1. General notice of the caste.
Koli.—A primitive tribe akin to the Bhīls, who are residents of the western Satpūra hills. They have the honorific title of Nāik. They numbered 36,000 persons in 1911, nearly all of whom belong to Berār, with the exception of some 2000 odd, who live in the Nimār District. These have hitherto been confused with the Kori caste. The Koris or weavers are also known as Koli, but in Nimār they have the designation of Khangār Koli to distinguish them from the tribe of the same name. The Kolis proper are found in the Burhānpur tahsīl, where most villages are said to possess one or two families, and on the southern Satpūra hills adjoining Berār. They are usually village servants, their duties being to wait on Government officers, cleaning their cooking-vessels and collecting carts and provisions. The duties of village watchman or kotwār were formerly divided between two officials, and while the Koli did the most respectable part of the work, the Mahār or Balāhi carried baggage, sent messages, and made the prescribed reports to the police. In Berār the Kolis acted for a time as guardians of the hill passes. A chain of outposts or watch towers ran along the Satpūra hills to the north of Berār, and these were held by Kolis and Bhīls, whose duties were to restrain the predatory inroads of their own tribesmen, in the same manner as the Khyber Rifles now guard the passes on the North-West Frontier. And again along the Ajanta hills to the south of the Berār valley a tribe of Kolis under their Nāiks had charge of the ghāts or gates of the ridge, and acted as a kind of local militia paid by assignments of land in the villages.[1] In Nimār the Kolis, like the Bhīls, made a trade of plunder and dacoity during the unsettled times of the eighteenth century, and the phrase ‘Nāhal, Bhīl, Koli’ is commonly used in old Marāthi documents to designate the hill-robbers as a class. The priest of a Muhammadan tomb in Burhānpur still exhibits an imperial Parwāna or intimation from Delhi announcing the dispatch of a force for the suppression of the Kolis, dated A.D. 1637. In the Bombay Presidency, so late as 1804, Colonel Walker wrote: “Most Kolis are thieves by profession, and embrace every opportunity of plundering either public or private property.”[2] The tribe are important in Bombay, where their numbers amount to more than 1½ million. It is supposed that the common term ‘coolie’ is a corruption of Koli,[3] because the Kolis were usually employed as porters and carriers in western India, as ‘slave’ comes from Slav. The tribe have also given their name to Colāba.[4] Various derivations have been given of the meaning of the word Koli,[5] and according to one account the Kolis and Mairs were originally the same tribe and came from Sind, while the Mairs were the same as the Meyds or Mihiras who entered India in the fifth century as one of the branches of the great White Hun horde. “Again, since the settlement of the Mairs in Gujarāt,” the writer of the Gujarāt Gazetteer continues, “reverses of fortune, especially the depression of the Rājpūts under the yoke of the Muhammadans in the fourteenth century, did much to draw close the bond between the higher and middle grades of the warrior class. Then many Rājpūts sought shelter among the Kolis and married with them, leaving descendants who still claim a Rājpūt descent and bear the names of Rājpūt families. Apart from this, and probably as the result of an original sameness of race, in some parts of Gujarāt and Kāthiawār intermarriage goes on between the daughters of Talabda Kolis and the sons of Rājpūts.” Thus the Thākur of Talpuri Mahi Kāntha in Bombay calls himself a Prāmara Koli, and explains the term by saying that his ancestor, who was a Prāmara or Panwār Rājpūt, took water at a Koli’s house.[6] As regards the origin of the Kolis, however, whom the author of the Gujarāt Gazetteer derives from the White Huns, stating them to be immigrants from Sind, another and perhaps more probable theory is that they are simply a western outpost of the great Kol or Munda tribe, to which the Korkus and Nāhals and perhaps the Bhīls may also belong. Mr. Hīra Lāl suggests that it is a common custom in Marāthi to add or alter so as to make names end in i. Thus Halbi for Halba, Koshti for Koshta, Patwi for Patwa, Wanjāri for Banjāra, Gowari for Goala; and in the same manner Koli from Kol. This supposition appears a very reasonable one, though there is little direct evidence. The Nimār Kolis have no tradition of their origin beyond the saying—
Siva kī jholi
Us men ka Koli,
or ‘The Koli was born from Siva’s wallet.’