Volume 2 / Part 2 — Bhuiya

List of Paragraphs

1. The tribe and its name.

2. Distribution of the tribe.

3. Example of the position of the aborigines in Hindu society.

4. The Bhuiyas a Kolarian tribe.

5. The Baigas and the Bhuiyas. Chhattīsgarh the home of the Baigas.

6. The Baigas a branch of the Bhuiyas.

7. Tribal sub-divisions.

8. Exogamus septs.

9. Marriage customs.

10. Widow-marriage and divorce.

11. Religion.

12. Religious dancing.

13. Funeral rites and inheritance.

14. Physical appearance and occupation.

15. Social customs.

1. The tribe and its name.

The name Bhuiya means ‘Lord of the soil,’ or ‘Belonging to the soil,’ and is a Sanskrit derivative. The tribe have completely forgotten their original name, and adopted this designation conferred on them by the immigrant Aryans. The term Bhuiya, however, is also employed by other tribes and by some Hindus as a title for landholders, being practically equivalent to zamīndār. And hence a certain confusion arises, and classes or individuals may have the name of Bhuiya without belonging to the tribe at all. “In most parts of Chota Nāgpur,” Sir H. Risley says, “there is a well-known distinction between a Bhuiya by tribe and a Bhuiya by title. The Bhuiyas of Bonai and Keonjhar described by Colonel Dalton belong to the former category; the Bhuiya Mundas and Oraons to the latter. The distinction will be made somewhat clearer if it is explained that every ‘tribal Bhuiya’ will as a matter of course describe himself as Bhuiya, while a member of another tribe will only do so if he is speaking with reference to a question of land, or desires for some special reason to lay stress on his status as a landholder or agriculturist.”

We further find in Bengal and Benares a caste of landholders known as Bhuinhār or Bābhan, who are generally considered as a somewhat mixed and inferior group of Brāhman and Rājpūt origin. Both Sir H. Risley and Mr. Crooke adopt this view and deny any connection between the Bhuinhārs and the Bhuiya tribes. Bābhan appears to be a corrupt form of Brāhman. Mr. Mazumdār, however, states that Bhuiya is never used in Bengali as an equivalent for zamīndār or landholder, and he considers that the Bhuinhārs and also the Bārah Bhuiyas, a well-known group of twelve landholders of Eastern Bengal and Assam, belonged to the Bhuiya tribe. He adduces from Sir E. Gait’s History of Assam the fact that the Chutias and Bhuiyas were dominant in that country prior to its conquest by the Ahoms in the thirteenth century, and considers that these Chutias gave their name to Chutia or Chota Nāgpur. I am unable to express any opinion on Mr. Mazumdār’s argument, and it is also unnecessary as the question does not concern the Central Provinces.

2. Distribution of the tribe.

The principal home of the Bhuiya tribe proper is the south of the Chota Nāgpur plateau, comprised in the Gāngpur, Bonai, Keonjhar and Bāmra States. “The chiefs of these States,” Colonel Dalton says, “now call themselves Rājpūts; if they be so, they are strangely isolated families of Rājpūts. The country for the most part belongs to the Bhuiya sub-proprietors. They are a privileged class, holding as hereditaments the principal offices of the State, and are organised as a body of militia. The chiefs have no right to exercise any authority till they have received the tilak or token of investiture from their powerful Bhuiya vassals. Their position altogether renders their claim to be considered Rājpūts extremely doubtful, and the stories told to account for their acquisition of the dignity are palpable fables. They were no doubt all Bhuiyas originally; they certainly do not look like Rājpūts.” Members of the tribe are the household servants of the Bāmra Rāja’s family, and it is said that the first Rāja of Bāmra was a child of the Patna house, who was stolen from his home and anointed king of Bāmra by the Bhuiyas and Khonds. Similarly Colonel Dalton records the legend that the Bhuiyas twenty-seven generations ago stole a child of the Moharbhanj Rāja’s family, brought it up amongst them and made it their Rāja. He was freely admitted to intercourse with Bhuiya girls, and the children of this intimacy are the progenitors of the Rājkuli branch of the tribe. But they are not considered first among Bhuiyas because they are not of pure Bhuiya descent. Again the Rāja of Keonjhar is always installed by the Bhuiyas. These facts indicate that the Bhuiyas were once the rulers of Chota Nāgpur and are recognised as the oldest inhabitants of the country. From this centre they have spread north through Lohardaga and Hazāribāgh and into southern Bihār, where large numbers of Bhuiyas are encountered on whom the opprobrious designation of Mūsahar or ‘rat-eater’ has been conferred by their Hindu neighbours. Others of the tribe who travelled south from Chota Nāgpur experienced more favourable conditions, and here the tendency has been for the Bhuiyas to rise rather than to decline in social status. “Some of their leading families,” Sir H. Risley states, “have come to be chiefs of the petty States of Orissa, and have now sunk the Bhuiya in the Khandait or swordsman, a caste of admitted respectability in Orissa and likely in course of time to transform itself into some variety of Rājpūt.”

3. Example of the position of the aborigines in Hindu society.

The varying status of the Bhuiyas in Bihār, Chota Nāgpur and Orissa is a good instance of the different ways in which the primitive tribes have fared in contact with the immigrant Aryans. Where the country has been completely colonised and populated by Hindus, as in Bihār, the aboriginal residents have commonly become transformed into village drudges, relegated to the meanest occupations, and despised as impure by the Hindu cultivators, like the Chamārs of northern India and the Mahārs of the Marātha Districts. Where the Hindu immigration has only been partial and the forests have not been cleared, as in Chota Nāgpur and the Central Provinces, they may keep their old villages and tribal organisation and be admitted as a body into the hierarchy of caste, ranking above the impure castes but below the Hindu cultivators. This is the position of the Gonds, Baigas and other tribes in these tracts. While, if the Hindus come only as colonists and not as rulers, the indigenous residents may retain the overlordship of the soil and the landed proprietors among them may be formed into a caste ranking with the good cultivating castes of the Aryans. Instances of such are the Khandaits of Orissa, the Binjhwārs of Chhattīsgarh and the Bhilālas of Nimār and Indore.

4. The Bhuiyas a Kolarian tribe.

5. The Baigas and the Bhuiyas. Chhattīsgarh the home of the Baigas.

6. The Baigas a branch of the Bhuiyas.

7. Tribal sub-divisions.

8. Exogamus septs.

In Raigarh the Bhuiyas appear to have no exogamous divisions. When they wish to arrange a marriage they compare the family gods of the parties, and if these are not identical and there is no recollection of a common ancestor for three generations, the union is permitted. In Sambalpur, however, Mr. Mazumdār states, all Bhuiyas are divided into the following twelve septs: Thākur, or the clan of royal blood; Saont, from sāmanta, a viceroy; Padhān, a village headman; Nāik, a military leader; Kālo, a wizard or priest; Dehri, also a priest; Chatria, one who carried the royal umbrella; Sāhu, a moneylender; Mājhi, a headman; Behra, manager of the household; Amāta, counsellor; and Dandsena, a police official. The Dehrin sept still worship the village gods on behalf of the tribe.

9. Marriage customs.

Marriage is adult, but the more civilised Bhuiyas are gradually adopting Hindu usages, and parents arrange matches for their children while they are still young. Among the Pābudias some primitive customs survive. They have the same system as the Oraons, by which all the bachelors of the village sleep in one large dormitory; this is known as Dhāngarbāsa, dhāngar meaning a farmservant or young man, or Māndarghar, the house of the drums, because these instruments are kept in it. “Some villages,” Colonel Dalton states, “have a Dhāngaria bāsa, or house for maidens, which, strange to say, they are allowed to occupy without any one to look after them. They appear to have very great liberty, and slips of morality, so long as they are confined to the tribe, are not much heeded.” This intimacy between boys and girls of the same village does not, however, commonly end in marriage, for which a partner should be sought from another village. For this purpose the girls go in a body, taking with them some ground rice decorated with flowers. They lay this before the elders of the village they have entered, saying, ‘Keep this or throw it into the water, as you prefer.’ The old men pick up the flowers, placing them behind their ears. In the evening all the boys of the village come and dance with the girls, with intervals for courtship, half the total number of couples dancing and sitting out alternately. This goes on all night, and in the morning any couples who have come to an understanding run away together for a day or two. The boy’s father must present a rupee and a piece of cloth to the girl’s mother, and the marriage is considered to be completed.

Among the Pābudia or Madhai Bhuiyas the bride-price consists of two bullocks or cows, one of which is given to the girl’s father and the other to her brother. The boy’s father makes the proposal for marriage, and the consent of the girl is necessary. At the wedding turmeric and rice are offered to the sun; some rice is then placed on the girl’s head and turmeric rubbed on her body, and a brass ring is placed on her finger. The bridegroom’s father says to him, “This girl is ours now: if in future she becomes one-eyed, lame or deaf, she will still be ours.” The ceremony concludes with the usual feast and drinking bout. If the boy’s father cannot afford the bride-price the couple sometimes run away from home for two or three days, when their parents go in search of them and they are brought back and married in the boy’s house.

10. Widow-marriage and divorce.

11. Religion.

The Bhuiyas commonly take as their principal deity the spirit of the nearest mountain overlooking their village, and make offerings to it of butter, rice and fowls. In April they present the first-fruits of the mango harvest. They venerate the sun as Dharam Deota, but no offerings are made to him. Nearly all Bhuiyas worship the cobra, and some of them call it their mother and think they are descended from it. They will not touch or kill a cobra, and do not swear by it. In Rairakhol they venerate a goddess, Rambha Devi, who may be a corn-goddess, as the practice of burning down successive patches of jungle and sowing seed on each for two or three years is here known as rambha. They think that the sun and moon are sentient beings, and that fire and lightning are the children of the sun, and the stars the children of the moon. One day the moon invited the sun to dinner and gave him very nice food, so that the sun asked what it was. The moon said she had cooked her own children, and on this the sun went home and cooked all his children and ate them, and this is the reason why there are no stars during the day. But his eldest son, fire, went and hid in a rengal tree, and his daughter, the lightning, darted hither and thither so that the sun could not catch her. And when night came again, and the stars came out, the sun saw how the moon had deceived him and cursed her, saying that she should die for fifteen days in every month. And this is the reason for the waxing and waning of the moon. Ever since this event fire has remained hidden in a rengal tree, and when the Bhuiyas want him they rub two pieces of its wood together and he comes out. This is the Bhuiya explanation of the production of fire from the friction of wood.

12. Religious dancing.

In the month of Kārtik (October), or the next month, they bring from the forest a branch of the karm tree and venerate it and perform the karma dance in front of it. They think that this worship and dance will cause the karma tree, the mango, the jack-fruit and the mahua to bear a full crop of fruit. Monday, Wednesday and Friday are considered the proper days for worshipping the deities, and children are often named on a Friday.

13. Funeral rites and inheritance.

The dead are either buried or burnt, the corpse being placed always with the feet pointing to its native village. On the tenth day the soul of the dead person is called back to the house. But if a man is killed by a tiger or by falling from a tree no mourning is observed for him, and his soul is not brought back. To perish from snake-bite is considered a natural death, and in such cases the usual obsequies are awarded. This is probably because they revere the cobra as their first mother. The Pābudia Bhuiyas throw four to eight annas’ worth of copper on to the pyre or into the grave, and if the deceased had a cow some ghī or melted butter. No division of property can take place during the lifetime of either parent, but when both have died the children divide the inheritance, the eldest son taking two shares and the others one equal share each.

14. Physical appearance and occupation.

Colonel Dalton describes the Bhuiyas as, “A dark-brown, well-proportioned race, with black, straight hair, plentiful on the head, but scant on the face, of middle height, figures well knit and capable of enduring great fatigue, but light-framed like the Hindu rather than presenting the usual muscular development of the hillman.” Their dress is scanty, and in the Tributary States Dalton says that the men and women all wear dresses of brown cotton cloth. This may be because white is a very conspicuous colour in the forests. They wear ornaments and beads, and are distinctive in that neither men nor women practise tattooing, though in some localities this rule is not observed by the women. To keep themselves warm at night they kindle two fires and sleep between them, and this custom has given rise to the saying, ‘Wherever you see a Bhuiya he always has a fire.’ In Bāmra the Bhuiyas still practise shifting cultivation, for which they burn the forest growth from the hillsides and sow oilseeds in the fresh soil. This method of agriculture is called locally Khasrathumi. They obtain their lands free from the Rāja in return for acting as luggage porters and coolies. In Bāmra they will not serve as farm-servants or labourers for hire, but elsewhere they are more docile.

15. Social customs.

A woman divorced for adultery is not again admitted to caste intercourse. Her parents take her to their village, where she has to live in a separate hut and earn her own livelihood. If any Bhuiya steals from a Kol, Gānda or Ghasia he is permanently put out of caste, while for killing a cow the period of expulsion is twelve years. The emblem of the Bhuiyas is a sword, in reference to their employment as soldiers, and this they affix to documents in place of their signature.