Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 7.djvu/105

 BHEELS OF THE VINDHYAN RANGE. (363)

HE group of Bheels, or Bhils, is taken from members of the Malwah Bheel corps, and the men have a much more civilized look than in their native condition. They have been drilled, and are soldiers of government, which has improved them. The five men are accompanied by four women, one of whom is somewhat good looking; but the Bheels, for the most part, are an extremely ugly race, and like most of the aboriginal tribes, have features peculiar to themselves.

Two of the great Central India chains of mountains are inhabited by Bheels, the Vindhya and Satpoora; but they extend from these in all directions to a limited distance, still, however, adhering to mountain ranges, and their spurs and offsets. Westward their places are filled by Grassias, while north-west are Meenas, south and south-east Korkoos, Gonds, and other cognate tribes; but the Bheels are distinct from all, and probably the most ancient. All the Hindoo tribes recognise their great. antiquity, and acknowledge them as lords of the soil, paying them certain proportions of crops, as well in respect of original right, as to protect themselves from plunder and injury. In all ethnological classifications of the wild tribes of India, the Bheels are recognised as descendants of an aboriginal race; that is, they far exceed,the Aryan in antiquity of local possession,, and by their adherence to mountain fastnesses and deep forests, they may be classed with those now local tribes from whom the Aryans wrested the low-lying fertile lands, and drove them gradually to the mountain ranges. The same result appears in all other parts of India where wild tribes in the Himalayas, in the western and eastern Ghauts, and the like, hold no place in the lowland population, but are confined to the localities which they now inhabit.

A legend of the origin of the Bheels is to be found, according to Lieut. Waterhouse, in the Svi Bhugwat, book 4, chapter xvi., to the following effect:—"Centuries ago, the Rajpoot King of Hindoostan had two sons: the eldest named Nisbad, being black and deformed, with red eyes, his father sent him to the