Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 1.djvu/73

 OTHERWISE CALLED THE LUKKA OR FIGHTING COLES OF SINGBHOOM.

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HE Singbhoom district is where the languages spoken by three great divisions of the Hindoo family, the Hindee, Ooria, and Bengallee, approach and blend; but there is a space between the limit of each, a tract of open undulating country surrounded by hills, about sixty miles in length from north to south, and from thirty-five to sixty from east to west, occupied by a people speaking a language having little affinity with any one of the three, and upon whom no Hindoo doctrine has ever exercised the slightest influence,—a people on whose smiling country covetous eyes have often been directed, but into which no one ever attempted to intrude with impunity.

It appears to be a generally received opinion, that the scattered remnants of the primitive tribes found in the hills and forests of Northern and Central India, were the former lords of the more fertile plains from which they were driven as the Aryan race advanced. Most of the Hill races have traditions of such compulsory migrations similar to those of the Oraons or "Coonkhurs" of Chota Nagpore, treated of in a previous note; but the Moondahs of Chota Nagpore and the Hos of Singbhoom, kindred tribes, are in possession of lands as fair as any to be found in India, which they have occupied for ages, and there is no reason for supposing that they were ever forced to retreat before the usurping Hindoos. The tradition of the Oraons indeed, shows that the Moondahs had been long settled in these parts, when they, under pressure from the west, sought and obtained a shelter there.

In Chota Nagpore, since its chief adopted Hindooism, his object has been to introduce colonies of Hindoos to support him in the position he chose to assume as a Rajpoot potentate; and these Hindoo colonists, called "Suds," receiving from him grants of land, including villages of Coles, pushed aside a large proportion of the old settlers, appropriated their lands, and arrogated over the remainder, rights which the Maharajah himself did not possess, and could not have conferred on