The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 2

Bhīl

1. General notice. The Bhīls a Kolarian tribe.

Bhīl. ³¹⁰—An indigenous or non-Aryan tribe which has been much in contact with the Hindus and is consequently well known. The home of the Bhīls is the country comprised in the hill ranges of Khāndesh, Central India and Rājputāna, west from the Satpūras to the sea in Gujarāt. The total number of Bhīls in India exceeds a million and a half, of which the great bulk belong to Bombay, Rājputāna and Central India. The Central Provinces have only about 28,000, practically all of whom reside in the Nimār district, on the hills forming the western end of the Satpūra range and adjoining the Rājpipla hills of Khāndesh. As the southern slopes of these hills lie in Berār, a few Bhīls are also found there. The name Bhīl seems to occur for the first time about A.D. 600. It is supposed to be derived from the Dravidian word for a bow, which is the characteristic weapon of the tribe. It has been suggested that the Bhīls are the Pygmies referred to by Ktesias (400 B.C.) and the Phyllitae of Ptolemy (A.D. 150). The Bhīls are recognised as the oldest inhabitants of southern Rājputāna and parts of Gujarāt, and are usually spoken of in conjunction with the Kolis, who inhabit the adjoining tracts of Gujarāt. The most probable hypothesis of the origin of the Kolis is that they are a western branch of the Kol or Munda tribe who have spread from Chota Nāgpur, through Mandla and Jubbulpore, Central India and Rājputāna to Gujarāt and the sea. If this is correct the Kolis would be a Kolarian tribe. The Bhīls have lost their own language, so that it cannot be ascertained whether it was Kolarian or Dravidian. But there is nothing against its being Kolarian in Sir G. Grierson’s opinion; and in view of the length of residence of the tribe, the fact that they have abandoned their own language and their association with the Kolis, this view may be taken as generally probable. The Dravidian tribes have not penetrated so far west as Central India and Gujarāt in appreciable numbers.

Group of Bhīls.

2. Rājpūts deriving their title to the land from the Bhīls.

The Rājpūts still recognise the Bhīls as the former residents and occupiers of the land by the fact that some Rājpūt chiefs must be marked on the brow with a Bhīl’s blood on accession to the Gaddi or regal cushion. Tod relates how Goha,³¹¹ the eponymous ancestor of the Sesodia Rājpūts, took the state of Idar in Gujarāt from a Bhīl: “At this period Idar was governed by a chief of the savage race of Bhīls. The young Goha frequented the forests in company with the Bhīls, whose habits better assimilated with his daring nature than those of the Brāhmans. He became a favourite with these vena-putras or sons of the forest, who resigned to him Idar with its woods and mountains. The Bhīls having determined in sport to elect a king, their choice fell on Goha; and one of the young savages, cutting his finger, applied the blood as the badge (tīka) of sovereignty to his forehead. What was done in sport was confirmed by the old forest chief. The sequel fixes on Goha the stain of ingratitude, for he slew his benefactor, and no motive is assigned in the legend for the deed.”³¹²

The legend is of course a euphemism for the fact that the Rājpūts conquered and dispossessed the Bhīls of Idar. But it is interesting as an indication that they did not consider themselves to derive a proper title to the land merely from the conquest, but wished also to show that it passed to them by the designation and free consent of the Bhīls. The explanation is perhaps that they considered the gods of the Bhīls to be the tutelary guardians and owners of the land, whom they must conciliate before they could hope to enjoy it in quiet and prosperity. This token of the devolution of the land from its previous holders, the Bhīls, was till recently repeated on the occasion of each succession of a Sesodia chief. “The Bhīl landholders of Oguna and Undri still claim the privilege of performing the tīka for the Sesodias. The Oguna Bhīl makes the mark of sovereignty on the chief’s forehead with blood drawn from his own thumb, and then takes the chief by the arm and seats him on the throne, while the Undri Bhīl holds the salver of spices and sacred grains of rice used in making the badge.”³¹³ The story that Goha killed the old Bhīl chief, his benefactor, who had adopted him as heir and successor, which fits in very badly with the rest of the legend, is probably based on another superstition. Sir J. G. Frazer has shown in The Golden Bough that in ancient times it was a common superstition that any one who killed the king had a right to succeed him. The belief was that the king was the god of the country, on whose health, strength and efficiency its prosperity depended. When the king grew old and weak it was time for a successor, and he who could kill the king proved in this manner that the divine power and strength inherent in the late king had descended to him, and he was therefore the fit person to be king.³¹⁴ An almost similar story is told of the way in which the Kachhwāha Rājpūts took the territory of Amber State from the Mīna tribe. The infant Rājpūt prince had been deprived of Narwar by his uncle, and his mother wandered forth carrying him in a basket, till she came to the capital of the Mīnas, where she first obtained employment in the chiefs kitchen. But owing to her good cooking she attracted his wife’s notice and ultimately disclosed her identity and told her story. The Mīna chief then adopted her as his sister and the boy as his nephew. This boy, Dhola Rai, on growing up obtained a few Rājpūt adherents and slaughtered all the Mīnas while they were bathing at the feast of Diwāli, after which he usurped their country.³¹⁵ The repetition both of the adoption and the ungrateful murder shows the importance attached by the Rājpūts to both beliefs as necessary to the validity of their succession and occupation of the land.

The position of the Bhīls as the earliest residents of the country was also recognised by their employment in the capacity of village watchmen. One of the duties of this official is to know the village boundaries and keep watch and ward over them, and it was supposed that the oldest class of residents would know them best. The Bhīls worked in the office of Mānkar, the superior village watchman, in Nimār and also in Berār. Grant Duff states³¹⁶ that the Rāmosi or Bhīl was employed as village guard by the Marāthas, and the Rāmosis were a professional caste of village policemen, probably derived from the Bhīls or from the Bhīls and Kolis.

3. Historical notice.

The Rājpūts seem at first to have treated the Bhīls leniently. Intermarriage was frequent, especially in the families of Bhīl chieftains, and a new caste called Bhilāla³¹⁷ has arisen, which is composed of the descendants of mixed Rājpūt and Bhīl marriages. Chiefs and landholders in the Bhīl country now belong to this caste, and it is possible that some pure Bhīl families may have been admitted to it. The Bhilālas rank above the Bhīls, on a level with the cultivating castes. Instances occasionally occurred in which the children of Rājpūt by a Bhīl wife became Rājpūts. When Colonel Tod wrote, Rājpūts would still take food with Ujla Bhīls or those of pure aboriginal descent, and all castes would take water from them.³¹⁸ But as Hinduism came to be more orthodox in Rājputāna, the Bhīls sank to the position of outcastes. Their custom of eating beef had always caused them to be much despised. A tradition is related that one day the god Mahādeo or Siva, sick and unhappy, was reclining in a shady forest when a beautiful woman appeared, the first sight of whom effected a cure of all his complaints. An intercourse between the god and the strange female was established, the result of which was many children; one of whom, from infancy distinguished alike by his ugliness and vice, slew the favourite bull of Mahādeo, for which crime he was expelled to the woods and mountains, and his descendants have ever since been stigmatised by the names of Bhīl and Nishāda.³¹⁹ Nishāda is a term of contempt applied to the lowest outcastes. Major Hendley, writing in 1875, states: “Some time since a Thākur (chief) cut off the legs of two Bhīls, eaters of the sacred cow, and plunged the stumps into boiling oil.”³²⁰ When the Marāthas began to occupy Central India they treated the Bhīls with great cruelty. A Bhīl caught in a disturbed part of the country was without inquiry flogged and hanged. Hundreds were thrown over high cliffs, and large bodies of them, assembled under promise of pardon, were beheaded or blown from guns. Their women were mutilated or smothered by smoke, and their children smashed to death against the stones.³²¹ This treatment may to some extent have been deserved owing to the predatory habits and cruelty of the Bhīls, but its result was to make them utter savages with their hand against every man, as they believed that every one’s was against them. From their strongholds in the hills they laid waste the plain country, holding villages and towns to ransom and driving off cattle; nor did any travellers pass with impunity through the hills except in convoys too large to be attacked. In Khāndesh, during the disturbed period of the wars of Sindhia and Holkar, about A.D. 1800, the Bhīls betook themselves to highway robbery and lived in bands either in mountains or in villages immediately beneath them. The revenue contractors were unable or unwilling to spend money in the maintenance of soldiers to protect the country, and the Bhīls in a very short time became so bold as to appear in bands of hundreds and attack towns, carrying off either cattle or hostages, for whom they demanded handsome ransoms.³²² In Gujarāt another writer described the Bhīls and Kolis as hereditary and professional plunderers—‘Soldiers of the night,’ as they themselves said they were.³²³ Malcolm said of them, after peace had been restored to Central India:³²⁴ “Measures are in progress that will, it is expected, soon complete the reformation of a class of men who, believing themselves doomed to be thieves and plunderers, have been confirmed in their destiny by the oppression and cruelty of neighbouring governments, increased by an avowed contempt for them as outcasts. The feeling this system of degradation has produced must be changed; and no effort has been left untried to restore this race of men to a better sense of their condition than that which they at present entertain. The common answer of a Bhīl when charged with theft or robbery is, ‘I am not to blame; I am the thief of Mahādeo’; in other words, ‘My destiny as a thief has been fixed by God.’” The Bhīl chiefs, who were known as Bhumia, exercised the most absolute power, and their orders to commit the most atrocious crimes were obeyed by their ignorant but attached subjects without a conception on the part of the latter that they had an option when he whom they termed their Dhunni (Lord) issued the mandates.³²⁵ Firearms and swords were only used by the chiefs and headmen of the tribe, and their national weapon was the bamboo bow having the bowstring made from a thin strip of its elastic bark. The quiver was a piece of strong bamboo matting, and would contain sixty barbed arrows a yard long, and tipped with an iron spike either flattened and sharpened like a knife or rounded like a nail; other arrows, used for knocking over birds, had knob-like heads. Thus armed, the Bhīls would lie in wait in some deep ravine by the roadside, and an infernal yell announced their attack to the unwary traveller.³²⁶ Major Hendley states that according to tradition in the Mahābhārata the god Krishna was killed by a Bhīl’s arrow, when he was fighting against them in Gujarāt with the Yādavas; and on this account it was ordained that the Bhīl should never again be able to draw the bow with the forefinger of the right hand. “Times have changed since then, but I noticed in examining their hands that few could move the forefinger without the second finger; indeed the fingers appeared useless as independent members of the hands. In connection with this may be mentioned their apparent inability to distinguish colours or count numbers, due alone to their want of words to express themselves.”³²⁷

Tantia Bhīl, a famous dacoit.

4. General Outram and the Khāndesh Bhīl Corps.

The reclamation and pacification of the Bhīls is inseparably associated with the name of Lieutenant, afterwards Sir James, Outram. The Khāndesh Bhīl Corps was first raised by him in 1825, when Bhīl robber bands were being hunted down by small parties of troops, and those who were willing to surrender were granted a free pardon for past offences, and given grants of land for cultivation and advances for the purchase of seed and bullocks. When the first attempts to raise the corps were made, the Bhīls believed that the object was to link them in line like galley-slaves with a view to extirpate the race, that blood was in high demand as a medicine in the country of their foreign masters, and so on. Indulging the wild men with feasts and entertainments, and delighting them with his matchless urbanity, Captain Outram at length contrived to draw over to the cause nine recruits, one of whom was a notorious plunderer who had a short time before successfully robbed the officer commanding a detachment sent against him. This infant corps soon became strongly attached to the person of their new chief and entirely devoted to his wishes; their goodwill had been won by his kind and conciliatory manners, while their admiration and respect had been thoroughly roused and excited by his prowess and valour in the chase. On one occasion, it is recorded, word was brought to Outram of the presence of a panther in some prickly-pear shrubs on the side of a hill near his station. He went to shoot it with a friend, Outram being on foot and his friend on horseback searching through the bushes. When close on the animal, Outram’s friend fired and missed, on which the panther sprang forward roaring and seized Outram, and they rolled down the hill together. Being released from the claws of the furious beast for a moment, Outram with great presence of mind drew a pistol which he had with him, and shot the panther dead. The Bhīls, on seeing that he had been injured, were one and all loud in their grief and expressions of regret, when Outram quieted them with the remark, ‘What do I care for the clawing of a cat?’ and this saying long remained a proverb among the Bhīls.³²⁸ By his kindness and sympathy, listening freely to all that each single man in the corps had to say to him, Outram at length won their confidence, convinced them of his good faith and dissipated their fears of treachery. Soon the ranks of the corps became full, and for every vacant place there were numbers of applicants. The Bhīls freely hunted down and captured their friends and relations who continued to create disturbances, and brought them in for punishment. Outram managed to check their propensity for liquor by paying them every day just sufficient for their food, and giving them the balance of their pay at the end of the month, when some might have a drinking bout, but many preferred to spend the money on ornaments and articles of finery. With the assistance of the corps the marauding tendencies of the hill Bhīls were suppressed and tranquillity restored to Khāndesh, which rapidly became one of the most fertile parts of India. During the Mutiny the Bhīl corps remained loyal, and did good service in checking the local outbursts which occurred in Khāndesh. A second battalion was raised at this time, but was disbanded three years afterwards. After this the corps had little or nothing to do, and as the absence of fighting and the higher wages which could be obtained by ordinary labour ceased to render it attractive to the Bhīls, it was finally converted into police in 1891.³²⁹

5. Subdivisions.

The Bhīls of the Central Provinces have now only two subdivisions, the Muhammadan Bhīls, who were forcibly converted to Islām during the time of Aurāngzeb, and the remainder, who though retaining many animistic beliefs and superstitions, have practically become Hindus. The Muhammadan Bhīls only number about 3000 out of 28,000. They are known as Tadvi, a name which was formerly applied to a Bhīl headman, and is said to be derived from tād, meaning a separate branch or section. These Bhīls marry among themselves and not with any other Muhammadans. They retain many Hindu and animistic usages, and are scarcely Muhammadan in more than name. Both classes are divided into groups or septs, generally named after plants or animals to which they still show reverence. Thus the Jāmania sept, named after the jāman tree,³³⁰ will not cut or burn any part of this tree, and at their weddings the dresses of the bride and bridegroom are taken and rubbed against the tree before being worn. Similarly the Rohini sept worship the rohan³³¹ tree, the Avalia sept the aonla³³² tree, the Meheda sept the bahera³³³ tree, and so on. The Mori sept worship the peacock. They go into the jungle and look for the tracks of a peacock, and spreading a piece of red cloth before the footprint, lay their offerings of grain upon it. Members of this sept may not be tattooed, because they think the splashes of colour on the peacock’s feathers are tattoo-marks. Their women must veil themselves if they see a peacock, and they think that if any member of the sept irreverently treads on a peacock’s footprints he will fall ill. The Ghodmārya (Horse-killer) sept may not tame a horse nor ride one. The Masrya sept will not kill or eat fish. The Sanyān or cat sept have a tradition that one of their ancestors was once chasing a cat, which ran for protection under a cover which had been put over the stone figure of their goddess. The goddess turned the cat into stone and sat on it, and since then members of the sept will not touch a cat except to save it from harm, and they will not eat anything which has been touched by a cat. The Ghattaya sept worship the grinding mill at their weddings and also on festival days. The Solia sept, whose name is apparently derived from the sun, are split up into four subsepts: the Ada Solia, who hold their weddings at sunrise; the Japa Solia, who hold them at sunset; the Taria Solia, who hold them when stars have become visible after sunset; and the Tar Solia, who believe their name is connected with cotton thread and wrap several skeins of raw thread round the bride and bridegroom at the wedding ceremony. The Moharia sept worship the local goddess at the village of Moharia in Indore State, who is known as the Moharia Māta; at their weddings they apply turmeric and oil to the fingers of the goddess before rubbing them on the bride and bridegroom. The Maoli sept worship a goddess of that name in Barwāni town. Her shrine is considered to be in the shape of a kind of grain-basket known as kilia, and members of the sept may never make or use baskets of this shape, nor may they be tattooed with representations of it. Women of the sept are not allowed to visit the shrine of the goddess, but may worship her at home. Several septs have the names of Rājpūt clans, as Sesodia, Panwār, Mori, and appear to have originated in mixed unions between Rājpūts and Bhīls.

6. Exogamy and marriage customs.

A man must not marry in his own sept nor in the families of his mothers and grandmothers. The union of first cousins is thus prohibited, nor can girls be exchanged in marriage between two families. A wife’s sister may also not be married during the wife’s lifetime. The Muhammadan Bhīls permit a man to marry his maternal uncle’s daughter, and though he cannot marry his wife’s sister he may keep her as a concubine. Marriages may be infant or adult, but the former practice is becoming prevalent and girls are often wedded before they are eleven. Matches are arranged by the parents of the parties in consultation with the caste panchāyat; but in Bombay girls may select their own husbands, and they have also a recognised custom of elopement at the Tosina fair in the month of the Mahi Kāntha. If a Bhīl can persuade a girl to cross the river there with him he may claim her as his wife; but if they are caught before getting across he is liable to be punished by the bride’s father.³³⁴ The betrothal and wedding ceremonies now follow the ordinary ritual of the middle and lower castes in the Marātha country.³³⁵ The bride must be younger than the bridegroom except in the case of a widow. A bride-price is paid which may vary from Rs. 9 to 20; in the case of Muhammadan Bhīls the bridegroom is said to give a dowry of Rs. 20 to 25. When the ovens are made with the sacred earth they roast some of the large millet juāri³³⁶ for the family feast, calling this Juāri Māta or the grain goddess. Offerings of this are made to the family gods, and it is partaken of only by the members of the bride’s and bridegroom’s septs respectively at their houses. No outsider may even see this food being eaten. The leavings of food, with the leaf-plates on which it was eaten, are buried inside the house, as it is believed that if they should fall into the hands of any outsider the death or blindness of one of the family will ensue. When the bridegroom reaches the bride’s house he strikes the marriage-shed with a dagger or other sharp instrument. A goat is killed and he steps in its blood as he enters the shed. A day for the wedding is selected by the priest, but it may also take place on any Sunday in the eight fine months. If the wedding takes place on the eleventh day of Kārtik, that is on the expiration of the four rainy months when marriages are forbidden, they make a little hut of eleven stalks of juāri with their cobs in the shape of a cone, and the bride and bridegroom walk round this. The services of a Brāhman are not required for such a wedding. Sometimes the bridegroom is simply seated in a grain basket and the bride in a winnowing-fan; then their hands are joined as the sun is half set, and the marriage is completed. The bridegroom takes the basket and fan home with him. On the return of the wedding couple, their kankans or wristbands are taken off at Hanumān’s temple. The Muhammadan Bhīls perform the same ceremonies as the Hindus, but at the end they call in the Kāzi or registrar, who repeats the Muhammadan prayers and records the dowry agreed upon. The practice of the bridegroom serving for his wife is in force among both classes of Bhīls.

7. Widow—marriage, divorce and polygamy.

The remarriage of widows is permitted, but the widow may not marry any relative of her first husband. She returns to her father’s house, and on her remarriage they obtain a bride-price of Rs. 40 or 50, a quarter of which goes in a feast to the tribesmen. The wedding of a widow is held on the Amāwas or last day of the dark fortnight of the month, or on a Sunday. A wife may be divorced for adultery without consulting the panchāyat. It is said that a wife cannot otherwise be divorced on any account, nor can a woman divorce her husband, but she may desert him and go and live with a man. In this case all that is necessary is that the second husband should repay to the first as compensation the amount expended by the latter on his marriage with the woman. Polygamy is permitted, and a second wife is sometimes taken in order to obtain children, but this number is seldom if ever exceeded. It is stated that the Bhīl married women are generally chaste and faithful to their husbands, and any attempt to tamper with their virtue on the part of an outsider is strongly resented by the man.

8. Religion.

The Bhīls worship the ordinary Hindu deities and the village godlings of the locality. The favourite both with Hindu and Muhammadan Bhīls is Khande Rao or Khandoba, the war-god of the Marāthas, who is often represented by a sword. The Muhammadans and the Hindu Bhīls also to a less extent worship the Pīrs or spirits of Muhammadan saints at their tombs, of which there are a number in Nimār. Major Hendley states that in Mewār the seats or sthāns of the Bhīl gods are on the summits of high hills, and are represented by heaps of stones, solid or hollowed out in the centre, or mere platforms, in or near which are found numbers of clay or mud images of horses.³³⁷ In some places clay lamps are burnt in front of the images of horses, from which it may be concluded that the horse itself is or was worshipped as a god. Colonel Tod states that the Bhīls will eat of nothing white in colour, as a white sheep or goat; and their grand adjuration is ‘By the white ram.’³³⁸ Sir A. Lyall³³⁹ says that their principal oath is by the dog. The Bhīl sepoys told Major Hendley that they considered it of little use to go on worshipping their own gods, as the power of these had declined since the English became supreme. They thought the strong English gods were too much for the weak deities of their country, hence they were desirous of embracing Brāhmanism, which would also raise them in the social scale and give them a better chance of promotion in regiments where there were Brāhman officers.

9. Witchcraft and amulets.

They wear charms and amulets to keep off evil spirits; the charms are generally pieces of blue string with seven knots in them, which their witch-finder or Badwa ties, reciting an incantation on each; the knots were sometimes covered with metal to keep them undefiled and the charms were tied on at the Holi, Dasahra or some other festival.³⁴⁰ In Bombay the Bhīls still believe in witches as the agents of any misfortunes that may befall them. If a man was sick and thought some woman had bewitched him, the suspected woman was thrown into a stream or swung from a tree. If the branch broke and the woman fell and suffered serious injury, or if she could not swim across the stream and sank, she was considered to be innocent and efforts were made to save her. But if she escaped without injury she was held to be a witch, and it frequently happened that the woman would admit herself to be one either from fear of the infliction of a harder ordeal, or to keep up the belief in her powers as a witch, which often secured her a free supper of milk and chickens. She would then admit that she had really bewitched the sick man and undertake to cure him on some sacrifice being made. If he recovered, the animal named by the witch was sacrificed and its blood given her to drink while still warm; either from fear or in order to keep up the character she would drink it, and would be permitted to stay on in the village. If, on the other hand, the sick person died, the witch would often be driven into the forest to die of hunger or to be devoured by wild animals.³⁴¹ These practices have now disappeared in the Central Provinces, though occasionally murders of suspected witches may still occur. The Bhīls are firm believers in omens, the nature of which is much the same as among the Hindus. When a Bhīl is persistently unlucky in hunting, he sometimes says ‘Nat laga,’ meaning that some bad spirit is causing his ill-success. Then he will make an image of a man in the sand or dust of the road, or sometimes two images of a man and woman, and throwing straw or grass over the images set it alight, and pound it down on them with a stick with abusive yells. This he calls killing his bad luck.³⁴² Major Hendley notes that the men danced before the different festivals and before battles. The men danced in a ring holding sticks and striking them against each other, much like the Baiga dance. Before battle they had a war-dance in which the performers were armed and imitated a combat. To be carried on the shoulders of one of the combatants was a great honour, perhaps because it symbolised being on horseback. The dance was probably in the nature of a magical rite, designed to obtain success in battle by going through an imitation of it beforehand. The priests are the chief physicians among the Bhīls, though most old men were supposed to know something about medicine.³⁴³

10. Funeral rites.

The dead are usually buried lying on the back, with the head pointing to the south. Cooked food is placed on the bier and deposited on the ground half-way to the cemetery. On return each family of the sept brings a wheaten cake to the mourners and these are eaten. On the third day they place on the grave a thick cake of wheaten flour, water in an earthen pot and tobacco or any other stimulant which the deceased was in the habit of using in his life.

11. Social customs.

The Hindu Bhīls say that they do not admit outsiders into the caste, but the Muhammadans will admit a man of any but the impure castes. The neophyte must be shaved and circumcised, and the Kāzi gives him some holy water to drink and teaches him the profession of belief in Islām. If a man is not circumcised, the Tadvi or Muhammadan Bhīls will not bury his body. Both classes of Bhīls employ Brāhmans at their ceremonies. The tribe eat almost all kinds of flesh and drink liquor, but the Hindus now abjure beef and the Muhammadans pork. Some Bhīls now refuse to take the skins off dead cattle, but others will do so. The Bhīls will take food from any caste except the impure ones, and none except these castes will now take food from them. Temporary or permanent exclusion from caste is imposed for the same offences as among the Hindus.

12. Appearance and characteristics.

The typical Bhīl is small, dark, broad-nosed and ugly, but well built and active. The average height of 128 men measured by Major Hendley was 5 feet 6.4 inches. The hands are somewhat small and the legs fairly developed, those of the women being the best. “The Bhīl is an excellent woodsman, knows the shortest cuts over the hills, can walk the roughest paths and climb the steepest crags without slipping or feeling distressed. He is often called in old Sanskrit works Venaputra, ‘child of the forest,’ or Pāl Indra, ‘lord of the pass.’ These names well describe his character. His country is approached through narrow defiles (pāl), and through these none could pass without his permission. In former days he always levied rakhwāli or blackmail, and even now native travellers find him quite ready to assert what he deems his just rights. The Bhīl is a capital huntsman, tracking and marking down tigers, panthers and bears, knowing all their haunts, the best places to shoot them, the paths they take and all those points so essential to success in big-game shooting; they will remember for years the spots where tigers have been disposed of, and all the circumstances connected with their deaths. The Bhīl will himself attack a leopard, and with his sword, aided by his friends, cut him to pieces.”³⁴⁴ Their agility impressed the Hindus, and an old writer says: “Some Bhīl chieftains who attended the camp of Sidhrāj, king of Gujarāt, astonished him with their feats of activity; in his army they seemed as the followers of Hanumān in attendance upon Rām.”³⁴⁵