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.
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