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H.P. Blavatsky - From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan
The "mediators" between Shiva and the Bhils possess such unrestricted authority that the most awful
crimes are accomplished at their lightest word. The tribe have thought it necessary to decrease their
power to a certain extent by instituting a kind of council in every village. This council is called tarvi, and
tries to cool down the hot-headed fancies of the dhanis, their brigand lords. However, the word of the
Bhils is sacred, and their hospitality is boundless.
The history and the annals of the princes of Jodpur and Oodeypur confirm the legend of the Bhil
emigration from their primitive desert, but how they happened to be there nobody knows. Colonel Tod is
positive that the Bhils, together with the Merases and the Goands, are the aborigines of India, as well as
the tribes who inhabit the Nerbuda forests. But why the Bhils should be almost fair and blue-eyed,
whereas the rest of the hill-tribes are almost African in type, is a question that is not answered by this
statement. The fact that all these aborigines call themselves Bhumaputra and Vanaputra, sons of the earth
and sons of the forest, when the Rajputs, their first conquerors, call themselves Surya-vansa and the
Brahmans Indu-putras, descendants of the sun and the moon, does not prove everything. It seems to me,
that in the present case, their appearance, which confirms their legends, is of much greater value than
philology. Dr. Clark, the author of Travels in Scandinavia, is very logical in saying that, "by directing our
attention on the traces of the ancient superstitions of a tribe, we shall find out who were its primitive
forefathers much more easily than by scientific examination of their tongue; the superstitions are grafted
on the very root, whereas the tongue is subjected to all kinds of changes."
But, unfortunately, everything we know about the history of the Bhils is reduced to the above-mentioned
tradition, and to a few ancient songs of their bards. These bards or bhattas live in Rajistan, but visit the
Bhils yearly, in order not to lose the leading thread of the achievements of their countrymen. Their songs
are history, because the bhattas have existed from time immemorial, composing their lays for future
generations, for this is their hereditary duty. And the songs of the remotest antiquity point to the lands
over the Kalapani as the place whence the Bhils came; that is to say, some place in Europe. Some
Orientalists, especially Colonel Tod, seek to prove that the Rajputs, who conquered the Bhils, were
newcomers of Scythian origin, and that the Bhils are the true aborigines. To prove this, they put forward
some features common to both peoples, Rajput and Scythian, for instance (1) the worship of the sword,
the lance, the shield and the horse; (2) the worship of, and the sacrifice to, the sun (which, as far as I
know, never was worshiped by the Scythians); (3) the passion of gambling (which again is as strong
amongst the Chinese and the Japanese); (4) the custom of drinking blood out of the skull of an enemy
(which is also practised by some aborigines of America), etc., etc.
I do not intend entering here on a scientific ethnological discussion; and, besides, I am sure no one fails
to see that the reasoning of scientists sometimes takes a very strange turn when they set to prove some
favorite theory of theirs. It is enough to remember how entangled and obscure is the history of the
ancient Scythians to abstain from drawing any positive conclusions whatsoever from it. The tribes that go
under one general denomination of Scythians were many, and still it is impossible to deny that there is a
good deal of similitude between the customs of the old Scandinavians, worshipers of Odin, whose land
indeed was occupied by the Scythians more than five hundred years B.C. and the customs of the Rajputs.
But this similitude gives as much right to the Rajputs to say that we are a colony of Surya-vansas settled
in the West as to us to maintain that the Rajputs are the descendants of Scythians who emigrated to the
East. The Scythians of Herodotus and the Scythians of Ptolemy, and some other classical writers, are two
perfectly distinct nationalities. Under Scythia, Herodotus means the extension of land from the mouth of
Danube to the Sea of Azoff, according to Niebuhr; and to the mouth of Don, according to Rawlinson;
whereas the Scythia of Ptolemy is a country strictly Asiatic, including the whole space between the river
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