They are coupled with the Bhils and Kolis in old Hindu accounts.
The Savars, Sawaras or Saonrs are also a widely distributed tribe, being found as far west as Bundelkhand and east in Orissa and Ganjam.

In the Central Provinces they have lost their own language and speak Hindi or Uriya, but in Madras they still retain their original speech, which is classified by Sir G.Grierson with Gadba as a Munda or Kolarian dialect.

The name occurs in Vedic literature, and the tribe is probably of great antiquity.

In the classical stories of their origin the first ancestor of the Savars is sometimes described as a Bhil.

The wide extension of the Savar tribe east and west is favourable to the hypothesis of the identity of the Kols and Kolis, who have a somewhat similar distribution.