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. Sending
his grandson to repent his sins in the desert, he said to him:
`Go, wretched murderer of my son and your brother, the ox Nardi;
go and live the life of an exile and a brigand, to be an everlasting
warning to your brethren!... ' These are the very words of the
great god. Now, do you think we could disobey his orders? The
least of our actions is always regulated by our Bhamyas - chieftains -
who are the direct descendants of Nadir-Sing, the first Bhil, the
child of our exiled ancestor, and being this, it is only natural
that the great god speaks to us through him."
Is not it strange that Apis, the sacred ox of the Egyptians, is
honored by the followers of Zoroaster, as well as by the Hindus?
The ox Nardi, the emblem of life in nature, is the son of the
creating father, or rather his life-giving breath. Ammianus
Marcellinus mentions, in one of his works, that there exists a
book which gives the exact age of Apis, the clue to the mystery
of creation and the cyclic calculations. The Brahmans also explain
the allegory of the ox Nardi by the continuation of life on our globe.
The "mediators" between Shiva and the Bhils possess such unrestricted
authority that the most awful crimes are accomplished at their
lightest word. The tribe have thought it necessary to decrease
their power to a certain extent by instituting a kind of council
in every village. This council is called tarvi, and tries to cool
down the hot-headed fancies of the dhanis, their brigand lords.
However, the word of the Bhils is sacred, and their hospitality
is boundless.
The history and the annals of the princes of Jodpur and Oodeypur
confirm the legend of the Bhil emigration from their primitive
desert, but how they happened to be there nobody knows. Colonel
Tod is positive that the Bhils, together with the Merases and the
Goands, are the aborigines of India, as well as the tribes who
inhabit the Nerbuda forests. But why the Bhils should be almost
fair and blue-eyed, whereas the rest of the hill-tribes are almost
African in type, is a question that is not answered by this statement.
The fact that all these aborigines call themselves Bhumaputra and
Vanaputra, sons of the earth and sons of the forest, when the
Rajputs, their first conquerors, call themselves Surya-vansa and
the Brahmans Indu-putras, descendants of the sun and the moon,
does not prove everything. It seems to me, that in the present
case, their appearance, which confirms their legends, is of much
greater value than philology. Dr. Clark, the author of Travels
in Scandinavia, is very logical in saying that, "by directing our
attention on the traces of the ancient superstitions of a tribe,
we shall find out who were its primitive forefathers much more easily
than by scientific examination of their tongue; the superstitions
are grafted on the very root, whereas the tongue is subjected to
all kinds of changes."
But, unfortunately, everything we know about the history of the
Bhils is reduced to the above-mentioned tradition, and to a few
ancient songs of their bards. These bards or bhattas live in Rajistan,
but visit the Bhils yearly, in order not to lose the leading thread
of the achievements of their countrymen. Their songs are history,
because the bhattas have existed from time immemorial, composing
their lays for future generations, for this is their hereditary
duty. And the songs of the remotest antiquity point to the lands
over the Kalapani as the place whence the Bhils came; that is to say,
some place in Europe. Some Orientalists, especially Colonel Tod,
seek to prove that the Rajputs, who conquered the Bhils, were
newcomers of Scythian origin, and that the Bhils are the true
aborigines.
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