This book is the result of the arrangement made by the Government of India, on the suggestion of the late Sir Herbert Risley, for the preparation of an ethnological account dealing with the inhabitants of each of the principal Provinces of India. The work for the Central 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 Rājasthān, Mr. J.D. Forbes’ Rasmāla or Annals of Gujarāt, 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 Rāmāseeāna or Vocabulary of the Thugs, Mr. Kennedy’s Criminal Classes of the Bombay Presidency, Major Gunthorpe’s Criminal Tribes of Bombay, Berār 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 Gujarāt by Mr. Bhimbhai Kirpārām, and Pārsis and Muhammadans of Gujarāt by Khān Bahādur Fazlullah Lutfullah Faridi, and Mr. Kharsedji Nasarvānji Seervai, J.P., and Khān Bahādur Bāmanji Behrāmji 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 Kabīr and the Kabīrpanth (Baptist Mission Press, Cawnpore), Mr. Rajendra Lāl Mitra’s Indo-Aryans (Newman & Co., Calcutta), The Jainas by Dr. J.G. BÜhler and Mr. J. Burgess, Dr. J.N. Bhattachārya’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 Brāhmans, 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 Islām (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 Hoshangābād Settlement Report, Sir Reginald Craddock’s Nāgpur Settlement Report, Colonel Ward’s Mandla Settlement Report, Colonel Lucie Smith’s Chānda Settlement Report, Mr. G.W. Gayer’s Lectures on Criminal Tribes, Mr. C.W. Montgomerie’s Chhindwāra Settlement Report, Mr. C.E. Low’s Bālāghāt District Gazetteer, Mr. E.J. Kitts’ Berār Census Report of 1881, and the Central Provinces Census Reports of Mr. T. Drysdale, Sir Benjamin Robertson and Mr. J.T. Marten.

The author is indebted to Sir J.G. Frazer for his kind permission to make quotations from The Golden Bough and Totemism and Exogamy (Macmillan), in which the best examples of almost all branches of primitive custom are to be found; to Dr. Edward Westermarck for similar permission in respect of The History of Human Marriage, and The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas (Macmillan); to Messrs. A. & C. Black in respect of the late Professor Robertson Smith’s Religion of the Semites; to Messrs. Heinemann for those from M. Salomon Reinach’s Orpheus; and to Messrs. Hachette et Cie and Messrs. Parker of Oxford for those from La CitÉ Antique of M. Fustel de Coulanges. Much assistance has also been obtained from Sir E. B. Tylor’s Early History of Mankind and Primitive Culture, Lord Avebury’s The Origin of Civilisation, Mr. E. Sidney Hartland’s Primitive Paternity, and M. Salomon Reinach’s Cultes, Mythes et Religions. The labours of these eminent authors have made it possible for the student to obtain a practical knowledge of the ethnology of the world by the perusal of a small number of books; and if any of the ideas put forward in these volumes should ultimately be so fortunate as to obtain acceptance, it is to the above books that I am principally indebted for having been able to formulate them. Other works from which help has been obtained are M. Emile Senart’s Les Castes dans I’Inde, Professor W. E. Hearn’s The Aryan Household, and Dr. A.H. Keane’s The World’s Peoples. Sir George Grierson’s great work, The Linguistic Survey of India, has now given an accurate classification of the non-Aryan tribes according to their languages and has further thrown a considerable degree of light on the vexed question of their origin. I have received from Mr. W. Crooke of the Indian Civil Service (retired) much kind help and advice during the final stages of the preparation of this work. As will be seen from the articles, resort has constantly been made to his Tribes and Castes for filling up gaps in the local information.

Rai Bahādur Hīra Lāl was my assistant for several years in the taking of the census of 1901 and the preparation of the Central Provinces District Gazetteers; he has always given the most loyal and unselfish aid, has personally collected a large part of the original information contained in the book, and spent much time in collating the results. The association of his name in the authorship is no more than his due, though except where this has been specifically mentioned, he is not responsible for the theories and deductions from the facts obtained. Mr. Pyāre Lāl Misra, barrister, Chhindwāra, was my ethnographic clerk for some years, and he and Munshi Kanhya Lāl, late of the Educational Department, and Mr. Adurām Chandhri, Tahsīldār, gave much assistance in the inquiries on different castes. Among others who have helped in the work, Rai Bahādur Panda Baijnāth, Diwān of the Patna and Bastar States, should be mentioned first, and Bābu Kali Prasanna Mukerji, pleader, Saugor, Mr. Gopāl Datta Joshi, District Judge, Saugor, Mr. Jeorākhan Lāl, Deputy-Inspector of Schools, and Mr. Gokul Prasād, Tahsīldār, may be selected from the large number whose names are given in the footnotes to the articles. Among European officers whose assistance should be acknowledged are Messrs. C.E. Low, C.W. Montgomerie, A.B. Napier, A.E. Nelson, A.K. Smith, R.H. Crosthwaite and H.F. Hallifax, of the Civil Service; Lt.-Col. W.D. Sutherland, I.M.S., Surgeon-Major Mitchell of Bastar, and Mr. D. Chisholm.

Some photographs have been kindly contributed by Mrs. Ashbrooke Crump, Mrs. Mangabai Kelkar, Mr. G.L. Corbett, C.S., Mr. R.L. Johnston, A.D.S.P., Mr. J.H. Searle, C.S., Mr. Strachey, Mr. H.E. Bartlett, Professor L. Scherman of Munich, and the Diwān of Raigarh State. Bishop Westcott kindly gave the photograph of Kabīr, which appears in his own book.

Finally I have to express my gratitude to the Chief Commissioner, Sir Benjamin Robertson, for the liberal allotment made by the Administration for the publication of the work; and to the publishers, Messrs. Macmillan & Co., and the printers, Messrs. R. & R. Clark, for their courtesy and assistance during its progress through the press.

September 1915.