Note 55 — Volume II.

Manners and customs. 2. The best available account of the manners and customs of the real Bhîls is that given by a writer in the Râjputâna Gazetteer:55—“All Bhîls go about armed with the tribal weapons, bows and arrows; except the headmen and others of consequence, who carry swords. They are a dirty race. The men wear their hair long, and hanging in uncombed masses from their shoulders. Their women are small and ugly, those of rank being distinguishable by the number of brass rings on their legs, often extending from the ankle to the knee. They kill and eat kine and are much addicted to spirits, vast quantities of which are consumed on festive occasions, which frequently end in quarrels and bloodshed. Fond of fighting, they resort to their weapons on the slightest provocation, but their most serious affrays arise out of cattle-lifting and the abduction of women. If a Bhîl run away with a betrothed girl, a feud will frequently ensue, which will not end till the villages of both sides have been burnt and many lives lost. As a rule they keep tolerably quiet in the winter and the rainy season; but in the summer, between the gathering in of the last harvest and the sowing of the next, they begin raiding on each other; and even the richest think this time, which hangs heavily on their hands, favourable for paying off old scores. There are sixty different sections of the Bhîl tribe in Bânswâra.