"But Why Do You Intend Taking Us To The Place Of A Man Whom You
Consider As A Thief And A Robber?" Objected One Of Us Timidly.
"He is a thief and a brigand," coolly answered the Bengali, "but
only in the political sense.
Otherwise he is an excellent man,
and the truest of friends. Besides, if he does not help us, we
shall starve; the bazaar and everything in the shops belong to him."
These explanations of the Babu notwithstanding, we were glad to
learn that the "chum" in question was absent, and we were received
by a relation of his. The garden was put at our disposal, and
before our tents were pitched, we saw people coming from every
side of the garden, bringing us provisions. Having deposited what
he had brought, each of them, on leaving the tent, threw over his
shoulder a pinch of betel and soft sugar, an offering to the
"foreign bhutas," which were supposed to accompany us wherever we
went. The Hindus of our party asked us, very seriously, not to
laugh at this performance, saying it would be dangerous in this
out-of-the-way place.
No doubt they were right. We were in Central India, the very nest
of all kinds of superstitions, and were surrounded by Bhils. All
along the Vindya ridge, from Yama, on the west of the "dead city,"
the country is thickly populated by this most daring, restless and
superstitious of all the half-savage tribes of India.
The Orientalists think that the naive Bhils comes from the Sanskrit
root bhid, which means to separate. Sir J. Malcolm supposes
accordingly that the Bhils are sectarians, who separated from the
Brahmanical creed, and were excommunicated. All this looks very
probable, but their tribal traditions say something different. Of
course, in this case, as in every other, their history is strongly
entangled with mythology; and one has to go through a thick shrubbery
of fancy before reaching the tribe's genealogical tree.
The relation of the absent dhani, who spent the evening with us,
told us the following: The Bhils are the descendants of one of
the sons of Mahadeva, or Shiva, and of a fair woman, with blue
eyes and a white face, whom he met in some forest on the other
side of the Kalapani, "black waters," or ocean. This pair had
several sons, one of whom, as handsome as he was vicious, killed
the favorite ox of his grandfather Maha-deva, and was banished by
his father to the Jodpur desert. Banished to its remotest southern
corner, he married; and soon his descendants filled the whole
country. They scattered along the Vindya ridge, on the western
frontier of Malva and Kandesh; and, later, in the woody wilderness,
on the shores of the rivers Maha, Narmada and Tapti. And all of
them, inheriting the beauty of their forefather, his blue eyes
and fair complexion, inherited also his turbulent disposition
and his vice.
"We are thieves and robbers," naively explained the relative of
the Babu's "chum," "but we can't help it, because this is the
decree of our mighty forefather, the great Maha-deva-Shiva.
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