The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 1 — Reading Notes

Provinces was entrusted to the author, and its preparation, undertaken in addition to ordinary official duties, has been spread over a number of years. The prescribed plan was that a separate account should be written of each of the principal tribes and castes, according to the method adopted in Sir Herbert Risley's _Tribes and Castes of Bengal_. This was considered to be desirable as the book is intended primarily as a work of reference for the officers of Government, who may desire to know something of the customs of the people among whom their work lies. It has the disadvantage of involving a large amount of repetition of the same or very similar statements about different castes, and the result is likely therefore to be somewhat distasteful to the ordinary reader. On the other hand, there is no doubt that this method of treatment, if conscientiously followed out, will produce more exhaustive results than a general account. Similar works for some other Provinces have already appeared, as Mr. W. Crooke's _Castes and Tribes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh_, Mr. Edgar Thurston's _Castes and Tribes of Southern India_, and Mr. Ananta Krishna Iyer's volumes on Cochin, while a Glossary for the Punjab by Mr. H.A. Rose has been partly published. The articles on Religions and Sects were not in the original scheme of the work, but have been subsequently added as being necessary to render it a complete ethnological account of the population. In several instances the adherents of the religion or sect are found only in very small numbers in the Province, and the articles have been compiled from standard works.

In the preparation of the book much use has necessarily been made of the standard ethnological accounts of other parts of India, especially Colonel Tod's _Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan_, Mr. J.D. Forbes' _Rasmala or Annals of Gujarat_, Colonel Dalton's _Ethnology of Bengal_, Dr. Buchanan's _Eastern India_, Sir Denzil Ibbetson's _Punjab Census Report_ for 1881, Sir John Malcolm's _Memoir of Central India_, Sir Edward Gait's _Bengal and India Census Reports_ and article on Caste in Dr. Hastings' _Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics_, Colonel (Sir William) Sleeman's _Report on the Badhaks_ and _Ramaseeana or Vocabulary of the Thugs,_ Mr. Kennedy's _Criminal Classes of the Bombay Presidency_, Major Gunthorpe's _Criminal Tribes of Bombay, Berar and the Central Provinces_, the books of Mr. Crooke and Sir H. Risley already mentioned, and the mass of valuable ethnological material contained in the _Bombay Gazetteer _ (Sir J. Campbell), especially the admirable volumes on _Hindus of Gujarat_ by Mr. Bhimbhai Kirparam, and _Parsis and Muhammadans of Gujarat_ by Khan Bahadur Fazlullah Lutfullah Faridi, and Mr. Kharsedji Nasarvanji Seervai, J.P., and Khan Bahadur Bamanji Behramji Patel. Other Indian ethnological works from which I have made quotations are Dr. Wilson's _Indian Caste_ (_Times_ Press and Messrs. Blackwood). Bishop Westcott's _Kabir and the Kabirpanth_ (Baptist Mission Press, Cawnpore), Mr. Rajendra Lal Mitra's _Indo-Aryans_ (Newman & Co., Calcutta), _The Jainas_ by Dr. J.G. Bühler and Mr. J. Burgess, Dr. J.N. Bhattacharya's _Hindu Castes and Sects_ (Thacker, Spink & Co., Calcutta), Professor Oman's _Mystics, Ascetics and Saints of India, Cults, Customs and Superstitions of India_, and _Brahmans, Theists and Muslims of India_ (T. Fisher Unwin), Mr. V.A. Smith's _Early History of India_ (Clarendon Press), the Rev. T.P. Hughes' _Dictionary of Islam_ (W.H. Allen & Co., and Heffer & Sons, Cambridge), Mr. L.D. Barnett's _Antiquities of India_, M. André Chevrillon's _Romantic India_, Mr. V. Ball's _Jungle Life in India_, Mr. W. Crooke's _Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India_, and _Things Indian_, Captain Forsyth's _Highlands of Central India_ (Messrs. Chapman & Hall), Messrs. Yule and Burnell's _Hobson-Jobson_ (Mr. Crooke's edition), Professor Hopkins' _Religions of India_, the Rev. E.M. Gordon's _Indian Folk-Tales_ (Elliot & Stock), Messrs. Sewell and Dikshit's _Indian Calendar_, Mr. Brennand's _Hindu Astronomy_, and the late Rev. Father P. Dehon's monograph on the Oraons in the _Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal_.

Ethnological works on the people of the Central Provinces are not numerous; among those from which assistance has been obtained are Sir C. Grant's _Central Provinces Gazetteer_ of 1871, Rev. Stephen Hislop's _Notes on the Aboriginal Tribes of the Central Provinces_, Colonel Bloomfield's _Notes on the Baigas_, Sir Charles Elliott's _Hoshangabad Settlement Report_, Sir Reginald Craddock's _Nagpur Settlement Report_, Colonel Ward's _Mandla Settlement Report_, Colonel Lucie Smith's _Chanda Settlement Report_, Mr. G.W. Gayer's _Lectures on Criminal Tribes_, Mr. C.W. Montgomerie's _Chhindwara Settlement Report_, Mr. C.E. Low's _Balaghat District Gazetteer_, Mr. E.J. Kitts' _Berar Census Report_ of 1881, and the _Central Provinces Census Reports_ of Mr. T. Drysdale, Sir Benjamin Robertson and Mr. J.T. Marten.