Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 1.djvu/63

 THE COLES OF CHOTA XAGPORE.

HE country called Chota or Chootea Nagpore is the larger portion of an extensive plateau 2,000 feet above the level of the sea, on which are the sources of the Coel, the Soobunrekha, the Damodur, and other less known Indian rivers. The plateau is fenced in most places by a line of hills, some of which attain a height of upwards of 3,000 feet. The whole surface is undulating, sometimes gently, and sometimes abruptly, and the scenery is further diversified by interior ranges of hills, and the protrusion of vast rocks of granite, either in great globular masses, or in huge fragments piled up in most fantastic shapes.

The total area is estimated at 4,468 square miles, with a population of 645,359 souls, of whom about one-half are what are known to Europeans by the name of Coles.

The word Col or Kol is an epithet of opprobrium applied to these tribes by the Hindoos. It is a Sanscrit word, meaning pig or out-cast, and its further employment as a name for a people ought, as Major Dalton, the chief local authority, justly remarks, to be interdicted. It includes many tribes, but the people of Chota Nagpore, to whom it is generally applied, are either Moondahs or Oraons; and though the two races are found in many parts of the country occupying the same villages, cultivating the same fields, celebrating together the same festivals, and enjoying the same amusements, they do not intermarry. The uniform tradition in Chota Nagpore is, that the Moondahs were the first settlers, and thus acquired certain proprietary rights in the soil, which they are most tenacious of to this day. In nearly every village are found descendants of these first settlers, who are called "Bhooyhars," land-clearers, and their lands, called "Bhooyharee," are very lightly assessed at fixed rates, or, in some instances, held rent-free.

In ancient times the Coles acknowledged no Rajah, but the country was divided into groups of villages called "Purhas," under chiefs who occasionally met and took counsel together as a confederacy. Traces of this old division are still found. The