Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s6.6.3

c48.s6.6.3

The Santāl, Bhūmij and the Muṇḍā call themselves Hō, but no one else does, and intermarriage between them and the Hō of Singbhūm is now unusual. The latter are of Cūtiā Nāgpur, like the others, but having got possession of a more fertile region, they have taken the greatest care to prevent strangers from sharing the land with them. Physically, they are the finest of the race, and have become a steady agricultural community of a somewhat undeveloped type. The tribes returning themselves as Kōl are found for the most part in the Mirzāpur district along the Ganges, in Jabalpur and Māndla in the Central Provinces, and in the Baghelkhaṇḍ tract of Central India. They have the tradition of having once lived in the plains of south Bihār from which they were expelled by Savara of some sort, and had to take refuge in Baghelkhaṇḍ. In all the above tracts the tribe is comparatively Brāhmanised and has lost much of the organisation and worship it has retained in Cūtiā Nāgpur, where the Kōl is a branch of the Muṇḍā. Here they live after the fashion of their ancestors, but in the rest of their settlements they have taken to simple cultivation on the ordinary lines, and differ but little from their Brāhmanic neighbours except in more extended respect for sorcery, and in the propitiation of the local gods in preference to those of wider fame.