1. General notice and structure of the caste.
Bhatra.[1]—A primitive tribe of the Bastar State and the south of Raipur District, akin to the Gonds. They numbered 33,000 persons in 1891, and in subsequent enumerations have been amalgamated with the Gonds. Nothing is known of their origin except a legend that they came with the Rājas of Bastar from Warangal twenty-three generations ago. The word Bhatra is said to mean a servant, and the tribe are employed as village watchmen and household and domestic servants. They have three divisions, the Pīt, Amnāit and Sān Bhatras, who rank one below the other, the Pīt being the highest and the Sān the lowest. The Pīt Bhatras base their superiority on the fact that they decline to make grass mats, which the Amnāit Bhatras will do, while the Sān Bhatras are considered to be practically identical with the Muria Gonds. Members of the three groups will eat with each other before marriage, but afterwards they will take only food cooked without water from a person belonging to another group. They have the usual set of exogamous septs named after plants and animals. Formerly, it is said, they were tattooed with representations of the totem plant and animal, and the septs named after the tiger and snake ate the flesh of these animals at a sacrificial meal. These customs have fallen into abeyance, but still if they kill their totem animal they will make apologies to it, and break their cooking-pots, and bury or burn the body. A man of substance will distribute alms in the name of the deceased animal. In some localities members of the Kāchhun or tortoise sept will not eat a pumpkin which drops from a tree because it is considered to resemble a tortoise. But if they can break it immediately on touching the ground they may partake of the fruit, the assumption being apparently that it has not had time to become like a tortoise.