The Baigas are the most primitive and interesting forest tribal of the district; but they have completely lost their language, if they ever had one, speak Hindi, and profess to scorn a knowledge of Gondi. Their origin is obscure, but they are almost certainly older established than the Gonds, and while retaining their religious ascendancy over them, were gradually pressed by them into the fastnesses of Eastern Mandla, which are now their home. Their own idea of their origin closely resembles our history of the creation. Nanga and his wife Nangi, the ancestors of the whole human race, had two sons who married their sisters; from the elder of them is sprung the Baiga caste, while the younger is the progenitor of the rest of the human race. There are Baigas to be found here and there all over the district, but their principal habitat is in the recesses of the Maikal Range to the east of the District. They are the priests and wizards of the Gonds, and to some extent also of the Hindus.

Though the practice is now falling in to disuse, practically every village or group of villages in the district, whether Hindu or aboriginal, at one time had, and most still have a Baiga priest, who receives from each tenant a regular annual remuneration at the usual rate of one kuro (four of five seers) of kharif seed per plough. His duties are some-what indefinite; kharif sowings will not be undertaken until he has performed sacrifice, he is often the garpagiri or exorciser of hail, he has to purify the village in case of an outbreak of disease, for which he is also handsomely paid by the job, and he protects it generally from evil spirits. there or four years ago the educated Hindu inhabitants of Mandla town called in a Baiga priest to perform his wizardry in the case of a virulent outbreak of cholera which proved too mush for the Brahmans. On that occasion, the usual ceremony of the scape-goat and the devil cart proved unsuccessful in allaying the disease; but so great was the faith of the inhabitants in the Baiga that on his explaining that the amount first subscribed (some fifty rupees) was not sufficient, a second sum of double the amount was contributed and a second ceremony gone through.

In character, like the Gonds the Baigas are simple, honest and truthful, and when once their distrust of the stranger has been overcome, they are cheerful and companionable. But their shyness led them to such lengths in the first great famine of 1897,that many died of starvation with relief at their very doors, overlooked by their Gond and Hindu fellow village, and themselves afraid to apply; and even later when their first shyness had been overcome, it was no uncommon thing for the whole male population of a village to flee in to the jungles on the approach of a relief officer, leaving their women and children to treat with the intruder as best they might.

Settled amongst Hindus, they invariably sink to the lowest position possible, both socially and morally; for they are poor laborious and receive scant consideration. In their own communities in east Dindori, however, they hold their heads high, have a carefully arranged village community, and maintain some tradition of a quondam possession of power as a ruling race, for which however their seems little foundation in fact. Their villages are usually perched on some almost inaccessible crag, as down some difficult valley. The village in built in the form of a regular square with a tree surrounded by an made of earthen platform or a pile of firewood in the center, where the elders sit and discuss affairs of state. The houses, which are built of wattle and daub and thatched with grass, are small and low but neat and often ornamented with primitive drawings of tigers, elephants and pigs in gaudy colours. Those on each side of the square are contiguous and the entrance, which is only 3-¹/₂ or 4 feet high, is usually the only face fronting the square.

The square is always kept clean and garnished by the women and though pigs and fowls are allowed to run loose, generally speaking the conservancy arrangements are excellent. Separate from the village and at some little distance will be found the Agarias'forge, if any exists there, a shed or line of sheds open all round where the village usually congregates to watch the smelting. In person the Baigas are slighter and lighter than the Gonds, the features are less that, and the face generally finer drawn, though many of the Bharotia sub- caste are hardly distinguishable in feature form Gonds, and betray the fact that the lower sub- castes were undoubtedly at one time recruited from that race.

The scantiness of their dress is extreme. It is said that God gave their ancestor Nanga, a piece of cloth six cubits long, but Nanga tore off a piece of 1 ¹/₄ cubits, and returned the balance as not being wanted. Now therefore a loincloth of 1 ¹/₄ cubits, a few strings of cowries and beads, and possibly and armlet, is all the clothing a Baiga uses, even in the coldest weather; and the majority use no head covering except their own long hair. They are equal to even more sustained excerption than the Gonds, and on the most slender sustenance. Their real courage, when they are not cold, is greater than that of the Gond. A Baiga has been known to walk up to a wounded for his pains; and many instances are on record of a Baiga rescuing a companion from panthers and tigers, armed only with a club or axe.

They are expert in the use of the bow and arrow and the axe. Mr. Bell has seen a small boy with a bag of six quail as the result of a morning's work with his diminutive bow, and he himself received a wound in the leg from the axe of a Baiga glancing off the back of a mouse- deer in full flight during a beat. But their reputation as expert trackers is ill deserved; they have neither the application nor the industry necessary for successful tracking, and they cannot compare in this respect with the aboriginal of the south of the province.

 Their wants from the outside world are few, consisting only of salt and the clothes they wear, their few implements of agriculture or the chase are supplied by the local smith, and their food, which is kodokutki, Baiganitur (pulse) and Shakarkand (sweet potatoes), supplemented by countless roots and fruits they obtain by their own slight excerptions. They have tittle or no idea of economy. A Baiga shikari, who was given a present of twenty-five rupees, was asked how he intended to spend so large a sum. He replied quite seriously that thirteen rupees would be given to a money- lender in satisfaction of an ancient debt, two rupees would be spent on food and clothing, and the remaining he has was going to keep for liquor at the approaching Holi festival. Falstaff could scarcely have improved on such a distribution.

Strictly speaking, a Baiga cannot without offence lacerate the breast of mother Earth with the plough; and hence it is said they took to bewar, their typical form of cultivation. In his heart of hearts, the Baiga has still a contempt for regular cultivation, which is reflected in his story that God made him king of the forest, with all the wood- craft necessary to wring from the jungle the eatables wherewith of his benefit it has been stocked; where as Hindus and other such inferior persons lack this wisdom, and are chained perforce to the drudgery of cultivation. A bewar consists of from two to three acres of thick forest, often on a steep and almost precipitous slope. About May the whole of the wood is cut down and burnt in situ and the ashes spread over the surface; and on the break of the rains kodon, Kutki, Baiganitur or sweet potatoes are sown in the ashes without further preparation. provided the rains continue late enough, a plot of this kind will continue to give excellent crops until the fourth year, when a fresh scene of operations must be sought. There is much misconception as to the amount of permanent damage done to the forests by the axe cultivation of the Baigas. which has been blamed for the denudation of the sources of the upper Narmada and her tributaries. Mr.Bell discussed this matter at length with many Baigas, and the allegation is not in accordance with either their assertions or his own observation. They claim that the jungle only grow the thicker and stronger after the abandonment of a bewar, and they have shown not one, but fifty abandoned bewars where the sal reproduction was strong and luxuriant enough even to impede progress. It is the dahia cultivation of the Gonds, they assert, which has denuded the forests. The reason for this is that Gonds cultivate only below the line of frost. The sal once cut in those regions can only reproduce small shoots, which are destroyed by the annually recurring frosts. As frost comes as early as the middle of November, the Baiga crops, which as a rule are late ripeness, must be sown where they will not suffer from it. The Baigas therefore choose a sites the sal can freely reproduce. The Gond inflicts a permanent, the Baiga only a temporary, injury to the forests.

It is incorrect to say that the Baiga cannot be induced to take to cultivation. Doubtless their cultivation is of the poorest and most scratchy, and if they were given a free hand, many of them would possibly revert to axe cultivation. But the great majority of the Mandla Baigas have now taken to plough cultivation, as perforce they must, seeing that bewar cultivation has been put a stop to everywhere both in malguzari and in Government forest, except the Baiga chak or Reservation. This is a block of some 36 square miles of rugged and inaccessible jungle in the heart of the heart of the Maikal Range, containing six ( at present only four) villages, which was set apart for the Baigas about 35 years ago. Here they were allowed to pursue unfettered their ancestral methods of hunting and agriculture at the rate of one rupee per axe; but side by side with this concession attempts were made to wean them to plough cultivation. In 1893 they were provided with bullocks at Government expense; and though some of these did undoubtedly in the subsequent bad times die of neglect or find their way by less legitimate means in to the Baiga cooking pots, the result has been very marked. In fact, only about one-fifth of the Baiga population of the district live in the Baiga Reserve; and of these only 74 families, in only three of the six village, now practice bewar at all. They limit their operations to an area of 292 acres, which with the necessary rotations represents a reservation for axe cultivation of 2336 acres or one- tenth of the total area of the Reserve.

There are seven sub-tribe of Baigas, viz. the Binjhwars Bharotias, Narotias, Raibhainas, Kathbhainas, Kondwans, and Gondwainas. The Binjhwars are the highest and have adopted some Hindu observances, such as abstaining from the flesh of the cow and buffalo tribe, and of reptiles and rats; and the writer recently found a case amongst Bharotias in which, while all the junior members of the family joined in a feast off the car case of a bison he had shot, the recognised head of the family was unable to do so. The Binjhwars can give food to, but will not take it from, the lower sub-tribes. In Mandla the Bharotias are the commonest; many of these shave the head except for a choti or central lock, and are known as Mundia or shaven Baigas. There is not as amongst Gonds and strict rule of exogamy in the main sub-tribes; but each sub-tribes is divided into a number of exogamous, often identical in name with the Gond steps, such as Markam, Marabi, Nelam, Tekam; and some of the sub-tribes have also partially assimilated the Gond subdivision according to the number of gods worshipped.

A baiga may not take a wife from his own step or from own worshipping the same number of gods; but he may marry within his mother's step. Infant marriage is not practiced, though arrangements are sometimes made for a betrothal soon after birth, which however requires ratification by a subsequent ceremony. The girl frequently select her own husband. The first proposal comes from the house of the bride for the marriage ceremony. It is essential that the bribe groom should meet the bride's party riding on the elephant; and this animal being now in the Baiga country somewhat less common than marriages, his part is enacted by two wooden cots lashed together and covered with a blanket; a cloth trunk is affixed in front and the whole is borne by carriers. The elephant must charge and trample down the bride's procession until bought off with a rupee, when the parties embrace and proceed to the marriage-shed. Here the couple, after throwing fried rise at one another until they are tired, seal the marriage bond by walking three or seven times round the marriage post with their cloths tied together. Husband and wife may not have intercourse on a cot, because, though men may sleep on a cot, women are supposed to be compelled by the gods to lie on mother earth. Polygamy is permitted, but is not common; widows may remarry, but unless they marry their husband's younger brother.

The dead are usually buried naked, with the head pointing south; but men of mark and old persons are burnt as a special honour to save them from being devoured by beasts. In the grave are placed a rupee or two and some tobacco; if the corpse is burnt, a rupee, placed in the mouth immediately before death, is recovered by the daughter from the pyre and used as an amulet. A black and white fowl are sacrificed and eaten near some nallah, a portion being set aside for the dead. A platform of earth is erected over the grave of a man of mark with a stone at the head; and here the family practice ancestor worship in time of trouble, or consign the spirit of a member who has for any reason to be buried elsewhere. During mourning which lasts nine days, all ordinary duties are in abeyance in the household, even cooked food being supplied by neighbours.

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