in knots, inelegant and cheap. The women wear gla.s.s bangles only on the left hand and bra.s.s or silver ones on the right, no doubt because gla.s.s ornaments would interfere with their work and get broken. Their cloth is drawn over the left shoulder instead of the right, a custom which they share with Gonds, Kapewars and Buruds. In appearance the caste are generally dirty. They are ignorant themselves and do not care that their children should be educated. Their custom of polygamy leads to family quarrels and excessive subdivision of property; thus in one village, Ashti, the proprietary right is divided into 192 shares. On this account they are seldom well-to-do. Their countenances are of a somewhat inferior type and generally dark in colour. In character they are peaceful and amenable, and have the reputation of being very respectful to Government officials, who as a consequence look on them with favour. 'Their heart is good,' a tahsildar [534] of the Bhandara District remarked. If a guest comes to a Kohli, the host himself offers to wash his feet, and if the guest be a Brahman, will insist on doing so. They eat flesh and fowls, but abstain from liquor. In social status they are on a level with the Malis and a little below the regular cultivating castes.

KOL

[This article is based mainly on Colonel Dalton's cla.s.sical description of the Mundas and Hos in the Ethnology of Bengal and on Sir H. Risley's article on Munda in The Tribes and Castes of Bengal. Extracts have also been made from Mr. Sarat Chandra Roy's exhaustive account in The Mundas and their Country (Calcutta, 1912). Information on the Mundas and Kols of the Central Provinces has been collected by Mr. Hira Lal in Raigarh and by the author in Mandla, and a monograph has been furnished by Mr. B. C. Mazumdar, Pleader, Sambalpur. It should be mentioned that most of the Kols of the Central Provinces have abandoned the old tribal customs and religion described by Colonel Dalton, and are rapidly coming to resemble an ordinary low Hindu caste.]

List of Paragraphs

1. General notice. Strength of the Kols in India.

2. Names of the tribe.

3. Origin of the Kolarian tribes.

4. The Kolarians and Dravidians.

5. Date of the Dravidian immigration.

6. Strength of the Kols in the Central Provinces.

7. Legend of origin.

8. Tribal subdivisions.

9. Totemism.

10. Marriage customs.

11. Divorce and widow-marriage.

12. Religion.

13. Witchcraft.

14. Funeral rites.

15. Inheritance.

16. Physical appearance.

17. Dances.

18. Social rules and offences.

19. The caste panchayat.

20. Names.

21. Occupation.

22. Language.

1. General notice. Strength of the Kols in India.

Kol, Munda, Ho.--A great tribe of Chota Nagpur, which has given its name to the Kolarian family of tribes and languages. A part of the District of Singhbhum near Chaibasa is named the Kolhan as being the special home of the Larka Kols, but they are distributed all over Chota Nagpur, whence they have spread to the United Provinces, Central Provinces and Central India. It seems probable also that the Koli tribe of Gujarat may be an offshoot of the Kols, who migrated there by way of Central India. If the total of the Kols, Mundas and Hos or Larka Kols be taken together they number about a million persons in India. The real strength of the tribe is, however, much greater than this. As shown in the article on that tribe, the Santals are a branch of the Kols, who have broken off from the parent stock and been given a separate designation by the Hindus. They numbered two millions in 1911. The Bhumij (400,000) are also probably a section of the tribe. Sir H. Risley [535] states that they are closely allied to if not identical with the Mundas. In some localities they intermarry with the Mundas and are known as Bhumij Munda. [536] If the Kolis also be taken as an offshoot of the Kol tribe, a further addition of nearly three millions is made to the tribes whose parentage can be traced to this stock. There is little doubt also that other Kolarian tribes, as the Kharias, Khairwars, Korwas and Korkus, whose tribal languages closely approximate to Mundari, were originally one with the Mundas, but have been separated for so long a period that their direct connection can no longer be proved. The disintegrating causes, which have split up what was originally one into a number of distinct tribes, are probably no more than distance and settlement in different parts of the country, leading to cessation of intermarriage and social intercourse. The tribes have then obtained some variation in the original name or been given separate territorial or occupational designations by the Hindus and their former ident.i.ty has gradually been forgotten.

2. Names of the tribe.

"The word Kol is probably the Santali har, a man. This word is used under various forms, such as har, hara, ho and koro by most Munda tribes in order to denote themselves. The change of r to l is familiar and does not give rise to any difficulty." [537] The word Korku is simply a corruption of Kodaku, young men, and there is every probability that the Hindus, hearing the Kol tribe call themselves hor or horo, may have corrupted the name to a form more familiar to themselves. An alternative derivation from the Sanskrit word kola, a pig, is improbable. But it is possible, as suggested by Sir G. Grierson, that after the name had been given, its Sanskrit meaning of pig may have added zest to its employment by the Hindus. The word Munda, Sir H. Risley states, is the common term employed by the Kols for the headman of a village, and has come into general use as an honorific t.i.tle, as the Santals call themselves Manjhi, the Gonds Bhoi, and the Bhangis and other sweepers Mehtar. Munda, like Mehtar, originally a t.i.tle, has become a popular alternative name for the caste. In Chota Nagpur those Kols who have partly adopted Hinduism and become to some degree civilised are commonly known as Munda, while the name Ho or Larka Kol is reserved for the branch of the tribe in Singhbhum who, as stated by Colonel Dalton, "From their jealous isolation for so many years, their independence, their long occupation of one territory, and their contempt for all other cla.s.ses that come in contact with them, especially the Hindus, probably furnish the best ill.u.s.tration, not of the Mundaris in their present state, but of what, if left to themselves and permanently located, they were likely to become. Even at the present day the exclusiveness of the old Hos is remarkable. They will not allow aliens to hold land near their villages; and indeed if it were left to them no strangers would be permitted to settle in the Kolhan."

It is this branch of the tribe whose members have come several times into contact with British troops, and on account of their bravery and warlike disposition they are called the Larka or fighting Kols. The Mundas on the other hand appear now to be a very mixed group. The list of their subcastes given [538] by Sir H. Risley includes the Khangar, Kharia, Mahali, Oraon and Savar Mundas, all of which are the names of separate tribes, now considered as distinct, though with the exception of the Oraons they were perhaps originally offshoots of the Kols or akin to them; while the Bhuinhar or landholders and Nagvansi or Mundas of the royal house are apparently the aristocracy of the original tribe. It would appear possible from the list of sub-tribes already given that the village headmen of other tribes, having adopted the designation of Munda and intermarried with other headmen so as to make a superior group, have in some cases been admitted into the Munda tribe, which may enjoy a higher rank than other tribes as the Raja of Chota Nagpur belongs to it; but it is also quite likely that these groups may have simply arisen from the intermarriages of Mundas with other tribes, alliances of this sort being common. The Kols of the Central Provinces probably belong to the Munda tribe of Chota Nagpur, and not to the Hos or Larka Kols, as the latter would be less likely to emigrate. But quite a separate set of subcastes is found here, which will be given later.

3. Origin of the Kolarian tribes.

The Munda languages have been shown by Sir G. Grierson to have originated from the same source as those spoken in the Indo-Pacific islands and the Malay Peninsula. "The Mundas, the Mon-Khmer, the wild tribes of the Malay Peninsula and the Nicobarese all use forms of speech which can be traced back to a common source though they mutually differ widely from each other." [539] It would appear therefore that the Mundas, the oldest known inhabitants of India, perhaps came originally from the south-east, the islands of the Indian Archipelago and the Malay Peninsula, unless India was their original home and these countries were colonised from it.

Sir E. Gait states: "Geologists tell us that the Indian Peninsula was formerly cut off from the north of Asia by sea, while a land connection existed on the one side with Madagascar and on the other with the Malay Archipelago; and though there is nothing to show that India was then inhabited we know that it was so in palaeolithic times, when communication was probably still easier with the countries to the north-east and south-west than with those beyond the Himalayas." [540]

In the south of India, however, no traces of Munda languages remain at present, and it seems therefore necessary to conclude that the Mundas of the Central Provinces and Chota Nagpur have been separated from the tribes of Malaysia who speak cognate languages for an indefinitely long period, or else that they did not come through southern India to these countries, but by way of a.s.sam and Bengal or by sea through Orissa. There is good reason to believe from the names of places and from local tradition that the Munda tribes were once spread over Bihar and parts of the Ganges valley; and if the Kolis are an offshoot of the Kols, as is supposed, they also penetrated across Central India to the sea in Gujarat and the hills of the Western Ghats. It is presumed that the advance of the Aryans or Hindus drove the Mundas from the open country to the seclusion of the hills and forests. The Munda and Dravidian languages are shown by Sir G. Grierson to be distinct groups without any real connection.

4. The Kolarians and Dravidians.

Though the physical characteristics of the two sets of tribes display no marked points of difference, it has been generally held by ethnologists who know them that they represent two distinct waves of immigration, and the absence of connection between their languages bears out this view. It has always been supposed that the Mundas were in the country of Chota Nagpur and the Central Provinces first, and that the Dravidians, the Gonds, Khonds and Oraons came afterwards. The grounds for this view are the more advanced culture of the Dravidians; the fact that where the two sets of tribes are in contact those of the Munda group have been ousted from the more open and fertile country, of which according to tradition they were formerly in possession; and the practice of the Gonds and other Dravidian tribes of employing the Baigas, Bhuiyas and other Munda tribes for their village priests, which is an acknowledgment that the latter as the earlier residents have a more familiar acquaintance with the local deities, and can solicit their favour and protection with more prospect of success. Such a belief is the more easily understood when it is remembered that these deities are not infrequently either the human ancestors of the earliest residents or the local animals and plants from which they supposed themselves to be descended.

5. Date of the Dravidian immigration.

The Dravidian languages, Gondi, Kurukh and Khond, are of one family with Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Canarese, and their home is the south of India. As stated [541] by Sir E. Gait, there is at present no evidence to show that the Dravidians came to southern India from any other part of the world, and for anything that is known to the contrary the languages may have originated there. The existence of the small Brahui tribe in Baluchistan, who speak a Dravidian language but have no physical resemblance to other Dravidian races, cannot be satisfactorily explained, but as he points out this is no reason for holding that the whole body of speakers of Dravidian languages entered India from the north-west, and, with the exception of this small group of Brahuis, penetrated to the south of India and settled there without leaving any traces of their pa.s.sage.

The Dravidian languages occupy a large area in Madras, Mysore and Hyderabad, and they extend north into the Central Provinces and Chota Nagpur, where they die out, practically not being found west and north of this tract. As the languages are more highly developed and the culture of their speakers is far more advanced in the south, it is justifiable to suppose, pending evidence to the contrary, that the south is their home and that they have spread thence as far north as the Central Provinces. The Gonds and Oraons too have stories to the effect that they came from the south. It has. .h.i.therto been believed, at least in the Central Provinces, that both the Gonds and Baigas have been settled in this territory for an indefinite period, that is, from prior to any Aryan or Hindu immigration. Mr. H. A. Crump, however, has questioned this a.s.sumption. He points out that the Baiga tribe have entirely lost their own language and speak a dialect of Chhattisgarhi Hindi in Mandla, while half the Gonds still speak Gondi. If the Baigas and Gonds were settled here together before the arrival of any Hindus, how is it that the Baigas do not speak Gondi instead of Hindi? A comparison of the caste and language tables of the census of 1901 shows that several of the Munda tribes have entirely lost their own language, among these being the Binjhwar, Baiga, Bhaina, Bhuiya, Bhumij, Chero and Khairwar, and the Bhils and Kolis if these are held to be Munda tribes. None of these tribes have adopted a Dravidian language, but all speak corrupt forms of the current Aryan vernaculars derived from Sanskrit. The Mundas and Hos themselves with the Kharias, Santals and Korkus retain Munda languages. On the other hand a half of the Gonds, nearly all the Oraons and three-fourths of the Khonds still preserve their own Dravidian speech. It would therefore seem that the Munda tribes who speak Aryan vernaculars must have been in close contact with Hindu peoples at the time they lost their own language and not with Gonds or Oraons. In the Central Provinces it is known that Rajput dynasties were ruling in Jubbulpore from the sixth to the twelfth century, in Seoni about the sixth century and in Bhandak near Chanda from an early period as well as at Ratanpur in Chhattisgarh. From about the twelfth century these disappear and there is a blank till the fourteenth century or later, when Gond kingdoms are found established at Kherla in Betul, at Deogarh in Chhindwara, at Garha-Mandla [542] including the Jubbulpore country, and at Chanda fourteen miles from Bhandak. It seems clear then that the Hindu dynasties were subverted by the Gonds after the Muhammadan invasions of northern India had weakened or destroyed the central powers of the Hindus and prevented any a.s.sistance being afforded to the outlying settlements. But it seems prima facie more likely that the Hindu kingdoms of the Central Provinces should have been destroyed by an invasion of barbarians from without rather than by successful risings of their own subjects once thoroughly subdued. The Haihaya Rajput dynasty of Ratanpur was the only one which survived, all the others being supplanted by Gond states. If then the Gond incursion was subsequent to the establishment of the old Hindu kingdoms, its probable date may be placed from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, the subjugation of the greater part of the Province being no doubt a gradual affair. In favour of this it may be noted that some recollection still exists of the settlement of the Oraons in Chota Nagpur being later than that of the Mundas, while if it had taken place long before this time all tradition of it would probably have been forgotten. In Chhindwara the legend still remains that the founder of the Deogarh Gond dynasty, Jatba, slew and supplanted the Gaoli kings Ransur and Ghansur, who were previously ruling on the plateau. And the Bastar Raj-Gond Rajas have a story that they came from Warangal in the south so late as the fourteenth century, accompanied by the ancestors of some of the existing Bastar tribes. Jadu Rai, the founder of the Gond-Rajput dynasty of Garha-Mandla, is supposed to have lived near the G.o.davari. A large section of the Gonds of the Central Provinces are known as Rawanvansi or of the race of Rawan, the demon king of Ceylon, who was conquered by Rama. The Oraons also claim to be descended from Rawan. [543] This name and story must clearly have been given to the tribes by the Hindus, and the explanation appears to be that the Hindus considered the Dravidian Gonds and Oraons to have been the enemy encountered in the Aryan expedition to southern India and Ceylon, which is dimly recorded in the legend of Rama. On the other hand the Bhuiyas, a Munda tribe, call themselves Pawan-ka-put or Children of the Wind, that is of the race of Hanuman, who was the Son of the Wind; and this name would appear to show, as suggested by Colonel Dalton, that the Munda tribes gave a.s.sistance to the Aryan expedition and accompanied it, an alliance which has been preserved in the tale of the exploits of Hanuman and his army of apes. Similarly the name of the Ramosi caste of Berar is a corruption of Ramvansi or of the race of Rama; and the Ramosis appear to be an offshoot of the Bhils or Kolis, both of whom are not improbably Munda tribes. A Hindu writer compared the Bhil auxiliaries in the camp of the famous Chalukya Rajput king Sidhraj of Gujarat to Hanuman and his apes, on account of their agility. [544] These instances seem to be in favour of the idea that the Munda tribes a.s.sisted the Aryans, and if this were the case it would appear to be a legitimate inference that at the same period the Dravidian tribes were still in southern India and not mixed up with the Munda tribes in the Central Provinces and Chota Nagpur as at present. Though the evidence is perhaps not very strong, the hypothesis, as suggested by Mr. Crump, that the settlement of the Gonds in the Central Provinces is comparatively recent and subsequent to the early Rajput dynasties, is well worth putting forward.

6. Strength of the Kols in the Central Provinces.