Note 73 — B (continued 3)

Bhūmia.—The Bhūmias are an Oriya caste of hill cultivators, found in the Jeypore Zamindāri. According to a tradition, they were the first to cultivate the land on the hills. In the Central Provinces they are said to be known as Baigas, concerning whom Captain Ward writes73 that “the decision of the Baiga in a boundary dispute is almost always accepted as final, and, from this right as children of the soil and arbiters of the land belonging to each village, they are said to have derived their title of Bhūmia, the Sanskrit bhūmi meaning the earth.”