Identifier: northwesternpro00croo (find matches)
Title: The north-western provinces of India : their history, ethnology, and administration
Year: 1897 (1890s)
Authors: Crooke, William, 1848-1923
Subjects:
Publisher: London, Methuen
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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n law-lessness of mind. These have neither gatherings forcouncil nor oracles of law, but they dwell in hollow caves onthe crests of the high hills, and each one utters the law to hischildren and his wives, and they reck not one of another. Short of stature, black of skin, with his coarse hair floatingunkempt over his shoulders, possessing only a modicum ofclothing, the Korwa is of the pure, unmixed Dravidian type,and is the nearest approach to an absolute savage whichnorthern India can show. His mental culture is on a parwith his surroundings. He worships a collection of rudefetishes which his animistic beliefs teach him are the abode ofthe spirits or ghosts which he dreads. Of a benign Providencehe has no conception ; he is witch-ridden and demon-haunted.Every hill and forest, every mighty tree and prominent rockholds a divinity active in mischief, which will slay him orvisit him with the cholera, the fever, the rheumatism, unlesshe conciliates the creature in some uncanny way. 218 *
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THE PEOPLE : THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY It is one of the sad but inevitable results of the progress ofcivilisation that these simple, law-abiding jungle races who,in their straightforward independence and manliness are instriking contrast to the degraded serf of the Plains, mustexchange the free life of the hillside for the restraints of anordered existence. As they are now they are certainly muchhappier than the menials of the lowlands condemned toservitude, cribbed and confined within their narrow holdings,toiling without hope on the most niggard wage. But yearby year the road and railway are opening up the secretplaces of these secluded hills, and with the first settlers comesthe money-lender, who jingles rupees before them, suggestsnew wants and gradually draws them more and more withinhis clutches. For such people our precise British law bringsno message of salvation. They are not like the dweller inthe Plains, who has at any rate heard from his forefathersthat we have saved t

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