Note 54 — C

Chero.—A Dravidian race of labourers and cultivators found in the hill country of Mirzapur where they number according to the last Census 4,881. The word may be possibly of non-Aryan origin. It has been connected with the Hindi chela (Sanskrit chetaka, chedaka “a slave”). Sir G. Campbell’s54 theory that that Chero-Khero, Kharwâr is not probable. The ethnology of the Cheros has been to some extent obscured by the fact that they are in Bengal perhaps the most advanced of the Dravidian races. Colonel Dalton calls them the last Kolarian tribe dominant in the Gangetic Provinces.55 They are said in Shâhâbâd to have been rulers of the country extending from Charanadri, the modern Chunâr, to Gridhaya kot (Giridhi), and from the Ganges to the hills which now form the boundary of South Bihâr, including the entire extent of the country in the Patna division south of the Ganges. The names of the Kol Râj and the Chero Râj are now discriminately applied by the natives of the South Bihâr to the kingdom of the aborigines.56 According to Dr. Buchanan Hamilton they extended as far as Gorakhpur or Kosala, and destroyed the family of the Sun in Ajudhya, as well as that of the Moon in Magadha.57