Note 118 — Volume II. (continued 2)

Bind.—A non-Aryan tribe in the Eastern Districts of the Division, and with scattered colonies elsewhere. The name is said to be derived from the Vindhya118 hills of Central India. One legend quoted by Mr. Risley119 tells “how a traveller passing by the foot of the hills heard a strange flute-like sound coming out of a clump of bamboos. He cut a shoot and took from it a fleshy substance, which afterwards grew into a man, the supposed ancestor of the Binds. The myth seems to be of a totemistic character, but other traces of totemism are not forthcoming.” One account in Mirzapur makes Bind, Kewat, Mallâh, Luniya, Paskewata, Kuchbandhiya, and Musahar the descendants of Nikhâd, who was produced by the Rishis from the thigh of Râja Vena. Another Mirzapur legend tells how, in the beginning of all things, Mahâdeva made a lump of earth and endued it with life. The creature thus produced asked Mahâdeva what he should eat. The god pointed to a tank and told him to eat the fish and the wild rice (tinni) which grew near the banks. Since then this is the food of the Binds. They have no traditions of emigration from any other part of the country. The exact position of the Binds is not easily determined. About Mirzapur there are two sub-castes, Kharê and Dhusiya, the latter of whom probably take their name from Jhusi, an old town on the Ganges, in the Allahâbâd District.120 The Kharê Binds call themselves Kewat, and there seems little doubt that they intermarry with other Kewats. Another story says Binds and Luniyas were formerly all Binds, and that the present Luniyas are descendants of a Bind who consented to dig a grave for a Muhammadan king, and was outcasted for doing so. Others, again, make out the Bind to be a sub-division of both the Bhar and Luniya.121 There is, again, in Mirzapur, another division of them which is partly religious and partly local. The sub-caste of Kharê Binds has three septs, the Nârâyaniha, Pânchopiriha, and Maiwarha. The Nârâyaniha are worshippers of the orthodox Hindu gods, Mahâdeva, Pârvati, Mahâbîr, or Hanumân, and, in particular, Satya Nârâyan or Vishnu. The Pânchopiriha are worshippers of the five saints of Islâm, who should, according to orthodox belief, be Muhammad, ‘Ali, Bîbî Fatima, Hasan, and Husain. But most Binds name them (if they can name them at all), as Ghâzi Miyân, Rajab Sâlâr, Subhân, Parihâr, and Barahma or Barahna, who apparently represents Ibrahîm or Abraham. The Maiwarha themselves derive their name from the town of Mau in the Azamgarh District.