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The Bhils in the Historic Setting of Western India

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Tribal Studies in India

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Abstract

This chapter highlights the processes of the interaction between the Bhils and the regional states and the rural society in which they lived in southern Rajasthan and Gujarat in medieval times. Sources for this study are drawn from inscriptions, literary texts, bardic traditions, and the accounts of European travellers. The central theme relates to the participation of the Bhils in the processes of regional state formation, their contacts with rural peasant society and the consequent emergence of elite among the Bhils. I have thus tried to break the traditional academic mould of treating tribal peoples as isolated and in a stereotyped image.

Originally published in Social Science Probing, Special Issue, 1993 on ‘State and Society’. Reproduced with the permission of the author

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Notes

  1. 1.

    ‘Bhil’ is an exonym that derives from the Draidian word Vil or Vilawar meaning a bow or a bowman and indicates a prevalent perception of the Bhils as good archers (see Doshi 1971: 32). The earliest mention of the name Bhil in Sanskrit literature occurs in the Kathāsarit-sāgara of Gunadhya (c. AD 600) where there is a mention of an elephant-riding Bhil chief denying a king passage through the Vindhyas. Today the Bhils of Rajasthan are classified into Gametia Bhils (who claim to be descendants of the Bhil rulers and heads of the Bhil villages and who are concentrated in the northern and western parts of Udaipur district and in parts of Sirohi district), KatariaBhils (Dhariavad, Ashpur and Ghatol tehsils of Udaipur, Dungarpur and Banswara districts) and the Mama Bhils of Kushalgarh. The Bhils are the largest tribal community in Gujarat, where they are divided into major groups such as the Bhil Garasia, Vasavas, Pawra Bhil and Tavadi Bhil (see Singh 1997:118, 125–7).

  2. 2.

    Khandesh region covered an area of central India and now falls in todays’ north-western portion of Maharashtra – includes districts of Jalgaon, Dhule, Nandurbar and Burhanpur district of Madhya Pradesh- Editor.

  3. 3.

    Epigraphia Indica, vol. 19, pp.97–68.

  4. 4.

    Merutunga’s Prabandhacintamani, Singhi Jain Granthamala, Santiniketan:Viswabharati, 1933.

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  1. SOITS, Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi, India

    Nandini Sinha Kapur

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  1. Arunachal Institute of Tribal Studies, Rajiv Gandhi University, Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh, India

    Maguni Charan Behera

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Sinha Kapur, N. (2020). The Bhils in the Historic Setting of Western India. In: Behera, M. (eds) Tribal Studies in India. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9026-6_2

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