BHIL

ethnic group of nearly 2.5 million people of western India. Many are tribal, and they have been known for rugged independence, sometimes associated with banditry. The Bhil are distributed widely in upland areas from Ajmer in Rajasthan on the north to Thana in Maharashtra on the south, and eastward as far as Indore in Madhya Pradesh. Nearly all of them engage in agriculture, some of them using the primitive slash-and-burn (jhum) method, but most employing the plow. The highland Bhil generally live in scattered houses made of wattle and thatch. The relationship between the Bhil and neighbouring peoples is not clear. The Bhil follow Rajasthani kinship usages in Rajasthan and Maharashtrian usages in Maharashtra, but with easier marriage and divorce procedures. Most Bhil worship local deities in varied pantheons only slightly touching the practices of higher Hinduism; a few aristocratic segments such as the Bhilala and some plains groups employ Brahman priests; others are converts to Islam. Their dialects are akin to Gujarati or to other Indo-Aryan languages rather than to the Munda or Dravidian tongues of most tribal peoples. The Bhil have evidently received many genetic contributions from the higher Hindu castes, whom many Bhil now resemble more closely than they do the more isolated aboriginal peoples.