ent dialect of the
group known as Rajasthani, and hence perhaps the caste-name did
not get corrupted. The Lodhis of the Jubbulpore Division probably
came here at a later date from northern India. The Mandla Lodhis
are said to have been brought to the District by Raja Hirde Sah of
the Gond-Rajput dynasty of Garha-Mandla in the seventeenth century,
and they were given large grants of the waste land in the interior in
order that they might clear it of forest. [89] The Lodhis are a good
instance of a caste who have obtained a great rise in social status
on migrating to a new area. In northern India Mr. Nesfield places
them lowest among the agricultural castes and states that they are
little better than a forest tribe. He derives the name from _lod_,
a clod, according to which Lodhi would mean clodhopper. [90] Another
suggestion is that the name is derived from the bark of the _lodh_
tree, [91] which is collected by the Lodhas in northern India and sold
for use as a dyeing agent. In Bulandshahr they are described as "Of
short stature and uncouth appearance, and from this as well as from
their want of a tradition of immigration from other parts they appear
to be a mixed class proceeding from aboriginal and Aryan parents. In
the Districts below Agra they are considered so low that no one drinks
water touched by them; but this is not the case in the Districts above
Agra." [92] In Hamirpur they appear to have some connection with the
Kurmis, and a story told of them in Saugor is that the first Lodhi
was created by Mahadeo from a scarecrow in a Kurmi woman's field
and given the vocation of a farmservant But the Lodhis themselves
claim Rajput ancestry and say that they are descended from Lava,
the eldest of the two sons of Raja Ramchandra of Ajodhya.

2. Position in the central Provinces

In the Central Provinces they have become landholders and are
addressed by the honorific title of Thakur, ranking with the higher
cultivating castes. Several Lodhi landholders in Damoh and Saugor
formerly held a quasi-independent position under the Muhammadans,
and subsequently acknowledged the Raja of Panna as their suzerain,
who conferred on some families the titles of Raja and Diwan. They
kept up a certain amount of state, and small contingents of soldiery,
attended by whom they went to pay their respects to the representative
of the ruling power. "It would be difficult," says Grant, [93] "to
recognise the descendants of the peaceful c