The Rajputs seem at first to have treated the Bhils
leniently. Intermarriage was frequent, especially in the families of
Bhil chieftains, and a new caste called Bhilala [317] has arisen,
which is composed of the descendants of mixed Rajput and Bhil
marriages. Chiefs and landholders in the Bhil country now belong to
this caste, and it is possible that some pure Bhil families may have
been admitted to it. The Bhilalas rank above the Bhils, on a level
with the cultivating castes. Instances occasionally occurred in which
the children of Rajput by a Bhil wife became Rajputs. When Colonel Tod
wrote, Rajputs would still take food with Ujla Bhils or those of pure
aboriginal descent, and all castes would take water from them. [318]
But as Hinduism came to be more orthodox in Rajputana, the Bhils
sank to the position of outcastes. Their custom of eating beef had
always caused them to be much despised. A tradition is related that
one day the god Mahadeo or Siva, sick and unhappy, was reclining in a
shady forest when a beautiful woman appeared, the first sight of whom
effected a cure of all his complaints. An intercourse between the
god and the strange female was established, the result of which was
many children; one of whom, from infancy distinguished alike by his
ugliness and vice, slew the favourite bull of Mahadeo, for which crime
he was expelled to the woods and mountains, and his descendants have
ever since been stigmatised by the names of Bhil and Nishada. [319]
Nishada is a term of contempt applied to the lowest outcastes. Major
Hendley, writing in 1875, states: "Some time since a Thakur (chief)
cut off the legs of two Bhils, eaters of the sacred cow, and plunged
the stumps into boiling oil." [320] When the Marathas began to occupy
Central India they treated the Bhils with great cruelty. A Bhil caught
in a disturbed part of the country was without inquiry flogged and
hanged. Hundreds were thrown over high cliffs, and large bodies of
them, assembled under promise of pardon, were beheaded or blown from
guns. Their women were mutilated or smothered by smoke, and their
children smashed to death against the stones. [321] This treatment may
to some extent have been deserved owing to the predatory habits and
cruelty of the Bhils, but its result was to make them utter savages
with their hand against every man, as they believed that every one's
was against them. From their strongholds in the hills they laid waste
the plain country, holding villages and towns to ransom and driving off
cattle; nor did any travellers pass with impunity through the hills
except in convoys too large to be attacked. In Khandesh, during the
disturbed period of the wars of Sindhia and Holkar, about A.D. 1800,
the Bhils betook themselves to highway robbery and lived in bands
either in mountains or in villages immediately beneath them. The
revenue contractors were unable or unwilling to spend money in the
maintenance of soldiers to protect the country, and the Bhils in a very
short time became so bold as to appear in bands of hundreds and attack
towns, carrying off either cattle or hostages, for whom they demanded
handsome ransoms. [322] In Gujarat another writer described the Bhils
and Kolis as hereditary and professional plunderers--'Soldiers of
the night,' as they themselves said they were. [323] Malcolm said
of them, after peace had been restored to Central India: [324]
"Measures are in progress that will, it is expected, soon complete
the reformation of a class of men who, believing themselves doomed
to be thieves and plunderers, have been confirmed in their destiny
by the oppression and cruelty of neighbouring governments, increased
by an avowed contempt for them as outcasts. The feeling this system
of degradation has produced must be changed; and no effort has been
left untried to restore this race of men to a better sense of their
condition than that which they at present entertain. The common answer
of a Bhil when charged with theft or robbery is, 'I am not to blame;
I am the thief of Mahadeo'; in other words, 'My destiny as a thief
has been fixed by God.'" The Bhil chiefs, who were known as Bhumia,
exercised the most absolute power, and their orders to commit the
most atrocious crimes were obeyed by their ignorant but attached
subjects without a conception on the part of the latter that they
had an option when he whom they termed their Dhunni (Lord) issued the
mandates. [325] Firearms and swords were only used by the chiefs and
headmen of the tribe, and their national weapon was the bamboo bow
having the bowstring made from a thin strip of its elastic bark. The
quiver was a piece of strong bamboo matting, and would contain sixty
barbed arrows a yard long, and tipped with an iron spike either
flattened and sharpened like a knife or rounded like a nail; other
arrows, used for knocking over birds, had knob-like heads. Thus armed,
the Bhils would lie in wait in some deep ravine by the roadside, and
an infernal yell announced their attack to the unwary traveller. [326]
Major Hendley states that according to tradition in the Mahabharata
the god Krishna was killed by a Bhil's arrow, when he was fighting
against them in Gujarat with the Yadavas; and on this account it was
ordained that the Bhil should never again be able to draw the bow with
the forefinger of the right hand. "Times have changed since then, but
I noticed in examining their hands that few could move the forefinger
without the second finger; indeed the fingers appeared useless as
independent members of the hands. In connection with this may be
mentioned their apparent inability to distinguish colours or count
numbers, due alone to their want of words to express themselves." [327]