Population. Distribution of Races.

tween races which Dr. W. W. Hunter has termed "ethnical frontiers." All along the northern limit of this province the Gáwilgarh hills and their skirts are peopled by non-Aryans-Korkús, Gonds, and Bhils. Beyond the angle of its northern and eastern boundaries lay, in the Middle Ages, the Gauli kingdom of Kherla; in later times that angle was surrounded by the territory of the Gond chief of Deogarh. Up to the date of the Marátha conquests the whole country beyond the eastern frontier of Berár belonged to non-Aryan tribes, and the wild country within its south-eastern corner is to this day mostly inhabited by Gonds. All these tribes, though in the jungles they still conserve their primitive mode of life, have settled down to agriculture wherever their country has been cleared, as in parts of Wún, and are now honest, peaceful, and inoffensive. They may have now and then been concerned in gang-robberies; yet on the whole they have given no serious trouble to any orderly government, British or Native, since the end of the Marátha war of 1817. In more disturbed times they were a constant source of irritation to strong rulers, and of exasperation to weak ones. If we may judge from occasional allusions to them in history, we infer that in the Middle Ages these non-Aryan chiefs constantly made savage raids upon the lowlands; taking their advantage of dissension between rival kings in the Dakhan, or of distant expeditions which drained Berár of its army. Like Shakspeare's weasel Scot of the same period, they invaded the unguarded nest of the Báhmani king, and sucked his princely eggs whenever the Mahomedan vulture was in prey elsewhere. Then in those latter days of empire, when Aurangzeb and successive viceroys were fairly bayed by Marátha hordes, the highland clans made havoc over Berár, and worried the struggling Moghal as small darts plague a Spanish fighting-bull. Down to so late a period as 1820 the province was much damaged by their depredations.

No other conduct or policy could in those times be expected of independent border tribes; their strategy has been the same all over the world. They are never tamed until their tribal union and autocracy have been broken up by a strong hand. But when the Musalmáns are accused of dealing with the non-Aryan tribes as with "wild beasts," the Government which holds Berár in trust from them may take up their defence, and may ask what more could have been done than was done by the Moghal emperors. It is certain that they tried much to win over and conciliate the chiefs of the Gáwilgarh hills, for all the petty Rájas claim liberal grants and privileges under patents from Delhi. Bakht Buland of Deogarh voluntarily embraced the faith of Islam, and was graciously received at Delhi with much honour by Aurangzeb. Rája Rám Sing of Chánda obtained from the Emperor Mahomed Gházi a seal, upon which he is instituted "vassal of the highest class," and others of his house had received marks of imperial favour. Then the Bhils of the Sátpuras had been enlisted in a sort of local militia by Aurangzeb, who really did his best, so far as we can trace his policy, to pacify them, by entrusting to their charge the whole hill-country westward; and the Kolís of the Ajanta range guarded those passes

*Comparative Dictionary of Non-Aryan Languages, Dissertation, p. 8.

under their own náiks, who held land in fee for the service. The hereditary watchmen in the submontane villages belonged to these tribes. Those who believe that our mission in the nineteenth century is to redress the unutterable wrongs of the non-Aryans under our predecessors might find it even now difficult to suggest a wiser or more humane policy than was pursued by the Mahomedan government in Berár, so long so they had power to carry it on.

What has been done by our own Government for the Bhils of this part of India is narrated in a most interesting paper among the Bombay Government Records.* It is there told (and the description applies also to Berár) how the excesses of the Bhíls rose to a great height during the struggle for Khandesh between Maráthas and Moghals. Until after 1803 the country was utterly prostrate under a complication of famine, anarchy, and wasting guerilla warfare. This period, known as the Band amal, gave the Bhils their crowning opportunity, and the whole nation organized itself into gangs of plundering assassins. Of course the native government, which could not suppress these banditti, had no resource save in barbarous cruelty to individual robbers when caught. It is useless for a weak ruler to be merciful; but the conciliatory policy of the British (who were strong enough to adopt it) was employed from 1825 with admirable judgment and long-suffering perseverance. The recorded facts positively contradict all Dr. Hunter's description of the manner in which the hill-tribes were treated by English governors. The charges of ignorance and careless mismanagement are completely refuted; the grave exordium which opens his Dissertation is quite inapplicable to this part of India.

And no doubt the policy of the Moghal emperors was very often successful in disintegrating the aboriginal tribe, and in diffusing its members gradually through the settled population, where their descendants can now be traced as substantial cultivators or hereditary craftsmen. It is dangerous to generalize from Bengal about such a vast and heterogeneous population as that of India. The annalists of Berár, as of many other provinces, may demur to the assertion that "Indian History is one long monotonous recital of how the children of the soil have been driven deeper and deeper into the wilds"-that on the one side has always been "contemptuous detestation, and sullen fury on the other." Of course the aggressive tribes, who obstinately clung to a free life of predatory border-warfare, have necessarily been forced backwards by the ever-widening circle of civil life. There is no other possible method of dealing with such neighbours; concessions and conciliation invariably fail with them, whether they be Maoris, North American Indians, or wild Asiatic tribes; because a half-nomad people cannot live with a settled nation. Each wants the land for a different purpose, so one must quit; for no one was ever cajoled by beneficent legislation into giving up the necessaries of life. But in all such gradual expatriations there is a large number of wild men who submit, and settle down within the pale. Mr. G. Campbell some time ago discussed the question whether

*No. XXVI. (New Series.)

Dissertation prefixed to Comparative Dictionary, page 4.

Population.

Distribution of Races.

Population. Distribution

of Races.

Languages.

those classes, which he calls Helot, are not the diluvial deposits of the receding waters of non-Aryan occupation; and there is good ground, so far as physical form can guide us, for ranging among the non-Aryans of Berár not only the servile castes or outcastes, but others which by no means form the dregs of society. Who, indeed, will undertake to draw the line between Aryan and non-Aryan with any pretence to philosophic certainty? We cannot now trace it in Berár by language, by customs, by physique, or by habits of life— none of these are positive signs of identity. On the one hand, we should be puzzled to give reasons for assuming the very numerous families of Dhers or Mhárs, the beef-eating drudges of Berár, to be of nonAryan stock-their physical type has no marked aboriginality. On the other hand, we have the Hindú Banjára and Lambáni, with gotes or divisions bearing Rajpút names; yet from their look, their customs, and their ways of life, we might judge their clans to be strongly leavened by non-Aryan commixture, if not by descent. Then we have landholding Kolís, who deny all affinity with the Kolís of the hill; we have dubious pastoral tribes; and we have such cultivating communities as the A'nds, whose name seems to indicate a local tribe; and who, without any servile habits or typical features, carry some marks of a race not Hindú.

We are not now upon the broad aligned path of written history: we are groping among the faint tracks of a wilderness, with just a penumbra of scientific light to show the outline of past events, and barely enough historical chart for recognizing the main landmarks. We know that a process of continued change is now going on among the aboriginal races; that they alter their mode of life to suit different conditions of existence; that their languages decay; and that they gradually go over to the dominant Aryan religions-and we may reasonably believe that this process has been working for centuries. All analogy would lead us to conclude that whenever one race has fairly prevailed over another the conquered race separates into two parties. One party remains in the land, serves its masters, is continually recruited from beyond the pale, is gradually melted and mixed in the crucible of circumstances, until ethnic varieties dissolve and disappear. The other party takes to the wolds and fastnesses, where it can maintain its independent existence, and may remain isolated for centuries after the first conquest. It is easy enough to measure the wide gulf which divides the non-Aryan of the jungle from his civilized contemporaries; but in Berár we may count it almost impossible to analyse after so many generations the aboriginal element in our composite settled population.

SECTION V.-Languages.

The general language of the country is Marátha, which is said to be spoken in Berár with much provincial accent and idiom. To the south-east it acquires a tincture of Telugú; but the whole Musalmán population speaks bad Urdú, and never uses Marátha; the Urdú is, moreover, understood, and even spoken imperfectly, throughout the province, which, it must be remembered, has been under Mahomedan rule for five centuries and a half. The Gond and Korkú of the Gáwil

garh hills and the Wún jungles have preserved each their original tongue, but the Bhíl has lost his tribal language, its disuse having been probably encouraged by wholesale conversion of the Bhils to Mahomedanism.

Possibly it may still linger among the Neháls of the Melghát, who are said to have a peculiar dialect or patois different from that of the Gond and Korkú.

Population. Languages.

CHAPTER XII.

TRADE AND MANUFACTURES.

Section I.-Trade.

The great staple produce which the province exports, by which cultivation flourishes, traders grow rich, and the taxes are paid, is cotton. So much, however has of late years been written about Berár cotton, the trade has been so carefully fostered and encouraged, and its general course is so well known (while it is, moreover, so variable), that this Gazetteer need only give an outline of the more prominent and permanent condition of production and distribution in their

sent state.

pre

The best cotton is grown in the vale of Berár, or the Páyanghát districts lying north of the Ajanta hills, and here also are the large trading-towns. Amráoti, Akot, and Khamgaon are the only places worth mention as considerable marts for cotton-dealing, but at every little town and substantial village, at the railway stations, and at all the country markets, a certain amount of petty commerce goes on. In the Berár valley a great proportion of the cotton is brought straight to the principal markets or bazárs by the growers themselves. The rest is brought by the small local dealers who have given advances to the cultivators, or have managed to buy in the villages from the poorer class of cultivators, or from the upper sort of land-owners, who are too proud to clean and cart their own crops. At the large markets are plenty of exporting merchants, European and Native, most of them from Bombay, but a few resident, who buy and despatch by railway. Up above the gháts south of the valley the course of trade is somewhat different. The peasants are poorer, and live more distant from the great marts; they do not sell to the exporting merchants, but to the money-lenders and general dealers in the little country-towns. These men settle with the grower, and transfer the cotton thus collected by driblets to the agents of Bombay firms, who come about during the season and make up large despatches for Bombay.

*Until lately the character of Indian cotton in the Liverpool market stood very low, and the name "Surats," the description under

*Most of the facts and figures here below given have been taken from the Reports of Mr. H. Rivett-Carnac, Cotton Commissioner. Mr. A. J. Dunlop has kindly arranged and abstracted them.

Trade.

Trade.

which the cotton of this province is still included, was a byword and a general term of contempt. The bad name borne by Indian cotton deserves apparently to be debited to the manner in which the trade was until recently conducted, and to two great obstacles which for years successfully barred the road to any change or improvement in the upcountry business. The first and greatest of these obstacles was the position of the cultivator, on whom we are dependent for supplies. The other was caused by the inaccessibility of the inland tracts in which the cotton markets are situated.

Even until within the last few years the cultivator of this part of India was a somewhat miserable and depressed creature. He was deeply in debt, and the only means he had of procuring an advance to pay his land-rent-falling due when the autumn crop was quite young, and he had no produce to meet the demand-was by giving a "laoni," that is, making a contract with the village banker to supply a quantity of cotton by a fixed date. Under these circumstances the cotton, whether good, bad, or indifferent, would bring him in more than the price already fixed in the bargain to which necessity had compelled him to agree; and in the end of the year, when the crop was ripe, and when in order to secure really good cotton it was indispensable that the fields should be picked without delay, it was to the interest of the ryot first to secure his grain crop, on which he and his family were dependent for their food. In the mean time the cotton would suffer, the ripe wool falling to the ground, and the whole crop standing exposed to the heavy dew of the cold weather. This system threw both the cultivator and the cotton crop of a district into the power of a certain number of money-lenders, who had every object in keeping the trade in their own hands.

The other great obstacle to improvement was the inaccessibility of our principal cotton markets. In the season of 1825-26 Messrs. Vikáji and Pestanji, merchants of Bombay and Haidarábád, made what they declare to be the first exportation of cotton from Berár straight to Bombay. It consisted of 500 bullock-loads, being 120,000 lb. weight, valued at Rs. 25,000. Twenty years later, General Balfour, C.B., writing about 1847, thus describes the then existing communications:

"Formerly the greater part of the cotton of Berár was taken 500 "miles on bullocks to Mirzápúr, on the Ganges, and thence conveyed "on boats 450 miles to Calcutta. Now the greater part goes to Bom'bay, still wholly on pack-oxen, the distance varying from 126 to 450 "miles, according as the cotton is purchased at one mart or another. "The hire of a bullock for the journey ranges from about Rs. 5 to 16, "the chief cause of variation being the time of year. A load is about "250 lb. But this is not by any means the whole cost of conveyance"the indirect expenses are much greater; the cotton is eaten by the "bullocks, stolen by the drivers, torn off by the jungles through which "the road passes, and damaged by the dust and the weather, as well as "by having to be loaded and unloaded every day, often in wet and "mud."