1. Origin of the name
Pindāri, Pindāra, Pendhāri.[1]—The well-known professional class of freebooters, whose descendants now form a small cultivating caste. In the Central Provinces they numbered about 150 persons in 1911, while there are about 10,000 in India. They are mainly Muhammadans but include some Hindus. The Pindāris of the Central Provinces are for the most part the descendants of Gonds, Korkus and Bhīls whose children were carried off in the course of raids, circumcised, and brought up to follow the profession of a Pindāri. When the bands were dispersed many of them returned to their native villages and settled down. Malcolm considered that the name Pindāri was derived from pinda, an intoxicating drink, and was given to them on account of their dissolute habits. He adds that Karīm Khān, a famous Pindāri leader, had never heard of any other reason for the name, and Major Henley had the etymology confirmed by the most intelligent of the Pindāris of whom he inquired.[2] In support of this may be adduced the name of Bhangi, given to the sweeper caste on account of their drinking bhang or hemp. Wilson again held the most probable derivation to be from the Marāthi pendha, in the sense of a bundle of rice-straw, and hara one who takes, because the name was originally applied to horsemen who hung on to an army and were employed in collecting forage. The fact that the existing Pindāris are herdsmen and tenders of buffaloes and thus might well have been employed for the collection of forage may be considered somewhat to favour the above view; but the authors of Hobson-Jobson, after citing these derivations, continue: “We cannot think any of the etymologies very satisfactory. We venture another as a plausible suggestion merely. Both pind-parna in Hindi and pindas-basnen in Marāthi signify ‘to follow,’ the latter being defined as ‘to stick closely; to follow to the death; used of the adherence of a disagreeable fellow.’ Such phrases could apply to these hangers-on of an army in the field looking out for prey.” Mr. W. Irvine[3] has suggested that the word comes from a place or region called Pandhār, which is referred to by native historians and seems to have been situated between Burhānpur and Handia on the Nerbudda; and states that there is good evidence to prove that a large number of Pindāris were settled in this part of the country. Mr. D. Chisholm reports from Nimār that “Pandhār or Pāndhar is the name given to a stream which rises in the Gularghāt hills of the Asīr range and flows after a very circuitous course into the Masak river by Mandeva. The name signifies five, as it is joined by four other small streams. The Asīr hills were the haunts of the Pindāris, and the country about these, especially by the banks of the Pandhār, is very wild; but it is not commonly known that the Pindāris derived their name from this stream.” And as the Pindāris are first heard of as hangers-on of the Marātha armies in the Deccan prior to A.D. 1700, it seems unlikely also that their name can be taken from a place in the Nimār District, where it is not recorded that they were settled before 1794. Nor does the Pandhār itself seem sufficiently important to have given a name to the whole body of freebooters. Malcolm’s or Wilson’s derivations are perhaps on the whole the most probable. Prinsep writes: “Pindāra seems to have the same reference to Pandour that Kuzāk has to Cossack. The latter word is of Turkish origin but is commonly used to express a mounted robber in Hindustān.” Though the Pandours were the predatory light cavalry of the Austrian army, and had considerable resemblance to the Pindāris, it does not seem possible to suppose that there is any connection between the two words. The Pendra zamīndāri in Bilāspur is named after the Pindāris, the dense forests of the Rewah plateau which includes Pendra having been one of their favourite asylums of refuge.