The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c31.s9.23

c31.s9.23

Some of the principal clans farther south spring from a different source, and apparently are descended from the so-called aboriginal tribes, Gonds, Bhars, Kols, and the like, whom Sir Herbert Risley designated by the singularly inappropriate generic name of 'Dravidians', one of the most misleading terms ever introduced.¹ The evidence of a close connexion between the Chandēls and the Gonds, who, again, were associated with the Bhars, is particularly strong; and the inference is fully justified that the Chandēl Rājpūts were originally Hinduized Bhars or Gonds, or both, who attained recognition as Kshatriyas or Rājpūts, when they acquired power and took up the business of kingship for which the Kshatriya group of castes was appropriated. The Gaharwārs similarly are associated with the Bhars; the Bundēlas and the northern Rāthōrs are offshoots of the Gaharwārs, and so on. The name of the great Rāshtrakūta clan of the Deccan, the political history of which will be treated in the next chapter, is etymologically identical with Rāthōr, but there is not, so far as I am aware, evidence of any racial connexion between the Rāshtrakūtas of the Deccan and the Rāthōrs of Hindustan. The former seem to have originated among some one or other of the indigenous tribes of the Deccan in much the same way as the Chandēls became differentiated from the Gonds of the territory which is now the Chhatarpur State.¹