Central Provinces and Berar

“ The consequence is that the existing population is very diverse, and is made up of elements belonging to many parts of India. The people of the northern Districts came from Bundelkhand and the Gangetic plain, and here are found the principal castes of the United Provinces and the Punjab. The western end of the Nerbudda valley and Betūl were colonised from Mālwa and Central India. Berār and the Nāgpur plain fell to the Marāthas, and one of the most important Marātha States, the Bhonsla kingdom, had its capital at Nāgpur. ”

“ The comparatively recent growth of the caste in these Provinces is shown by its subdivisions. The principal subcastes of the Hindustāni Districts are the Pardeshi or foreigners, immigrants from northern India, and the Pūrbia or eastern, coming from Oudh; other subcastes are the Sri Gaur Mālas or immigrants from Mālwa, the Berādi from Berār, and the Māhure from Hyderābād. We find also subcastes of Jāt and Teli Barhais, consisting of Jāts and Telis (oil-pressers) who have taken to carpentering. ”

“ It is noticeable that different subdivisions of the caste will commonly take food from each other in Berār, whereas in the Central Provinces they refuse to do so. The more liberal usage in Berār is possibly another case of Muhammadan influence. Small children eat with their father and brothers, but the women always wait on the men, and take their own food afterwards. Among the Dālia Kunbis of Nimār, however, women eat before men at caste feasts in opposition to the usual practice. ”

“ In the Central Provinces, as in northern India, the caste may be considered to [245] have two branches, the lower one consisting of the Mochis who make and cobble shoes and are admittedly descended from Chamārs; while the better-class men either make saddles and harness, when they are known as Jīngar; or bind books, when they are called Jīldgar; or paint and make clay idols, when they are given the designation either of Chitrakār, Chitevari or Murtikār. In Berār some Jīngars have taken up the finer kinds of iron-work, such as mending guns, and are known as Jirāyat. ”

“ Extending along the southern and eastern faces of the Satpūra range lies the fourth geographical division, to the west the plain of Berār and Nāgpur, watered by the Purna, Wardha and Wainganga rivers, and further east the Chhattīsgarh plain, which forms the upper basin of the Mahānadi. The Berār and Nāgpur plain contains towards the west the shallow black soil in which autumn crops, like cotton and the large millet juāri, which do not require excessive moisture, can be successfully cultivated. This area is the great cotton-growing tract of the Province, and at present the most wealthy. ”

“ British Baluchistan, Bengal, Bombay, Burma, Central Provinces with Berar, Coorg, Eastern Bengal and Assam, Madras, North-West Frontier Province, Punjab, and the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. Each of these provinces is described under its separate name.
The native states are governed, as a rule, by native princes with the help of a political officer appointed by the British government and residing at their courts. Some of them administer the internal affairs of their states The native states. with almost complete independence; others require more assistance or a stricter control. ”

“ Thus it appears that the cultivating community of each village constituted an exogamous clan, the members of which believed themselves to be kinsmen. When some caste or tribe occupied a fresh area of land they were distributed by clans in villages, over the area, all the cultivators of a village being of one caste or tribe, as is still the case with the Kunbis in Berār. ”

“ Workers in iron, known as Manu; workers in copper or brass called Twashtik; workers in stone or Shilpik; workers in wood or Maya; and workers in gold and silver designated as Daivagnya.71 The caste appear to be of Telugu origin, and in Madras they are also known as Kammala. In the Central Provinces they were amalgamated with the Sunars in 1901, but in 1891 a total of 7000 were returned, belonging to the southern Districts; while 2700 members of the caste are shown in Berār. ”

“ The North-West Frontier Province is, with the exception of Behar, Chota Nagpur and Orissa, the youngest of the provinces into which British India is divided, while in respect of population and extent of territory administered according to British law, it is also the smallest. ”

“ In all our troubles no army has marched over those mountains. A revolution in the central provinces isolates us at once. Look how complete it is now! The news of Barrios's movement will be cabled to the United States, and only in that way will it reach Sta. Marta by the cable from the other seaboard. We have the greatest riches, the greatest fertility, the purest blood in our great families, the most laborious population. The Occidental Province should stand alone. ”

“ On Muhammad Shah's return from his campaign the reform which had been foreshadowed by the division of Telingana into two provincial governments was completed, and the four tarafs or great provinces of the Bahmani kingdom were divided into eight. Berar was divided into the provinces of Gawil and Mahur, Daulatabad into those of Daulatabad and Junnar, Gulbarga into those of Gulbarga and Bijapur, and Telingana was finally divided into the two provinces of Warangal and Rajamahendri, of which the former remained under the government of Azam Khan and the latter under that of Nizam-ul-Mulk. ”

“ In the Central Provinces its cultivation has probably only flourished to any appreciable extent for a period of about three centuries, and the Barai caste would appear to be mainly a functional one, made up of a number of immigrants from northern India and of recruits from different classes of the population, including a large proportion of the non-Aryan element. ”

“ That province of the Mogul Empire which lay on the Ganges immediately above Bengal, was so called, and still retains the name and character of a province, under the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, and embracing the ten modern districts of Patna, Sāran, Gāya, Shāhābād, Tirhut, Champāran, the Santāl Parganas, Bhāgalpūr, Monghyr, and Purnīah. The name was taken from the old city of Bihār, and that derived its title from being the site of a famous Vihāra in Buddhist times. In the later days of Mahommedan rule the three provinces of Bengal, Behar and Orissa were under one Subadar, viz. ”

“ The country around is open, fertile, and free from jungle; and in the times we write of, the position commanded the passes from Khandeish, and Guzerat, and Berar, into central Dekhan. It had been most judiciously chosen, and, while the kingdom endured, it ruled a fair country which stretched from the sea to the confines of Berar and Golconda, and was possessed of an ample revenue. Its people, too, were the sturdy Mahratta peasantry, who made excellent soldiers ”

“ In old times Santa Fé under the protection of the Central Government, which spared no expense in constructing forts and maintaining the forces requisite to keep the Indians in check, was the central point of communication not only between Buenos Ayres and Paraguay, but between Paraguay and the provinces of Cuyo and Tucuman: the wines and dried fruits of Mendoza and St. ”

“ Gawilgarh, somewhat more dilapidated than when it was captured by the great soldier, still overlooks the fertile Berar valley, and is a prominent object from the plains. From the fort itself, which stands at an elevation of 3,595 feet, a magnificent view of that valley is obtained on a clear day. The plains do not melt away into the dim distance, for the southern plateau of Berar rises on the horizon to the south-east, and the Yeotmal hills, about eighty-four miles distant as the crow flies, can be plainly distinguished. ”

“ North-West Provinces (46,905) , a province and lieutenant-governorship of British India, embraces the upper portion of the Ganges Valley and Doab, and reaches from Bengal to the Punjab, enclosing Oudh on all sides but the N.; area twice that of England, is the chief wheat province, and also raises opium, cotton, tea, and sugar; was separated from Bengal in 1835, and with it in 1877 was conjoined Oudh; Allahabad is the capital. ”

“ It was fixed that the 12 provinces of Guatemala, Chimaltenango, Quezaltenango, Ciudad Real de Chiapas, Vera Paz, San Salvador, San Miguel, Chiquimula, Sonsonate, Leon, Costa Rica, and Comayagua should each choose one deputy; and Guatemala, Ciudad Real, Leon, and Comayagua the four suplentes. Only two diputaciones provinciales were at first established, one in Guatemala and one in Leon. ”

“ The Berias of Central India differ in many respects from those of Bengal. Here Sir H. Risley considers Beria to be ‘the generic name of a number of vagrant, gipsy-like groups’; and a full description of them has been given by Bābu Rājendra Lāl Mitra, who considers them to resemble the gipsies of Europe. “They are noted for a light, elastic, wiry make, very uncommon in the people of this country. In agility and hardness they stand unrivalled. The men are of a brownish colour, like the bulk of Bengalis, but never black. The women are of lighter complexion and generally well-formed ”

“ The Kolis of western India count half a million persons more than the Gonds, and if the four related tribes Kol, Munda, Ho, and Santāl were taken together, they would be stronger by about the same amount. But if historical importance be considered as well as numbers, the first place should be awarded to the Gonds. Of the whole caste the Central Provinces contain 2,300,000 persons, Central India, and Bihār and Orissa about 235,000 persons each, and they are returned in small numbers from Assam, Madras and Hyderābād. The 50,000 Gonds in Assam are no doubt immigrant labourers on the tea-gardens. ”

“ Whatever their origin may have been the composition of the caste is now of a very mixed nature. Several names of other castes, as Gūjar, Guāl or Ahīr, Arakh, Khatīk, Bahelia, Bhīl and Bania, are returned as divisions of the Pāsis in the United Provinces. Like all migratory castes they are split into a number of small groups, whose constitution is probably not very definite. The principal subcastes in the Central Provinces are the Rājpāsis or highest class, who probably were at one time landowners ”

“ It is again fortunate that a long series of valuable books has been devoted to the races on the boundaries of these Provinces; for it must be remembered that these frontiers are purely geographical and not ethnical. [iv] Thus we have a large mass of information collected by Mr. Risley, Mr. O’Donnell and Dr. Buchanan Hamilton for Behâr, by Colonel Dalton for Chota Nâgpur, by Mr. Hislop for the Central Indian tribes, by Colonel Tod and Sir J. Malcolm for Râjputâna, and by Mr. Ibbetson and Mr. Maclagan for the Panjab. ”

“ I received several visits from Emgédesi tradesmen, many of whom are established in the northern provinces of Háusa, chiefly in Kátsena and Tasáwa, where living is infinitely cheaper than in Ágades. All these I found to be intelligent men, having been brought up in the centre of intercourse between a variety of tribes and nations of the most different organization, and, through the web of routes which join here, receiving information of distant regions. ”

“ Where the Hindu immigration has only been partial and the forests have not been cleared, as in Chota Nāgpur and the Central Provinces, they may keep their old villages and tribal organisation and be admitted as a body into the hierarchy of caste, ranking above the impure castes but below the Hindu cultivators. ”

“ Every effort has been made to afford the necessary safeguards and machinery to insure purity, secrecy, certainty, and expedition, without causing too great a drain upon the resources of municipal and provincial governments. The prominent features of this law as amended are the division of those provinces not inhabited by Moros or other non-Christian tribes into 78 assembly districts, each province to constitute at least one district and the more populous being divided into more districts, in the ratio of 1 to every 90,000 of population and major fraction thereof remaining. ”

“ The Kanjars and Berias are the gipsy castes of India. They are accustomed to wander about carrying their grass-matting huts with them. Many of them live by petty thieving and cheating. Their women practise palmistry and retail charms for the cure of sickness and for exorcising evil spirits, and love-philtres. ”

“ Their chiefs (sardârs) have supreme power, and manage their affairs with the help of tribal councils (panchâyat) . The punishments are fine, stripes with a shoe, expulsion from caste. The fines are spent in liquor. The chief is generally hereditary, and he is invested with authority over his clansmen, wherever they may be located. This is possible, as the Bediya, though a vagrant, is much attached to his birthplace, and often returns there.”
The Beriyas of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh. 3. ”

“ The countries north of Hindoo Koosh, which lie in the valley of the Oxus, and its tributary rivers, from Balkh upwards, have no general designation; eastward of that city lies Koondooz, under which all the smaller provinces may be classed, since the Meer, or chief of that state, has subdued them. Further to the eastward, we have the province of Budukhshan, also a dependency of Koondooz. To the north of this territory are the hill states of Wakhan, Shughnan, Durwaz, Koolab, and Hissar; which are remarkable, as containing a race of people that claim a descent from Alexander the Great. ”