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PEHR.

　Under the name of 'Pindarees' the Pehrs are well known in Indian history. They were plundering bands of freebooters who first came to notice after the fall of Tippoo Sultan of Mysore. Of no common race, and of no common religion, they welcomed to their ranks the outlaws and broken men of all India-Afghns, Marhs, or Js. They represented the debris of the Mughul empire, which had not been incor- porated by any of the local Muhammadan or Hind powers that sprang up out of its ruins. Their head-quarters were in Malwa, but their depredations were not confined to Central India. In bands, sometimes of a few hundreds, sometimes of many thousands, they rode out on their forays as far as the opposite coasts of Madras and of Bombay. The most powerful of the Pehr captains, Amr Khn, had an organised army of many regiments, and several batteries of cannon. Their power was finally broken by the Marquis of Hastings in 1817.

　Their name is said to be derived from ph, a sheaf, and probably meant originally 'grasscutters.'

　At the Census of 1911 the number of Pehrs was returned as 6,413,100 of whom were Hinds and 6,313 Musalmns.

　They were distributed as follows:-

　The only district which returned Pehr as a separate language for this Survey was Dharwar of Bombay, which gave a total of 1,250 speakers. Specimens have, how- ever, also been received from Belgaum (Bombay). In other districts Pehr has probably been included under the head of Hindstn. It is used only as a home lan- guage by the tribe which speaks it. In their intercourse with other people, its speakers employ ordinary Hindstn.

　To judge from the specimens Pehr is a mixture of rough Dakhin Hindstn with Marh and Rjasthn. The particular dialect of the last mentioned language with which their Hindstn is mixed, seems to be Jaipur. Compare pt, sons; bp, father; chh, is; chh, was. It is not necessary to discuss this jargon at length. I give two short specimens, one from each district. They both agree in all essential points Note the use of n as a postposition of the locative, present forms such as uttarnu, I descend; mrnu, I beat, where the final nu reminds us of the Dravidian termination of verbs, and the way in which kar-k, having done, is used at the end of a quotation, like the Sanskrit iti and the Dravidian andu, having said.