110 m. N.W. of Allahabad. Pop. (1901), 6721. It was founded, according to tradition, in the 11th century by Hamir Deo, a Karchuli Rajput expelled from Alwar by the Mahommedans.
The district has an area of 2289 sq. m., and encloses the native states of Sarila, Jigni and Bihat, besides portions of Charkhari and Garrauli. Hamirpur forms part of the great plain of Bundelkhand, which stretches from the banks of the Jumna to the central Vindhyan plateau. The district is in shape an irregular parallelogram, with a general slope northward from the low hills on the southern boundary. The scenery is rendered picturesque by the artificial lakes of Mahoba. These magnificent reservoirs were constructed by the Chandel rajas before the Mahommedan conquest, for purposes of irrigation and as sheets of ornamental water. Many of them enclose craggy islets or peninsulas, crowned by the ruins of granite temples, exquisitely carved and decorated. From the base of this hill and lake country the general plain of the district spreads northward in an arid and treeless level towards the broken banks of the rivers. Of these the principal are the Betwa and its tributary the Dhasan, both of which are unnavigable. There is little waste land, except in the ravines by the river sides. The deep black soil of Bundelkhand, known as mār, retains the moisture under a dried and rifted surface, and renders the district fertile. The staple produce is grain of various sorts, the most important being gram. Cotton is also a valuable crop. Agriculture suffers much from the spread of the kāns grass, a noxious weed which overruns the fields and is found to be almost ineradicable wherever it has once obtained a footing. Droughts and famine are unhappily common. The climate is dry and hot, owing to the absence of shade and the bareness of soil, except in the neighbourhood of the Mahoba lakes, which cool and moisten the atmosphere.
In 1901 the pop. was 458,542, showing a decrease of 11% in the decade, due to the famine of 1895–1897. Export trade is chiefly in agricultural produce and cotton cloth. Rath is the principal commercial centre. The Midland branch of the Great Indian Peninsula railway passes through the south of the district.
From the 9th to the 12th century this district was the centre of the Chandel kingdom, with its capital at Mahoba. The rajas adorned the town with many splendid edifices, remains of which still exist, besides constructing the noble artificial lakes already described. At the end of the 12th century Mahoba fell into the hands of the Mussulmans. In 1680 the district was conquered by Chhatar Sal, the hero of the Bundelas, who assigned at his death one-third of his dominions to his ally the peshwa of the Mahrattas. Until Bundelkhand became British territory in 1803 there was constant warfare between the Bundela princes and the Mahratta chieftains. On the outbreak of the Mutiny in 1857, Hamirpur was the scene of a fierce rebellion, and all the principal towns were plundered by the surrounding chiefs. After a short period of desultory guerrilla warfare the rebels were effectually quelled and the work of reorganization began. The district has since been subject to cycles of varying agricultural prosperity.
HAMITIC RACES AND LANGUAGES. The questions involved in a consideration of Hamitic races and Hamitic languages are independent of one another and call for separate treatment.
I. Hamitic Races.—The term Hamitic as applied to race is not only extremely vague but has been much abused by anthropological writers. Of the few who have attempted a precise definition the most prominent is Sergi,[1] and his classification may be taken as representing one point of view with regard to this difficult question.
Sergi considers the Hamites, using the term in the racial sense, as a branch of his “Mediterranean Race”; and divides them as follows:—
1. Eastern Branch—
- (a) Ancient and Modern Egyptian (excluding the Arabs).
- (b) Nubians, Beja.
- (c) Abyssinians.
- (d) Galla, Danakil, Somali.
- (e) Masai.
- (f) Wahuma or Watusi.
2. Northern Branch—
- (a) Berbers of the Mediterranean, Atlantic and Sahara.
- (b) Tibbu.
- (c) Fula.
- (d) Guanches (extinct).
With regard to this classification the following conclusions may be regarded as comparatively certain: that the members of groups d, e and f of the first branch appear to be closely inter-connected by ties of blood, and also the members of the second branch. The Abyssinians in the south have absorbed a certain amount of Galla blood, but the majority are Semitic or Semito-Negroid. The question of the racial affinities of the Ancient Egyptians and the Beja are still a matter of doubt, and the relation of the two groups to each other is still controversial. Sergi, it is true, arguing from physical data believes that a close connexion exists; but the data are so extremely scanty that the finality of his conclusion may well be doubted. His “Northern Branch” corresponds with the more satisfactory term “Libyan Race,” represented in fair purity by the Berbers, and, mixed with Negro elements, by the Fula and Tibbu. This Libyan race is distinctively a white race, with dark curly hair; the Eastern Hamites are equally distinctively a brown people with frizzy hair. If, as Sergi believes, these brown people are themselves a race, and not a cross between white and black in varying proportions, they are found in their greatest purity among the Somali and Galla, and mixed with Bantu blood among the Ba-Hima (Wahuma) and Watussi. The Masai seem to be as much Nilotic Negro as Hamite. This Galla type does not seem to appear farther north than the southern portion of Abyssinia, and it is not unlikely that the Beja are very early Semitic immigrants with an aboriginal Negroid admixture. It is also possible that they and the Ancient Egyptians may contain a common element. The Nubians appear akin to the Egyptians but with a strong Negroid element.
To return to Sergi’s two branches, besides the differences in skin colour and hair-texture there is also a cultural difference of great importance. The Eastern Hamites are essentially a pastoral people and therefore nomadic or semi-nomadic; the Berbers, who, as said above, are the purest representatives of the Libyans, are agriculturists. The pastoral habits of the Eastern Hamites are of importance, since they show the utmost reluctance to abandon them. Even the Ba-Hima and Watussi, for long settled and partly intermixed with the agricultural Bantu, regard any pursuit but that of cattle-tending as absolutely beneath their dignity.
It would seem therefore that, while sufficient data have not been collected to decide whether, on the evidence of exact anthropological measurements, the Libyans are connected racially with the Eastern Hamites, the testimony derived from broad “descriptive characteristics” and general culture is against such a connexion. To regard the Libyans as Hamites solely on the ground that the languages spoken by the two groups show affinities would be as rash and might be as false as to aver that the present-day Hungarians are Mongolians because Magyar is an Asiatic tongue. Regarding the present state of knowledge it would be safer therefore to restrict the term “Hamites” to Sergi’s first group; and call the second by the name “Libyans.” The difficult question of the origin of the ancient Egyptians is discussed elsewhere.
As to the question whether the Hamites in this restricted sense are a definite race or a blend, no discussion can, in view of the paucity of evidence, as yet lead to a satisfactory conclusion, but it might be suggested very tentatively that further researches may possibly connect them with the Dravidian peoples of India. It is sufficient for present purposes that the term Hamite, using it as coextensive with Sergi’s Eastern Hamite, has a definite connotation. By the term is meant a brown people with frizzy hair, of lean and sinewy physique, with slender but muscular arms and legs, a thin straight or even aquiline nose with delicate nostrils, thin lips and no trace of prognathism. (T. A. J.)
II. Hamitic Languages.—The whole north of Africa was once inhabited by tribes of the Caucasian race, speaking languages which are now generally called, after Genesis x., Hamitic, a term introduced principally by Friedrich Müller. The linguistic coherence of that race has been broken up especially by the intrusion of Arabs, whose language has exercised a powerful influence on all those nations. This splitting up, and the immense distances over which those tribes were spread, have made those languages diverge more widely than do the various tongues of the Indo-European stock, but still their affinity can easily be traced by the linguist, and is, perhaps, greater than the corresponding anthropologic similarity between the white Libyan, red Galla and swarthy Somali. The relationship of these languages to Semitic has long been noticed, but was at first taken for descent from Semitic (cf. the name “Syro-Arabian” proposed by Prichard). Now linguists are agreed that the
- ↑ G. Sergi, The Mediterranean Race. A Study of the Origin of European Peoples (London, 1901); idem. Africa, Antropologia della stirpe camitica (Turin, 1897).
