Note 62 — Volume II.

Eastern Bhoksas—Manners and customs. 10. The Eastern section are very closely connected with the Thârus. “Both tribes,” says Mr. E. Colvin,62 “are superstitious, and, as a rule, truthful, much given to intoxicating drink and not very chaste; both more or less migratory, only continuing to cultivate the land until it is exhausted, and then moving on to fresh grounds; both utterly reckless with water with which they inundate their fields. They bear a good moral character; are inoffensive and peaceable, as well as intensely ignorant and indolent. They have no arts and manufactures, and live on the chase and a scanty cultivation. They are particularly fond of wild pig, and this may be one of the reasons why they change the site of their villages every two or three years. In some places they collect the wild jungle produce, but in no systematic way. They also engage in gold washing, extracting gold dust to the value of a few hundred rupees a year from the auriferous sands of the Sona Nadi. They are slowly but surely dying out, and now number only a few thousands.” Mr. Colvin says that they are less intelligent than the Thârus. “To this day neither the Bhoksas nor the Thârus build even earthen walls for their houses, which are made of posts driven into the ground with beams resting upon them. They employ hill or plainsmen as blacksmiths; all which tends to prove that they never possessed knowledge sufficient to admit of their erecting the buildings or sinking the masonry wells, ruins of which still exist in the Tarâi.” Of their villages in Bijnor Dr. Stewart says:—“All are built on the same plan of one straight street, generally of considerable width (in some cases as much as 40 or 50 feet) and kept very clean—in both respects differing remarkably from the villages of the plains. The huts are placed end to end, with intervals after every group of three or four, and the walls are for the most part built of wattle and dab, but sometimes of thatch (chhappar), of which latter the roofs are also constructed. The houses are windowless, but each has a door in front and another behind, the latter affording access to the shed for cattle, etc. The doorways and roofs are very low, and the floors of beaten earth are considerably raised above the general level of the grounds. Those Western Bhoksas do not at any time live in houses built on poles, as is stated to be the case with those opposite Kumâun.”