o he said, "With
thy bow on thy shoulder and thine arrow in thy hand, whither goest
thou, O King of Delhi?" The Bahna was exceedingly pleased at this and
replied, 'King of the forest, eater of wild plums, only the great can
recognise the great.' But when the jackal had got to a safe distance
he turned round and shouted, "With your cotton-bow on your shoulder and
your club in your hand, there you go, you sorry Bahna." It is said also
that although the Bahnas as good Muhammadans wear beards, they do not
cultivate them very successfully, and many of them only have a growth
of hair below the chin and none on the under-lip, in the fashion known
as a goat's beard. This kind of beard is thus proverbially described
as '_Bahna kaisi darhi_' or 'A Bahna's beard.' It may be repeated in
conclusion that much of the ridicule attaching to the Bahnas arises
simply from the fact that they follow what is considered a feminine
occupation, and the remainder because in their ignorance they parody
the rites of Islam. It may seem ill-natured to record the sayings
in which they are lampooned, but the Bahnas cannot read English,
and these have an interest as specimens of popular wit.

Baiga

List of Paragraphs

1. _The tribe and its offshoots._
2. _Tribal legends._
3. _Tribal subdivisions._
4. _Marriage._
5. _Birth and funeral rites._
6. _Religion._
7. _Appearance and mode of life._
8. _Dress and food._
9. _Occupation._
10. _Language._

1. The tribe and its offshoots.

_Baiga._ [85]--A primitive Dravidian tribe whose home is on the eastern
Satpura hills in the Mandla, Balaghat and Bilaspur Districts. The
number of the Baigas proper was only 30,000 in 1911. But the Binjhals
or Binjhwars, a fairly numerous caste in the Chhattisgarh Division, and
especially in the Sambalpur District, appear to have been originally
Baigas, though they have dropped the original caste name, become
Hinduised, and now disclaim connection with the parent tribe. A
reason for this may be found in the fact that Sambalpur contains
several Binjhwar zamindars, or large landowners, whose families would
naturally desire a more respectable pedigree than one giving them the
wild Baigas of the Satpuras for their forefathers. And the evolution of
the Binjhwar caste is a similar phenomenon to the constitution of the
Raj-Gonds, the Raj-Korkus, and other aristocratic subdivisions among
the for