hey
were no doubt all Bhuiyas originally; they certainly do not look like
Rajputs." Members of the tribe are the household servants of the Bamra
Raja's family, and it is said that the first Raja of Bamra was a child
of the Patna house, who was stolen from his home and anointed king of
Bamra by the Bhuiyas and Khonds. Similarly Colonel Dalton records the
legend that the Bhuiyas twenty-seven generations ago stole a child
of the Moharbhanj Raja's family, brought it up amongst them and made
it their Raja. He was freely admitted to intercourse with Bhuiya
girls, and the children of this intimacy are the progenitors of the
Rajkuli branch of the tribe. But they are not considered first among
Bhuiyas because they are not of pure Bhuiya descent. Again the Raja of
Keonjhar is always installed by the Bhuiyas. These facts indicate that
the Bhuiyas were once the rulers of Chota Nagpur and are recognised
as the oldest inhabitants of the country. From this centre they have
spread north through Lohardaga and Hazaribagh and into southern Bihar,
where large numbers of Bhuiyas are encountered on whom the opprobrious
designation of Musahar or 'rat-eater' has been conferred by their
Hindu neighbours. Others of the tribe who travelled south from Chota
Nagpur experienced more favourable conditions, and here the tendency
has been for the Bhuiyas to rise rather than to decline in social
status. "Some of their leading families," Sir H. Risley states,
"have come to be chiefs of the petty States of Orissa, and have now
sunk the Bhuiya in the Khandait or swordsman, a caste of admitted
respectability in Orissa and likely in course of time to transform
itself into some variety of Rajput."

3. Example of the position of the aborigines in Hindu society.

The varying status of the Bhuiyas in Bihar, Chota Nagpur and Orissa
is a good instance of the different ways in which the primitive
tribes have fared in contact with the immigrant Aryans. Where the
country has been completely colonised and populated by Hindus, as
in Bihar, the aboriginal residents have commonly become transformed
into village drudges, relegated to the meanest occupations, and
despised as impure by the Hindu cultivators, like the Chamars of
northern India and the Mahars of the Maratha Districts. Where the
Hindu immigration has only been partial and the forests have not
been cleared, as in Chota Nagpur and the Central Provinces, they may
keep their old villages and tribal organis