re. The Rautadi are a
territorial group, taking their name from a place called Raotal. The
Khandaits practise hypergamy with the Rautadi, taking daughters from
them, but not giving their daughters to them. The Pabudia or Madhai
are the hill Bhuiyas, and are the most wild and backward portion of
the tribe. Dalton writes of them in Keonjhar: "They are not bound
to fight for the Raja, though they occasionally take up arms against
him. Their duty is to attend on him and carry his loads when he travels
about, and so long as they are satisfied with his person and his rule,
no more willing or devoted subjects could be found. They are then in
Keonjhar, as in Bonai, a race whom you cannot help liking and taking
an interest in from the primitive simplicity of their customs, their
amenability and their anxiety to oblige; but unsophisticated as they
are they wield an extraordinary power in Keonjhar, and when they take
it into their heads to use that power, the country may be said to be
governed by an oligarchy composed of the sixty chiefs of the Pawri
Desh, the Bhuiya Highlands. A knotted string passed from village to
village in the name of the sixty chiefs throws the entire country into
commotion, and the order verbally communicated in connection with
it is as implicitly obeyed as if it emanated from the most potent
despot." This knotted string is known as _Ganthi_. The Pabudias say
that their ancestors were twelve brothers belonging to Keonjhar,
of whom eight went to an unknown country, while the remaining four
divided among themselves all the territory of which they had knowledge,
this being comprised in the four existing states of Keonjhar, Bamra,
Palahara and Bonai. Any Pabudia who takes up his residence permanently
beyond the boundaries of these four states is considered to lose his
caste, like Hindus in former times who went to dwell in the foreign
country beyond the Indus. [374] But if the wandering Pabudia returns
in two years, and proves that he has not drunk water from any other
caste, he is taken back into the fold. Other subdivisions are the Kati
or Khatti and the Bathudia, these last being an inferior group who
are said to be looked down on because they have taken food from other
low castes. No doubt they are really the offspring of irregular unions.

8. Exogamus septs.

In Raigarh the Bhuiyas appear to have no exogamous divisions. When
they wish to arrange a marriage they compare the family gods of the
partie