BHIL, an aboriginal, probably Munda, tribe of central India (fr. Dravidian bil, "bow"). Its language only survives in about 6% of its vocabulary and it now speaks a mixture of Guzerati and Malwi. Possibly the pygmies of Ktesias and the Phyllitae and Pulindae of Ptolemy, its name is hardly traceable in Sanskrit lit erature but may appear as Pulinda in Asoka's edicts and later. The present home of the Bhils is the wild, hilly country between Mt. Abu and Asirgarh, whence they have spread west into Guzerat, and of late even into Sindh, and south into the Deccan. The typical Bhil is small, dark, broadnosed, but well-knit and ac tive, a good woodman and hunter but a poor ploughman. He still wears his hair long, and his womenfolk plait theirs into three tails. The men still carry a bow or axe. Divided into 4o totem-clans, they owe military service to village headmen and chiefs of cantons. In religion the Bhil is not yet fully Hinduized, since in famines he will eat beef, but not snakes, rats, monkeys or the horse. His chief god is Vaghdeo, the "tiger," and he propitiates ghosts, but he makes oath on the moon, or a dog, and reveres Devi and Hanuman of the Hindu pantheon, while the chief Hindu festivals are riot ously celebrated. Superstition is rife.
The Bhils claim to have once been much more numerous and to have held principalities in Rajputana and its adjacent lands. A respectable tradition in The Ocean of Story avers that a ruler of U j jain once espoused a Bhil princess whose father promised him an aid of 20,000 archers. In Rajputana the tribe must have given its name to Bhilwara, the "Bhil county," a district and town 8om. north-east of Udaipur; they are now in the hilly tracts of Kher wara and Kotra, the people of which are almost wholly Bhil. Near the latter lies Dungarpur, the Bhil ruler of which, Dun garia, was killed about A.D. 1200 by a scion of Udaipur who ex pelled the Bhils, named his new capital after his victim and promised his widows that on accession its chieftain's forehead should be marked with blood from the toe or finger of a descend ant of Dungaria—a usage also observed till recently in Banswara and Udaipur itself. Similarly Kotah was wrested from its Bhil Raja by a cadet of Bundi. In the Central India Agency another Bhilwara, a sparsely peopled tract, lies in the Narbada valley be twixt the Vindhyas and the Satpura Range. The local aristocracy in the Vindhyas is formed of Bhilalas, a mixed tribe of Rajput and Bhil origin, headed by the Raja of Onkar Mandhata in the Central Provinces, where Rajputs did not in earlier days disdain to eat with Bhils whom they regarded as lords of the soil. Hence the Bhil claim is undoubtedly well founded, but his early history is lost and how far his ancient domains extended cannot be ascer tained. His hostility to the Rajputs made him submissive to the Moghuls, but the Marathas renewed his persecution, and British rule found him at a low ebb. In 1825 a policy of reclamation re placed one of force. The Bhil Agency was formed in Khandesh, and in 184o-44 the Mewar Bhil Corps was raised with headquar ters at Kherwara. One of the few Indian regiments which re mained loyal in the Mutiny, service in it has been popular and has done much to elevate the tribe. Given its colours in 1863, it was placed under the Commander-in-Chief in 1897.