Note 1 — Mochi1

Mowār.—A small caste of cultivators found in the Chhattīsgarh country, in the Raipur and Bilāspur Districts and the Raigarh State. They numbered 2500 persons in 1901. The derivation of the name is obscure, but they themselves say that it is derived from Mow or Mowagarh, a town in the Jhānsi District of the United Provinces, and they also call themselves Mahuwār or the inhabitants of Mow. They say that the Rāja of Mowagarh, under whom they were serving, desired to marry the daughter of one of their Sirdārs (headmen), because she was extremely beautiful, but her father refused, and when the Rāja persisted in his desire they left the place in a body and came to Ratanpur in the time of Rāja Bīmbaji, in A.D. 1770. A Bilāspur writer states that the Mowārs are an offshoot from the Rajwār Rājpūts of Sargūja State. Colonel Dalton writes1 of the Rajwār Rājpūts of Sargūja and other adjoining States that they are peaceably disposed cultivators, who declare themselves to be fallen Kshatriyas; but he remarks later that they are probably aborigines, as they do not conform to Hindu customs, and they are skilled in a dance called Chailo, which he considers to be of Dravidian origin. In another place he remarks that the Rajwārs of Bengal admit that they are derived from the miscegenation of Kurmis and Kols. The fact that the Mowārs of Sārangarh make a representation of a bow and arrow on their documents, instead of signing their names, affords some support to the theory that they are probably a branch of one of the aboriginal tribes. The name may be derived from mowa, a radish, as the Mowārs of Bilāspur are engaged principally in garden cultivation.