A History of the Mahrattas v1.c17.145

v1.c17.145

been definitely placed beyond doubt, and is in fact denied by Mackintosh in his account of the former (Bombay, 1833). The Bēdars in the Madras Presidency are now cultivators (Thurston, O. and S.S.I.). The chiefs of Sonda in north Kanara were, perhaps, Bēdars, and related to the Rāyas of Vijayanagar. The Bēdars, or Bōyas, were the old fighting caste of Anantapur and neighbouring districts. In 1750 Haidar Alī used a select corps of Bēdars at the battle of Jinji; in 1751 the army of Morār Rāo of Gūtī was composed chiefly of Bēdars; and the same people formed the army of the Polygār of Chitaldrug in 1755. They served as irregular troops under Tipū’s government; and in the eighteenth century Harpanahalli was the seat of a powerful Bēdar polygār, whose family was founded by a Bōya on the subversion of the Vijayanagar kingdom. Both the Telugu and Kanarese-speaking Bēdars to-day are divided into Uru, or village-men, and Myāsa, or grass-land men, and these are again subdivided into various exogamous sub-classes. The usual titles of Bēdars and Bōyas are Nāidu, Nāik, Dōra, Dōrabidda (children of chieftains) and Vālmīkī. (Thurston, C, and T.S.I., i. 180 ff.)