Sir H.Risley says of them: [428] "They are a tribe employed in agriculture, earthwork, fishing, hunting, making saltpetre and collecting indigenous drugs.

Traditions current among the caste profess to trace their origin to the Vindhya hills, and one of these legends tells how a traveller, passing by the foot of the hills, heard a strange flute-like sound coming out of a clump of bamboos.

He cut a shoot and took from it a fleshy substance which afterwards grew into a man, the supposed ancestor of the Binds.

Another story says that the Binds and Nunias were formerly all Binds and that the present Nunias are the descendants of a Bind who consented to dig a grave for a Muhammadan king and was outcasted for doing so." A third legend tells how in the beginning of all things Mahadeo made a lump of earth and endowed it with life.

The creature thus produced asked Mahadeo what he should eat.