1. General notice of the tribe
Parja.—A small tribe,[1] originally an offshoot of the Gonds, who reside in the centre and east of the Bastar State and the adjoining Jaipur zamīndāri of Madras. They number about 13,000 persons in the Central Provinces and 92,000 in Madras, where they are also known as Poroja. The name Parja appears to be derived from the Sanskrit Parja, a subject. The following notice of it is taken from the Madras Census Report[2] of 1871: “The term Parja is, as Mr. Carmichael has pointed out, merely a corruption of a Sanskrit term signifying a subject; and it is understood as such by the people themselves, who use it in contradistinction to a free hillman. Formerly, says a tradition that runs through the whole tribe, Rājas and Parjas were brothers, but the Rājas took to riding horses or, as the Barenja Parjas put it, sitting still, and we became carriers of burdens and Parjas. It is quite certain in fact that the term Parja is not a tribal denomination, but a class denomination; and it may be fitly rendered by the familiar epithet of ryot. There is no doubt, however, that by far the greater number of these Parjas are akin to the Khonds of the Ganjam Maliāhs. They are thrifty, hardworking cultivators, undisturbed by the intestinal broils which their cousins in the north engage in, and they bear in their breasts an inalienable reverence for their soil, the value of which they are rapidly becoming acquainted with. Their ancient rights to these lands are acknowledged by colonists from among the Aryans, and when a dispute arises about the boundaries of a field possessed by recent arrivals a Parja is usually called in to point out the ancient landmarks. Gadbas are also represented as indigenous from the long lapse of years that they have been in the country, but they are by no means of the patriarchal type that characterises the Parjas.”
In Bastar the caste are also known as Dhurwa, which may be derived from Dhur, the name applied to the body of Gonds as opposed to the Rāj-Gonds. In Bastar, Dhurwa now conveys the sense of a headman of a village. The tribe have three divisions, Thakara or Tagara, Peng and Mudara, of which only the first is found in Bastar. Thakara appears to be a corruption of Thākur, a lord, and the two names point to the conclusion that the Parjas were formerly dominant in this tract. They themselves have a story, somewhat resembling the one quoted above from Madras, to the effect that their ancestor was the elder brother of the first Rāja of Bastar when he lived in Madras, to the south of Warangal. From there he had to flee on account of an invasion of the Muhammadans, and was accompanied by the goddess Dānteshwari, the tutelary deity of the Rājas of Bastar. In accordance with the command of the goddess the younger brother was considered as the Rāja and rode on a horse, while the elder went before him carrying their baggage. At Bhadrachallam they met the Bhatras, and further on the Halbas. The goddess followed them, guiding their steps, but she strictly enjoined on the Rāja not to look behind him so as to see her. But when they came to the sands of the rivers Sankani and Dankani, the tinkle of the anklets of the goddess could not be heard for the sand. The Rāja therefore looked behind him to see if she was following, on which she said that she could go no more with him, but he was to march as far as he could and then settle down. The two brothers settled in Bastar, where the descendants of the younger became the ruling clan, and those of the elder were their servants, the Parjas. The story indicates, perhaps, that the Parjas were the original Gond inhabitants and rulers of the country, and were supplanted by a later immigration of the same tribe, who reduced them to subjection, and became Rāj-Gonds. Possibly the first transfer of power was effected by the marriage of an immigrant into a Parja Rāja’s family, as so often happened with these old dynasties. The Parjas still talk about the Rāni of Bastar as their Bohu or ‘younger brother’s wife,’ and the custom is probably based on some such legend. The Madras account of them as the arbiters of boundary disputes points to the same conclusion, as this function is invariably assigned to the oldest residents in any locality. The Parjas appear to be Gonds and not Khonds. Their sept names are Gondi words, and their language is a form of Gondi, called after them Parji. Parji has hitherto been considered a form of Bhatri, but Sir G. Grierson[3] has now classified the latter as a dialect of the Uriya language, while Parji remains ‘A local and very corrupt variation of Gondi, considerably mixed with Hindi forms.’ While then the Parjas, in Bastar at any rate, must be held to be a branch of the Gonds, they may have a considerable admixture of the Khonds, or other tribes in different localities, as the rules of marriage are very loose in this part of the country.[4]