5. The Baigas and the Bhuiyas. Chhattīsgarh the home of the Baigas.
There appears to be considerable reason for supposing that the Baiga tribe of the Central Provinces are really a branch of the Bhuiyas. Though the Baigas are now mainly returned from Mandla and Bālāghāt, it seems likely that these Districts were not their original home, and that they emigrated from Chhattīsgarh into the Satpūra hills on the western borders of the plain. The hill country of Mandla and the Maikal range of Bālāghāt form one of the wildest and most inhospitable tracts in the Province, and it is unlikely that the Baigas would have made their first settlements here and spread thence into the fertile plain of Chhattīsgarh. Migration in the opposite direction would be more natural and probable. But it is fairly certain that the Baiga tribe were among the earliest if not the earliest residents of the Chhattīsgarh plain and the hills north and east of it. The Bhaina, Bhunjia and Binjhwār tribes who still reside in this country can all be recognised as offshoots of the Baigas. In the article on Bhaina it is shown that some of the oldest forts in Bilāspur are attributed to the Bhainas and a chief of this tribe is remembered as having ruled in Bilaigarh south of the Mahānadi. They are said to have been dominant in Pendra where they are still most numerous, and to have been expelled from Phuljhar in Raipur by the Gonds. The Binjhwārs or Binjhāls again are an aristocratic subdivision of the Baigas, belonging to the hills east of Chhattīsgarh and the Uriya plain country of Sambalpur beyond them. The zamīndārs of Bodāsāmar, Rāmpur, Bhatgaon and other estates to the south and east of the Chhattīsgarh plain are members of this tribe. Both the Bhainas and Binjhwārs are frequently employed as priests of the village deities all over this area, and may therefore be considered as older residents than the Gond and Kawar tribes and the Hindus. Sir G. Grierson also states that the language of the Baigas of Mandla and Bālāghāt is a form of Chhattīsgarhi, and this is fairly conclusive evidence of their first having belonged to Chhattīsgarh.[6] It seems not unlikely that the Baigas retreated into the hills round Chhattīsgarh after the Hindu invasion and establishment of the Haihaya Rājpūt dynasty of Ratanpur, which is now assigned to the ninth century of the Christian era; just as the Gonds retired from the Nerbudda valley and the Nāgpur plain before the Hindus several centuries later. Sir H. Risley states that the Binjhias or Binjhwārs of Chota Nāgpur say that their ancestors came from Ratanpur twenty generations ago.[7]