Note 107 — Volume II. (continued 2)

Appearance, clothes, tattooing. 19. Of the tribe whom he calls Bhuînhârs Colonel Dalton says:—“They are about the lowest type of human beings I have ever come across in my wanderings, and I have had more opportunities than most people of seeing varieties of race. They are very dark, (41, about the average), faces, or rather heads, altogether round as bullets, projecting jaws and lips, scarcely any prominence of nose, pig’s eyes, large bodies, and small limbs, no muscular development, very short of stature, not one of them more than five feet, very filthy in their persons, with diseased skins and sore eyes. One creature, an adult male of a group which appeared before me at Moheri, in Sarguja, looked to me like a disgustingly superannuated black baby. Baby-like, his round head rolled about his shoulders on a very short and unnaturally weak neck. You could imagine his proper place to be bundled up in a cloth slung from the shoulders of his black mother, his head helplessly rolling about after the manner of native infants thus supported. They speak Hindi plainly enough, but appear as devoid of ideas as they are of beauty. They adore the sun and their ancestors, but they have no notion that the latter are now spirits, or that there are spirits or ghosts or anything. They have no veneration for a tiger, but regard him as a dangerous enemy, whom it is their interest to slay whenever they have the opportunity. They were asked to dance, and did so; but it was a singularly feeble, motiveless performance. Men and women were scantily clothed, and appeared to take no thought for their personal appearance. The hair, uncared-for, was matted and rusty coloured. The Bhuînhârs in Palamau are said to be good cultivators; but I believe this means they are very docile farm labourers and beasts of burden. They appear to have no independence of character, and are for the most part in servitude or bondage, and content so to remain. If we have now in existence the descendants of human beings of the stone age, here I would say are specimens. They remind me much of the specimens I have seen of the Andamanese.”107 These are certainly in every way a more degraded race than the Bhuiyârs of Mirzapur who in appearance do not seem to differ much from the other Dravidian tribes by whom they are surrounded. They rather resemble the people whom Colonel Dalton calls Boyars. “In complexion,” he says, “I found the Boyars generally of a dark brown colour, fairly proportioned, and averaging upwards of five feet in height. The features were characterised by great breadth across the cheek bones, very narrow forehead, nose broad, nostrils wide apart, but the nasal bone more prominent than in the types previously described; the mouth so wide as nearly to equal the space occupied by both eyes, lips protuberant, chin receding, but not so the brow. There was more appearance of hair on the face than is generally found amongst the tribes of this class.”108 The Mirzapur people are also much better dressed than their Bengal kinsmen. The men wear a small loin cloth, generally have an upper sheet and a cloth wrapped round the head, the hair of which is allowed to hang down uncut and unkempt behind. The women wear the single white cotton cloth (dhoti) wrapped round the waist and brought over the shoulders. A few wear a small boddice. The women tattoo themselves in the manner common to all these aboriginal tribes.109 There is no tribal tattoo, and the pattern employed is according to the taste of the wearer. Tattooing is invested with some religious significance; if a woman is not tattooed Paramesar pitches her down from heaven when she dies. The women wear on their arms brass rings (mâthi, bahunta), anklets (pairi), in the ears palm leaf ornaments (tarki), with beads made of clay round the neck. The men have small brass earrings.