_Bhilala_, [348]--A small caste found in the Nimar and Hoshangabad
Districts of the Central Provinces and in Central India. The total
strength of the Bhilalas is about 150,000 persons, most of whom reside
in the Bhopawar Agency, adjoining Nimar. Only 15,000 were returned from
the Central Provinces in 1911. The Bhilalas are commonly considered,
and the general belief may in their case be accepted as correct, to be
a mixed caste sprung from the alliances of immigrant Rajputs with the
Bhils of the Central India hills. The original term was not improbably
Bhilwala, and may have been applied to those Rajput chiefs, a numerous
body, who acquired small estates in the Bhil country, or to those who
took the daughters of Bhil chieftains to wife, the second course being
often no doubt a necessary preliminary to the first. Several Bhilala
families hold estates in Nimar and Indore, and their chiefs now claim
to be pure Rajputs. The principal Bhilala houses, as those of Bhamgarh,
Selani and Mandhata, do not intermarry with the rest of the caste, but
only among themselves and with other families of the same standing in
Malwa and Holkar's Nimar. On succession to the _Gaddi_ or headship of
the house, representatives of these families are marked with a _tika_
or badge on the forehead and sometimes presented with a sword, and
the investiture may be carried out by custom by the head of another
house. Bhilala landholders usually have the title of Rao or Rawat. They
do not admit that a Bhilala can now spring from intermarriage between
a Rajput and a Bhil. The local Brahmans will take water from them and
they are occasionally invested with the sacred thread at the time
of marriage. The Bhilala Rao of Mandhata is hereditary custodian
of the great shrine of Siva at Onkar Mandhata on an island in the
Nerbudda. According to the traditions of the family, their ancestor,
Bharat Singh, was a Chauhan Rajput, who took Mandhata from Nathu
Bhil in A.D. 1165, and restored the worship of Siva to the island,
which had been made inaccessible to pilgrims by the terrible deities,
Kali and Bhairava, devourers of human flesh. In such legends may be
recognised the propagation of Hinduism by the Rajput adventurers and
the reconsecration of the aboriginal shrines to its deities. Bharat
Singh is said to have killed Nathu Bhil, but it is more probable that
he only married his daughter and founded a Bhilala family. Similar
alliances have taken place among other tribes, as the Korku chiefs
of the Gawilgarh and Mahadeo hills, and the Gond princes of Garha
Mandla. The Bhilalas generally resemble other Hindus in appearance,
showing no marked signs of aboriginal descent. Very probably they have
all an infusion of Rajput blood, as the Rajputs settled in the Bhil
country in some strength at an early period of history. The caste have,
however, totemistic group names; they will eat fowls and drink liquor;
and they bury their dead with the feet to the north, all these customs
indicating a Dravidian origin. Their subordinate position in past times
is shown by the fact that they will accept cooked food from a Kunbi
or a Gujar; and indeed the status of all except the chief's families
would naturally have been a low one, as they were practically the
offspring of kept women. As already stated, the landowning families
usually arrange alliances among themselves. Below these comes the
body of the caste and below them is a group known as the Chhoti Tad
or bastard Bhilalas, to which are relegated the progeny of irregular
unions and persons expelled from the caste for social offences.