Bhil
Indo-Aryan speaking ethnic group in West India
Bhil or Bheel are various indigenous groups inhabiting western India, including parts of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh and in Sindh, Pakistan. Additionally they are also found in distant places such as Bengal and Tripura. Though they now speak the Bhili language, an Indo-Aryan language, the aboriginal language that the Bhil originally spoke is lost. Bhils are divided into a number of endogamous territorial divisions, which in turn have a number of clans and lineages.
Bhils are listed as tribal people in the states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan—all in the western Deccan regions and central India—as well as in Bengal and Tripura in far-eastern India, on the border with Bangladesh. Many Bhils speak the dominant language of the region they reside in, such as Marathi, Gujarati or Bengali.
Etymology
Some scholars suggest that the term Bhil is derived from the word billa or billu which means bow in the Dravidian lexis. The term Bhil is used to refer to "various ethnic communities" living in the forests and hills of Rajasthan's southern parts and surrounding regions of western India, highlighting the "popularity of the bow and arrow as a weapon among these groups". It is also used as a blanket term to refer to the aboriginal peoples of these areas.
History
Bhil Rebellion
The Bhils of what is now the state of Gujarat rebelled on several occasions during the British colonial era, notably in 1846, 1857–58, and 1868.
The public source identifies “Bhil” as indo-Aryan speaking ethnic group in West India. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bhil, Indo-Aryan and speaking.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q854970. The Library of Congress control number is sh85013544. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1846, 1857 and 1868.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bhil” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.