1. General notice of the tribe.
Kolām.[1]—A Dravidian tribe residing principally in the Wūn tāluk of the Yeotmāl District. They number altogether about 25,000 persons, of whom 23,000 belong to Wūn and the remainder to the adjoining tracts of Wardha and Hyderābād. They are not found elsewhere. The tribe are generally considered to be akin to the Gonds[2] on the authority of Mr. Hislop. He wrote of them: “The Kolāms extend all along the Kandi Konda or Pindi Hills on the south of the Wardha river and along the table-land stretching east and north of Mānikgad and thence south to Dāntanpalli, running parallel to the western bank of the Prānhīta. The Kolāms and the common Gonds do not intermarry, but they are present at each other’s nuptials and eat from each other’s hand. Their dress is similar, but the Kolām women wear fewer ornaments, being generally content with a few black beads of glass round their neck. Among their deities, which are the usual objects of Gond adoration, Bhīmsen is chiefly honoured.” Mr. Hislop was, however, not always of this opinion, because he first excluded the Kolāms from the Gond tribes and afterwards included them.[3] In Wardha they are usually distinguished from the Gonds. They have a language of their own, called after them Kolāmi. Sir G. Grierson[4] describes it as, “A minor dialect of Berār and the Central Provinces which occupies a position like that of Gondi between Canarese, Tamil and Telugu. The so-called Kolāmi, the Bhīli spoken in the Pusad tāluk of Bāsim and the so-called Naiki of Chānda agree in so many particulars that they can almost be considered as one and the same dialect. They are closely related to Gondi. The points in which they differ from that language are, however, of sufficient importance to make it necessary to separate them from that form of speech. The Kolāmi dialect differs widely from the language of the neighbouring Gonds. In some points it agrees with Telugu, in other characteristics with Canarese and connected forms of speech. There are also some interesting points of analogy with the Todā dialect of the Nīlgiris, and the Kolāms must, from a philological point of view, be considered as the remnants of an old Dravidian tribe who have not been involved in the development of the principal Dravidian languages, or of a tribe who have not originally spoken a Dravidian form of speech.”
Group of Kōlams
The family names of the tribe also are not Gondi, but resemble those of Marātha castes. Out of fifty sept names recorded, only one, Tekām, is found among the Gonds. “All their songs and ballads,” Colonel Mackenzie says, “are borrowed from the Marāthas: even their women when grinding corn sing Marāthi songs.” In Wūn their dress and appearance resembles that of the Kunbis, but in some respects they retain very primitive customs. Colonel Mackenzie states that until recently in Berār they had the practice of capturing husbands for women who would otherwise have gone unwedded, this being apparently a survival of the matriarchate. It does not appear that the husbands so captured were ever unphilosophical enough to rebel under the old regime, though British enlightenment has taught them otherwise. Widows and widowers were exempt from capture and debarred from capturing. In view of the connection mentioned by Sir G. Grierson between the Kolāmi dialect and that of the Todās of the Nīlgiri hills who are a small remnant of an ancient tribe and still practise polyandry, Mr. Hīra Lāl suggests that the Kolāms may be connected with the Kolas, a tribe akin to the Todās[5] and as low in the scale of civilisation, who regard the Kolamallai hills as their original home.[6] He further notes that the name of the era by which the calendar is reckoned on the Malabar coast is Kolamba. In view of Sir G. Grierson’s statement that the Kolāmi dialect is the same as that of the Nāik Gonds of Chānda it may be noted that the headman of a Kolām village is known as Nāik, and it is possible that the Kolāms may be connected with the so-called Nāik Gonds.