ed a sword across the door at the height
of a man's neck. As the Agharias would not bend their heads they
were as a natural consequence all decapitated as they passed through
the door. Only one escaped, who had bribed a Chamar to go instead
of him. He and his village fled from Agra and came to Chhattisgarh,
where they founded the Agharia caste. And, in memory of this, when an
Agharia makes a libation to his ancestors, he first pours a little
water on the ground in honour of the dead Chamar. Such stories may
be purely imaginary, or may contain some substratum of truth, as that
the ancestors of the caste were Rajputs, who took wives from Chamars
and other low castes. The Kirars are another caste with more or less
mixed descent from Rajputs. They are also called Dhakar, and this
means one of illegitimate birth. The Bhilalas are a caste formed of the
offspring of mixed alliances between Rajputs and Bhils. In many cases
in Nimar Rajput immigrants appear to have married the daughters of Bhil
chieftains and landholders, and succeeded to their estates. Thus the
Bhilalas include a number of landed proprietors, and the caste ranks as
a good agricultural caste, from whom Brahmans will take water. Among
the other indigenous tribes, several of which have in the Central
Provinces retained the possession of large areas of land and great
estates in the wilder forest tracts, a subcaste has been formed of
the landholding members of the tribe. Such are the Raj-Gonds among
the Gonds, the Binjhals among Baigas, and the Tawar subtribe of the
Kawar tribe of Bilaspur, to which all the zamindars [50] belong. These
last now claim to be Tomara Rajputs, on the basis of the similarity
of the name. These groups rank with the good agricultural castes,
and Brahmans sometimes consent to take water from them. The Dangis
of Saugor appear to be the descendants of a set of freebooters in the
Vindhyan hills, much like the Gujars in northern India. The legend of
their origin is given in Sir B. Robertson's _Census Report_ of 1891:
"The chief of Garhpahra or old Saugor detained the palanquins of
twenty-two married women and kept them as his wives. The issue of the
illicit intercourse were named Dangis, and there are thus twenty-two
subdivisions of these people. There are also three other subdivisions
who claim descent from pure Rajputs, and who will take daughters
in marriage from the remaining twenty-two, but will not give their
daughters to them." Thus the Da