_Murha._--A Dravidian, caste of navvies and labourers found in
Jubbulpore and the adjoining Districts, to the number of about
1500 persons. The name Murha has been held to show that the caste
are connected with the Munda tribe. The Murhas, however, call
themselves also Khare Bind Kewat and Lunia or Nunia (salt-maker),
and in Jubbulpore they give these two names as subdivisions of the
caste. And these names indicate that the caste are an offshoot of
the large Bind tribe of Bengal and northern India, though in parts
of the Central Provinces they have probably been recruited from the
Kols or Mundas. Sir H. Risley [283] records a story related by the
Binds to the effect that they and the Nunias were formerly one, and
that the existing Nunias are descended from a Bind who consented to
dig a grave for a Muhammadan king and was put out of caste for doing
so. And he remarks that the Binds may be a true primitive tribe and
the Nunias a functional group differentiated from them by taking to
the manufacture of earth salt. This explanation of the relationship
of the Binds and Nunias seems almost certainly correct. In the United
Provinces the Binds are divided into the Khare and Dhusia or first and
second subcastes, and the Khare Binds also call themselves Kewat. [284]
And the Murhas of Narsinghpur call themselves Khare Bind Kewats, though
the other Kewats repudiate all connection with them. There seems thus
to be no doubt that the Murhas of these Provinces are another offshoot
of the Bind tribe like the Nunias, who have taken up the profession of
navvies and earthworkers and thus become a separate caste. Mr. Hira
Lal notes that the Narsinghpur District contains a village Nonia,
which is inhabited solely by Murhas who call themselves Khare Bind
Kewat. As the village is no doubt named Nonia or Nunia after them,
we thus have an instance of all the three designations being applied
to the same set of persons. The Murhas say that they came into
Narsinghpur from Rewah, and they still speak the Bagheli dialect,
though the current vernacular of the locality is Bundeli. The Binds
themselves derive their name from the Vindhya (Bindhya) hills. [285]
They relate that a traveller passing by the Vindhya hills heard a
strange flute-like sound coming out of a clump of bamboos. He cut
a shoot and took from it a fleshy substance, which afterwards grew
into a man, the supposed ancestor of the Binds. In Mandla the Murhas
say that the difference between themselves and the Nunias is that the
latter make field-embankments and other earthwork, while the Murhas
work in stone and build bridges. According to their own story they
were brought to Mandla from their home in Eastern Oudh more than ten
generations ago by a Gond king of the Garha-Mandla dynasty for the
purpose of building his fort or castle. He gave them two villages
for their maintenance which they have now lost. The caste has,
however, probably received some local accretions and in Mandla some
Murhas appear to be Kols; members of this tribe are generally above
the average in bodily strength and are in considerable request for
employment on earth- and stone-work.