On the other hand the Majhwars of Mirzapur, of whom Mr. Crooke gives a
detailed and interesting account, clearly appear to be derived from the
Gonds. They have five subdivisions, which they say are descended from
the five sons of their first Gond ancestor. These are Poiya, Tekam,
Marai, Chika and Oiku. Four of these names are those of Gond clans,
and each of the five subtribes is further divided into a number of
exogamous septs, of which a large proportion bear typical Gond names,
as Markam, Netam, Tekam, Masham, Sindram and so on. The Majhwars
of Mirzapur also, like the Gonds, employ Patharis or Pardhans as
their priests, and there can thus be no doubt that they are mainly
derived from the Gonds. They would appear to have come to Mirzapur
from Sarguja and the Vindhyan and Satpura hills, as they say that
their ancestors ruled from the forts of Mandla, Garha in Jubbulpore,
Sarangarh, Raigarh and other places in the Central Provinces. [146]
They worship a deified Ahir, whose legs were cut off in a fight with
some Raja, since when he has become a troublesome ghost. "He now lives
on the Ahlor hill in Sarguja, where his petrified body may still be
seen, and the Manjhis go there to worship him. His wife lives on
the Jhoba hill in Sarguja. Nobody but a Baiga dares to ascend the
hill, and even the Raja of Sarguja when he visits the neighbourhood
sacrifices a black goat. Manjhis believe that if these two deities are
duly propitiated they can give anything they need." The story makes
it probable that the ancestors of these Manjhis dwelt in Sarguja. The
Manjhis of Mirzapur are not boatmen or fishermen and have no traditions
of having ever been so. They are a backward tribe and practise shifting
cultivation on burnt-out patches of forest. It is possible that they
may have abandoned their former aquatic profession on leaving the
neighbourhood of the rivers, or they may have simply adopted the name,
especially since it has the meaning of a village headman and is used
as a title by the Santals and other castes and tribes. Similarly
the term Munda, which at first meant the headman of a Kol village,
is now the common name for the Kol tribe in Chota Nagpur.