Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/391

Rh Dhangars, a well known division of the Cole tribe, are also found, but in less number, in Beerbhoom; and Singhbhoom is chiefly occupied by the Coles. In Orissa three distinct mountain or forest races are found,—the Coles, the Kunds, and the Sours. The inhabitants of the hills in the districts of Bhaugulpore and Rajmahal are known to Europeans in connection with the name of Mr., “who, without bloodshed or the terrors of authority, employing only the means of conciliation, confidence, and benevolence, attempted and accomplished the entire subjection of the lawless and savage inhabitants of the jungleterry of Rajmahal who had long infested the neighbouring lands by their predatory incursions, inspired them with a taste for the arts of civilized life, and attached them to the British Government by a conquest over their minds,—the most permanent, as the most rational, mode of dominion.” On the eastern frontier of Bengal we find the Kookies or mountaineers of Tippera and the Garrows occupying the mountainous country between the Kassya Hills and the Brahmaputra. The Kassya tribes occupy the country from the plains of Sylhet in Bengal to in Assam, and there are other uncivilized hill tribes of Assam enumerated by Dr. McCosh, as the Akas, Duphlas and Koppachors; the Miris, the Abors, Bor-Abors, and Mishmis; the Singhphos and the Nagas, all more or less acknowledging subjection to the British Government or living under its protection, exclusive of the Assamese, Manipuris, Cacharis, Kangtis, and Mattucks, who are either Hindus, or Buddhists, or have a written language. The space intervening between Bengal, Orissa, and Nagpore, is the country of the Gonds, numerously divided and sub-divided. Still further west and along and beyond the Taptee and Nerbudda in Malwa, and in all the eastern quarter of Guzerat, are the Bheels who meet the coolies in Guzerat. In the peninsula we have the Tudas, the Erulars, the Curumbars, and the Cohatars, and the extent to which these and similar tribes prevail may be estimated from a statement recently made By Colonel Briggs at a meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society of London that, from his personal knowledge of the south of India, Brahmanism had not spread there, and that most of the peninsula was inhabited by persons not Hindus.

This must be received as a very loose and imperfect notice of the tribes scattered all over the face of India, but principally possessing its forest and mountain-tracts, who may be conjectured to be the remnants of the Autochthones or indigenous population existing before the occupation of the country by the Hindu, the Mohammadan, and the European races. Are these tribes to be allowed to remain in the rude and barbarous condition in which they have come under the dominion of the British Government? The Cole insurrections and the frequent necessity for the service of troops against the Kassya tribes and against the Bheels, compared with the peace which has been maintained amongst