The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India,...

Bind.—A large non-Aryan caste of Bihār and the United Provinces, of which 380 persons were returned in 1911. Sir H. Risley says of them:21 “They are a tribe employed in agriculture, earthwork, fishing, hunting, making saltpetre and collecting indigenous drugs. Traditions current among the caste profess to trace their origin to the Vindhya hills, and one of these legends tells how a traveller, passing by the foot of the hills, heard a strange flute-like sound coming out of a clump of bamboos. He cut a shoot and took from it a fleshy substance which afterwards grew into a man, the supposed ancestor of the Binds. Another story says that the Binds and Nunias were formerly all Binds and that the present Nunias are the descendants of a Bind who consented to dig a grave for a Muhammadan king and was outcasted for doing so.” A third legend tells how in the beginning of all things Mahādeo made a lump of earth and endowed it with life. The creature thus produced asked Mahādeo what he should eat. The god pointed to a tank and told him to eat the fish in it and the wild rice which grew near the banks. Mr. Crooke22 says that they use fish largely except in the fortnight (Pitripaksh) sacred to the dead in the month of Kunwār, and Sir H. Risley notes that after the rice harvest the Binds wander about the country digging up the stores of rice accumulated by field rats in their burrows. From four to six pounds of grain are usually found, but even this quantity is sometimes exceeded.

Birhor.—A small Kolarian tribe of whom about 150 persons were returned in 1911 from the Chota Nāgpur States. The name means a dweller in the forest. Sir H. Risley states that the Birhors live in tiny huts made of branches of trees and leaves, and eke out a miserable living by snaring hares and monkeys, and collecting jungle products, especially the bark of the chob creeper,23 from which a coarse kind of rope is made. They are great adepts at ensnaring monkeys and other small animals, and sell them alive or eat them. Colonel Dalton described them as,24 “A small, dirty, miserable-looking race, who have the credit of devouring their parents, and when I taxed them with it they did not deny that such a custom had once obtained among them. But they declared they never shortened lives to provide such feasts and shrank with horror from the idea of any bodies but those of their own blood-relatives being served up to them.” It would appear that this custom may be partly ceremonial, and have some object, such as ensuring that the dead person should be born again in the family or that the survivors should not be haunted by his ghost. It has been recorded of the Bhunjias that they ate a small part of the flesh of their dead parents.25 Colonel Dalton considered the Birhors to be a branch of the Kharia tribe, and this is borne out by Dr. Grierson’s statement that the specimen of the Birhor dialect returned from the Jashpur State was really Kharia.26 Elsewhere the Birhor dialect resembles Mundāri.

Bopchi—A small caste in the Wardha District numbering a few hundred persons. They are in reality Korkus, the name being a corruption of that of the Bendoya subtribe, but they have discarded their proper tribal name and formed a separate caste. They retain some of the Korku sept names, while others are derived from the Marāthi words or from the names of other castes, and these facts indicate that the Bopchis are of mixed descent from Korkus and other low Marātha castes with which unions have taken place. As might be expected, they are very tolerant of sexual and social offences, and do not expel a woman who has a liaison with a man of another caste or takes food from him. She is readmitted to caste intercourse, but has to undergo the penalty of washing her body with cowdung and having a lock of her hair cut off. A man committing a similar offence has his upper lip shaved. They employ Gosains for their gurus and their social position is very low.