egrading office
of swineherds. The Rajjhars, who appear to have formed a separate
caste as the landowning subdivision of the Bhars, like the Raj-Gonds
among Gonds, are said to be the descendants of a Raja and a Bharia
woman. The Rajjhars form a separate caste in the Central Provinces,
and the Bharias acknowledge some connection with them, but refuse to
take water from their hands, as they consider them to be of impure
blood. The Bharias also give Mahoba or Bandhogarh as their former
home, and these places are in the country of the Bhars. According
to tradition Raja Karna Deva, a former king of Dahal, the classical
name of the Jubbulpore country, was a Bhar, and it may be that the
immigration of the Bharias into Jubbulpore dates from his period, which
is taken as 1040 to 1080 A.D. While then it may be considered as fairly
certain that the Bharias are merely the Bhar tribe with a variant
of the name, it is clear from the titles of their family groups,
which will shortly be given, that they are an extremely mixed class
and consist largely of the descendants of members of other castes,
who, having lost their own social position, have taken refuge among
the Bharias at the bottom of the social scale. Mr. Crooke says of the
Bhars: [278] "The most probable supposition is that the Bhars were
a Dravidian race closely allied to the Kols, Cheros and Seoris, who
at an early date succumbed to the invading Aryans. This is borne out
by their appearance and physique, which closely resemble that of the
undoubted non-Aryan aborigines of the Vindhyan-Kaimur plateau." In
the Central Provinces the Bharias have been so closely associated
with the Gonds that they have been commonly considered to belong
to that tribe. Thus Mr. Drysdale says of them: [279] 'The Bharias
were the wildest of the wild Gonds and were inveterate _dhaya_ [280]
cutters.' Although, however, they have to some extent intermarried
with the Gonds, the Bharias were originally quite a distinct tribe,
and would belong to the Kolarian or Munda group but that they have
entirely forgotten their own language and speak only Hindi, though with
a peculiar intonation especially noticeable in the case of their women.

2. Tribal subdivisions.

The structure of the tribe is a very loose one, and though the
Bharias say that they are divided into subcastes, there are none
in reality. Members of all castes except the very lowest may become
Bharias, and one Bharia will recognise anoth