A History of the Mahrattas v1.c8.54

v1.c8.54

³ [The Rāmosīs (Ramoosees), whose name is probably derived from Rānavāsī, ‘forest-dwellers,’ are connected with the Bēdar (‘hunter’) tribes of the Kanarese and Telugu country, whence they originally migrated to the Deccan. Their traditional occupation is robbery. Under Marāthā rule they were often, like the Māngs, in charge of hill-forts. They still rank as a criminal tribe, but are largely employed under British rule as village watchmen, and in towns as night-watchmen for dwelling-houses and offices. Some, in return for their services, have a portion of the village-lands assigned to them. The change which has come over the tribe since the early years of the nineteenth century, when they were hunted down as marauding outlaws by Bombay troops, is shown by their holding an educational conference in Sātāra District in 1919, at which they resolved to request Government to discontinue the system of mustering them nightly at the various police-stations in the Deccan, and to grant them better facilities for education. (Captain Mackintosh’s Account of the Ramoossies, 1833; I.G. Bom., 1909, i. 120; B.E.S., Monograph 138; B.G., vol. xviii, pts. i-iii.)]