[1] This article is mainly compiled from papers by Mr. Pāndurang Lakshman Bākre, pleader, Betūl, and Munshi Pyāre Lāl, ethnographic clerk.

Bhuiya

List of Paragraphs

1. The tribe and its name.

Bhuiya, Bhuinhār, Bhumia.[1]—The name of a very important tribe of Chota Nāgpur, Bengal and Orissa. The Bhuiyas numbered more than 22,000 persons in the Central Provinces in 1911, being mainly found in the Sargūja and Jashpur States. In Bengal and Bihār the Bhuiyas proper count about half a million persons, while the Mūsahar and Khandait castes, both of whom are mainly derived from the Bhuiyas, total together well over a million.

The name Bhuiya means ‘Lord of the soil,’ or ‘Belonging to the soil,’ and is a Sanskrit derivative. The tribe have completely forgotten their original name, and adopted this designation conferred on them by the immigrant Aryans. The term Bhuiya, however, is also employed by other tribes and by some Hindus as a title for landholders, being practically equivalent to zamīndār. And hence a certain confusion arises, and classes or individuals may have the name of Bhuiya without belonging to the tribe at all. “In most parts of Chota Nāgpur,” Sir H. Risley says, “there is a well-known distinction between a Bhuiya by tribe and a Bhuiya by title. The Bhuiyas of Bonai and Keonjhar described by Colonel Dalton belong to the former category; the Bhuiya Mundas and Oraons to the latter. The distinction will be made somewhat clearer if it is explained that every ‘tribal Bhuiya’ will as a matter of course describe himself as Bhuiya, while a member of another tribe will only do so if he is speaking with reference to a question of land, or desires for some special reason to lay stress on his status as a landholder or agriculturist.”

We further find in Bengal and Benares a caste of landholders known as Bhuinhār or Bābhan, who are generally considered as a somewhat mixed and inferior group of Brāhman and Rājpūt origin. Both Sir H. Risley and Mr. Crooke adopt this view and deny any connection between the Bhuinhārs and the Bhuiya tribes. Bābhan appears to be a corrupt form of Brāhman. Mr. Mazumdār, however, states that Bhuiya is never used in Bengali as an equivalent for zamīndār or landholder, and he considers that the Bhuinhārs and also the Bārah Bhuiyas, a well-known group of twelve landholders of Eastern Bengal and Assam, belonged to the Bhuiya tribe. He adduces from Sir E. Gait’s History of Assam the fact that the Chutias and Bhuiyas were dominant in that country prior to its conquest by the Ahoms in the thirteenth century, and considers that these Chutias gave their name to Chutia or Chota Nāgpur. I am unable to express any opinion on Mr. Mazumdār’s argument, and it is also unnecessary as the question does not concern the Central Provinces.