Kawar, Kanwar, Kaur (honorific title, Sirdar).--A primitive tribe
living in the hills of the Chhattisgarh Districts north of the
Mahanadi. The hill-country comprised in the northern zamindari estates
of Bilaspur and the adjoining Feudatory States of Jashpur, Udaipur,
Sarguja, Chang Bhakar and Korea is the home of the Kawars, and is
sometimes known after them as the Kamran. Eight of the Bilaspur
zamindars are of the Kawar tribe. The total numbers of the tribe
are nearly 200,000, practically all of whom belong to the Central
Provinces. In Bilaspur the name is always pronounced with a nasal
as Kanwar. The Kawars trace their origin from the Kauravas of the
Mahabharata, who were defeated by the Pandavas at the great battle of
Hastinapur. They say that only two pregnant women survived and fled to
the hills of Central India, where they took refuge in the houses of
a Rawat (grazier) and a Dhobi (washerman) respectively, and the boy
and girl children who were born to them became the ancestors of the
Kawar tribe. Consequently, the Kawars will take food from the hands
of Rawats, especially those of the Kauria subcaste, who are in all
probability descended from Kawars. And when a Kawar is put out of
caste for having maggots in a wound, a Dhobi is always employed to
readmit him to social intercourse. These facts show that the tribe
have some close ancestral connection with the Rawats and Dhobis,
though the legend of descent from the Kauravas is, of course, a myth
based on the similarity of the names. The tribe have lost their own
language, if they ever had one, and now speak a corrupt form of the
Chhattisgarhi dialect of Hindi. It is probable that they belong to
the Dravidian tribal family.