Gadaria, Gādri.1—The occupational shepherd caste of northern India. The name is derived from the Hindi gādar and the Sanskrit gandhāra, a sheep, the Sanskrit name being taken from the country of Gandhāra or Kandahār, from which sheep were first brought. The three main shepherd castes all have functional names, that of the Dhangars or Marātha shepherds being derived from dhan, small stock, while the Kuramwārs or Telugu shepherds take their name like the Gadarias from kuruba, a sheep. These three castes are of similar nature and status, and differ only in language and local customs. In 1911 the Gadarias numbered 41,000 persons. They are found in the northern Districts, and appear to have been amongst the earliest settlers in the Nerbudda valley, for they have given their name to several villages, as Gadariakheda and Gādarwāra.

The Gadarias are a very mixed caste. They themselves say that their first ancestor was created by Mahādeo to tend his rams, and that he married three women who were fascinated by the sight of him shearing the sheep. These belonged to the Brāhman, Dhīmar and Barai castes respectively, and became the ancestors of the Nikhar, Dhengar and Barmaiyan subcastes of Gadarias. The Nikhar subcaste are the highest, their name meaning pure. Dhengar is probably, in reality, a corruption of Dhangar, the name of the Marātha shepherd [4]caste. They have other subdivisions of the common territorial type, as Jheria or jungly, applied to the Gadarias of Chhattīsgarh; Desha from desh, country, meaning those who came from northern India; Purvaiya or eastern, applied to immigrants from Oudh; and Mālvi or those belonging to Mālwa. Nikhar and Dhengar men take food together, but not the women; and if a marriage cannot be otherwise arranged these subcastes will sometimes give daughters to each other. A girl thus married is no longer permitted to take food at her father’s house, but she may eat with the women of her husband’s subcaste. Many of their exogamous groups are named after animals or plants, as Hiranwār, from hiran, a deer; Sapha from the cobra, Moria from the peacock, Nāhar from the tiger, Phulsungha, a flower, and so on. Others are the names of Rājpūt septs and of other castes, as Ahirwār (Ahīr) and Bamhania (Brāhman).

Another more ambitious legend derives their origin from the Bania caste. They say that once a Bania was walking along the road with a cocoanut in his hand when Vishnu met him and asked him what it was. The Bania answered that it was a cocoanut. Vishnu said that it was not a cocoanut but wool, and told him to break it, and on breaking the cocoanut the Bania found that it was filled with wool. The Bania asked what he should do with it, and Vishnu told him to make a blanket out of it for the god to sit on. So he made a blanket, and Vishnu said that from that day he should be the ancestor of the Gadaria caste, and earn his bread by making blankets from the wool of sheep. The Bania asked where he should get the sheep from, and the god told him to go home saying ‘Ehān, Ehān, Ehān,’ all the way, and when he got home he would find a flock of sheep following him; but he was not to look behind him all the way. And the Bania did so, but when he had almost got home he could not help looking behind him to see if there were really any sheep. And he saw a long line of sheep following him in single file, and at the very end was a ram with golden horns just rising out of the ground. But as he looked it sank back again into the ground, and he went back to Vishnu and begged for it, but Vishnu said that as he had looked behind him he had lost it. And this was [5]the origin of the Gadaria caste, and the Gadarias always say ‘Ehān, Ehān,’ as they lead their flocks of sheep and goats to pasture.

Marriage within the clan is forbidden and also the union of first cousins. Girls may be married at any age, and are sometimes united to husbands much younger than themselves. Four castemen of standing carry the proposal of marriage from the boy’s father, and the girl’s father, being forewarned, sends others to meet them. One of the ambassadors opens the conversation by saying, ‘We have the milk and you have the milk-pail; let them be joined.’ To which the girl’s party, if the match be agreeable, will reply, “Yes, we have the tamarind and you have the mango; if the panches agree let there be a marriage.” The boy’s father gives the girl’s father five areca-nuts, and the latter returns them and they clasp each other round the neck. When the wedding procession reaches the bride’s village it is met by their party, and one of them takes the sarota or iron nut-cutter, which the bridegroom holds in his hand, and twirls it about in the air several times. The ceremony is performed by walking round the sacred pole, and the party return to the bridegroom’s lodging, where his brother-in-law fills the bride’s lap with sweetmeats and water-nut as an omen of fertility. The maihar or small wedding-cakes of wheat fried in sesamum oil are distributed to all members of the caste present at the wedding. While the bridegroom’s party is absent at the bride’s house, the women who remain behind enjoy amusements of their own. One of them strips herself naked, tying up her hair like a religious mendicant, and is known as Bāba or holy father. In this state she romps with her companions in turn, while the others laugh and applaud. Occasionally some man hides himself in a place where he can be a witness of their play, but if they discover him he is beaten severely with belnas or wooden bread-rollers. Widow-marriage and divorce are permitted, the widow being usually expected to marry her late husband’s younger brother, whether he already has a wife or not. Sexual offences are not severely reprobated, and may be atoned for by a feast to the caste-fellows.

The Gadarias worship the ordinary Hindu deities and [6]also Dishai Devi, the goddess of the sheep-pen. No Gadaria may go into the sheep-pen with his shoes on. On entering it in the morning they make obeisance to the sheep, and these customs seem to indicate that the goddess Dishai Devi2 is the deified sheep. When the sheep are shorn and the fleeces are lying on the ground they take some milk from one of the ewes and mix rice with it and sprinkle it over the wool. This rite is called Jimai, and they say that it is feeding the wool, but it appears to be really a sacrificial offering to the material. The caste burn the dead when they can afford to do so, and take the bones to the Ganges or Nerbudda, or if this is not practicable, throw them into the nearest stream.

Well-to-do members of the caste employ Brāhmans for ceremonial purposes, but others dispense with their services. The Gadarias eat flesh and drink liquor, but abstain from fowls and pork. They will take food cooked with water from a Lodhi or a Dāngi, members of these castes having formerly been their feudal chieftains in the Vindhyan Districts and Nerbudda valley. Brāhmans and members of the good cultivating castes would be permitted to become Gadarias if they should so desire. The head of the caste committee has the title of Mahton and the office is hereditary, the holder being invariably consulted on caste questions even if he should be a mere boy. The Gadarias rank with those castes from whom a Brāhman cannot take water, but above the servile and labouring castes. They are usually somewhat stupid, lazy and good-tempered, and are quite uneducated. Owing to their work in cleaning the pens and moving about among the sheep, the women often carry traces of the peculiar smell of these animals. This is exemplified in the saying, ‘Ek to Gadaria, dusre lahsan khae,’ or ‘Firstly she is a Gadaria and then she has eaten garlic’; the inference being that she is far indeed from having the scent of the rose.

The regular occupations of the Gadarias are the breeding and grazing of sheep and goats, and the weaving of country blankets from sheep’s wool. The flocks are usually [7]tended by the children, while the men and women spin and weave the wool and make blankets. Goats are bred in larger numbers than sheep in the Central Provinces, being more commonly used for food and sacrifices, while they are also valuable for their manure. Any Hindu who thinks an animal sacrifice requisite, and objects to a fowl as unclean, will choose a goat; and the animal after being sacrificed provides a feast for the worshippers, his head being the perquisite of the officiating priest. Muhammadans and most castes of Hindus will eat goat’s meat when they can afford it. The milk is not popular and there is very little demand for it locally, but it is often sold to the confectioners, and occasionally made into butter and exported. Sheep’s flesh is also eaten, but is not so highly esteemed. In the case of both sheep and goats there is a feeling against consuming the flesh of ewes. Sheep are generally black in colour and only occasionally white. Goats are black, white, speckled or reddish-white. Both animals are much smaller than in Europe. Both sheep and goats are in brisk demand in the cotton tracts for their manure in the hot-weather months, and will be kept continually on the move from field to field for a month at a time. It is usual to hire flocks at the rate of one rupee a hundred head for one night; but sometimes the cultivators combine to buy a large flock, and after penning them on their fields in the hot weather, send them to Nāgpur in the beginning of the rains to be disposed of. The Gadaria was formerly the bête noir of the cultivator, on account of the risk incurred by the crops from the depredations of his sheep and goats. This is exemplified in the saying:

or, ‘The Ahīr (herdsman), the Gadaria and the Pāsi, these three are the husbandmen’s foes.’ And again:

or ‘The Ahīr, the Gadaria and the Gūjar want waste land,’ that is for grazing their flocks. But since the demand for manure has arisen, the Gadaria has become a popular personage [8]in the village. The shepherds whistle to their flocks to guide them, and hang bells round the necks of goats but not of sheep. Some of them, especially in forest tracts, train ordinary pariah dogs to act as sheep-dogs. As a rule, rams and he-goats are not gelt, but those who have large flocks sometimes resort to this practice and afterwards fatten the animals up for sale. They divide their sheep into five classes, as follows, according to the length of the ears: Kanāri, with ears a hand’s length long; Semri, somewhat shorter; Burhai, ears a forefinger’s length; Churia, ears as long as the little finger; and Neori, with ears as long only as the top joint of the forefinger. Goats are divided into two classes, those with ears a hand’s length long being called Bangalia or Bagra, while those with small ears a forefinger’s length are known as Gujra.

While ordinary cultivators have now taken to keeping goats, sheep are still as a rule left to the Gadarias. These are of course valued principally for their wool, from which the ordinary country blanket is made. The sheep3 are shorn two or sometimes three times a year, in February, June and September, the best wool being obtained in February from the cold weather coat. Members of the caste commonly shear for each other without payment. The wool is carded with a kamtha, or simple bow with a catgut string, and spun by the women of the household. Blankets are woven by men on a loom like that used for cotton cloth. The fabric is coarse and rough, but strong and durable, and the colour is usually a dark dirty grey, approaching black, being the same as that of the raw material. Every cultivator has one of these, and the various uses to which it may be put are admirably described by ‘Eha’ as follows: 4

“The kammal is a home-spun blanket of the wool of black sheep, thick, strong, as rough as a farrier’s rasp, and of a colour which cannot get dirty. When the Kunbi (cultivator) comes out of his hole in the morning it is wrapped round his shoulders and reaches to his knees, [9]guarding him from his great enemy, the cold, for the thermometer is down to 60° Fahrenheit. By-and-by he has a load to carry, so he folds his kammal into a thick pad and puts it on the top of his head. Anon he feels tired, so he lays down his load, and arranging his kammal as a cushion, sits with comfort on a rugged rock or a stony bank, and has a smoke. Or else he rolls himself in it from head to foot, like a mummy, and enjoys a sound sleep on the roadside. It begins to rain, he folds his kammal into an ingenious cowl and is safe. Many more are its uses. I cannot number them all. Whatever he may be called upon to carry, be it forest produce, or grain or household goods, or his infant child, he will make a bundle of it with his kammal and poise it on his head, or sling it across his back, and trudge away.”

Wool is a material of some sanctity among the Hindus. It is ceremonially pure, and woollen clothing can be worn by Brāhmans while eating or performing sacred functions. In many castes the bridegroom at a wedding has a string of wool with a charm tied round his waist. Religious mendicants wear jatas or wigs of sheep’s wool, and often carry woollen charms. The beads used for counting prayers are often of wool. The reason for wool being thus held sacred may be that it was an older kind of clothing used before cotton was introduced, and thus acquired sanctity by being worn at sacrifices. Perhaps the Aryans wore woollen clothing when they entered India.

Gadba, Gadaba.1—A primitive tribe classified as Mundāri or Kolarian on linguistic grounds. The word Gadba, Surgeon-Major Mitchell states, signifies a person who carries loads on his shoulders. The tribe call themselves Guthau. They belong to the Vizagapatam District of Madras, and in the Central Provinces are found only in the Bastar State, into which they have immigrated to the number of some 700 persons. They speak a Mundāri dialect, called Gadba, after their tribal name, and are one of the two Mundāri tribes found so far south as Vizagapatam, the other being [10]the Savars.2 Their tribal organisation is not very strict, and a Bhatra, a Parja, a Muria, or a member of any superior caste may become a Gadba at an expenditure of two or three rupees. The ceremony consists of shaving the body of the novice, irrespective of sex, clean of hair, after which he or she is given to eat rice cooked in the water of the Ganges. This is followed by a feast to the tribe in which a pig must be killed. The Gadbas have totemistic exogamous septs, usually named after animals, as gutāl dog, angwān bear, dungra tortoise, surangai tiger, gūmal snake, and so on. Members of each sept abstain from killing or injuring the animal or plant after which it is named, but they have no scruple in procuring others to do this. Thus if a snake enters the hut of a person belonging to the Gūmal sept, he will call a neighbour of another sept to kill it. He may not touch its carcase with his bare hand, but if he holds it through a piece of rag no sin is incurred.

Marriage is adult, but the rule existing in Madras that a girl is not permitted to marry until she can weave her own cloth does not obtain in the Central Provinces.3 As a rule the parents of the couple arrange the match, but the wishes of the girl are sometimes consulted and various irregular methods of union are recognised. Thus a man is permitted with the help of his friends to go and carry off a girl and keep her as his wife, more especially if she is a relation on the maternal side more distant than a first cousin. Another form is the Paisa Mundi, by which a married or unmarried woman may enter the house of a man of her caste other than her husband and become his wife; and the Upaliya, when a married woman elopes with a lover. The marriage ceremony is simple. The bridegroom’s party go to the girl’s house, leaving the parents behind, and before they reach it are met and stopped by a bevy of young girls and men in their best clothes from the bride’s village. A girl comes forward and demands a ring, which one of the men of the wedding party places on her finger, and they then proceed to the bride’s house, where the bridegroom’s presents, consisting of victuals, liquor, a cloth, [11]and two rupees, are opened and carefully examined. If any deficiency is found, it must at once be made good. The pair eat a little food together, coloured rice is applied to their foreheads, and on the second day a new grass shed is erected, in which some rice is cooked by an unmarried girl. The bride and bridegroom are shut up in this, and two pots of water are poured over them from the roof, the marriage being then consummated. If the girl is not adult this ceremony is omitted. Widow-marriage is permitted by what is called the tīka form, by which a few grains of rice coloured with turmeric are placed on the foreheads of the pair and they are considered as man and wife. There is no regular divorce, but if a married woman misbehaves with a man of the caste, the husband goes to him with a few friends and asks whether the story is true, and if the accusation is admitted demands a pig and liquor for himself and his friends as compensation. If these are given he does not turn his wife out of his house. A liaison of a Gadba woman with a man of a superior caste is also said to involve no penalty, but if her paramour is a low-caste man she is excommunicated for ever. In spite of these lax rules, however, Major Mitchell states that the women are usually very devoted to their husbands. Mr. Thurston4 notes that among the Bonda Gadabas a young man and a maid retire to the jungle and light a fire. Then the maid, taking a burning stick, places it on the man’s skin. If he cries out he is unworthy of her, and she remains a maid. If he does not, the marriage is at once consummated. The application of the brand is probably light or severe according to the girl’s feelings towards the young man.

The Gadbas worship Burhi Māta or Thākurāni Māta, who is the goddess of smallpox and rinderpest. They offer to her flowers and incense when these diseases are prevalent among men or cattle, but if the epidemic does not abate after a time, they abuse the goddess and tell her to do her worst, suspending the offerings. They offer a white cock to the sun and a red one to the moon, and various other deities exercise special functions, Bhandārin being the goddess of agriculture and Dharni of good health, while [12]Bharwān is the protector of cattle and Dand Devī of men from the attacks of wild beasts. They have vague notions of a heaven and hell where the sinful will be punished, and also believe in re-birth. But these ideas appear to be borrowed from their Hindu neighbours. When the new rice crop is ripe, the first-fruits are cooked and served to the cattle in new bamboo baskets, and are then partaken of by men. The ripening of the mango crop is also an important festival. In the bright fortnight of Chait (March) the men go out hunting, and on their return cook the game before Mātideo, the god of hunting, who lives in a tree. In Madras the whole male population turn out to hunt, and if they come back without success the women pelt them with cowdung on their return. If successful, however, they have their revenge on the women in another way.5 On festival days men and women dance together to the music of a pipe and drum. Sometimes they form a circle, holding long poles, and jump backwards and forwards to and from the centre by means of the pole; or the women dance singly or in pairs, their hands resting on each other’s waists. A man and woman will then step out of the crowd and sing at each other, the woman reflecting on the man’s ungainly appearance and want of skill as a cultivator or huntsman, while the man retorts by reproaching her with her ugliness and slatternly habits.6

The dead are buried with their feet to the west, ready to start for the region of the setting sun. On their return from the funeral the mourners stop on the way, and a fish is boiled and offered to the dead. An egg is cut in half and placed on the ground, and pieces of mango bark are laid beside it on which the mourners tread. The women accompany the corpse, and in the meantime the house of the dead person is cleaned with cowdung by the children left behind. On the first day food is supplied to the mourners by their relatives, and in the evening some cooked rice and vegetables are offered to the dead. The mourning lasts for nine days, and on the last day a cow or bullock is killed with the blunt head of an axe, the performance of [13]this function being hereditary in certain families of the caste. Some blood from the animal and some cooked rice are put in leaf-cups and placed on the grave by the head of the corpse. The animal is cooked and eaten by the grave, and they then return to the cooking shed and place its jawbone under a stick supported on two others, blood and cooked rice being again offered. The old men and women bathe in warm water, and all return to the place where the dead man breathed his last. Here they drink and have another meal of rice and beef, which is repeated on the following day, and the business of committing the dead to the ancestors is complete. Liquor is offered to the ancestors on feast days.

The caste are cultivators and labourers, while some are employed as village watchmen, and others are hereditary pālki-bearers to the Rāja of Bastar, enjoying a free grant of land. They practise shifting cultivation, cleaning a space by indiscriminate felling in the forest, and roughly ploughing the ground for a single broad-cast crop of rice; in the following year the clearing is usually abandoned. Their dress is simple, though they now wear ordinary cloth. Forty years ago it is said that they wore coverings made from the bark of the kuring tree and painted with horizontal bands of red, yellow and blue.7 A girdle of the thickness of a man’s arm made from fine strips of bark is still worn and is a distinguishing feature of the Gadba women. They also carry a circlet round their forehead of the seeds of kusa grass threaded on a string. Both men and women wear enormous earrings, the men having three in each ear. The Gadbas are almost omnivorous, and eat flesh, fish, fowls, pork, buffaloes, crocodiles, non-poisonous snakes, large lizards, frogs, sparrows, crows and large red ants. They abstain only from the flesh of monkeys, horses and asses. A Gadba must not ride on a horse under penalty of being put out of caste. Mr. Thurston8 gives the following reason for this prejudice:—“The Gadbas of Vizagapatam will not touch a horse, as they are palanquin-bearers, and have the same objection to a rival animal as a cart-driver has to a motor-car.” They will eat the leavings of other castes and take food from all except the impure ones, [14]but like the Mehtars and Ghasias elsewhere they will not take food or water from a Kāyasth. Only the lowest castes will eat with Gadbas, but they are not considered as impure, and are allowed to enter temples and take part in religious ceremonies.

Gānda.—A servile and impure caste of Chota Nāgpur and the Uriya Districts. They numbered 278,000 persons in 1901, resident largely in Sambalpur and the Uriya States, but since the transfer of this territory to Bengal, only about 150,000 Gāndas remain in the Central Provinces in Raipur, Bilāspur and Raigarh. In this Province the Gāndas have become a servile caste of village drudges, acting as watchmen, weavers of coarse cloth and musicians. They are looked on as an impure caste, and are practically in the same position as the Mehras and Chamārs of other Districts. In Chota Nāgpur, however, they are still in some places recognised as a primitive tribe,1 being generally known here as Pān, Pāb or Chik. Sir H. Risley suggests that the name of Gānda may be derived from Gond, and that the Pāns may originally have been an offshoot of that tribe, but no connection between the Gāndas and Gonds has been established in the Central Provinces.

The subcastes reported differ entirely from those recorded in Orissa. In the Central Provinces they are mainly occupational. Thus the Bajna or Bajgari are those who act as musicians at feasts and marriages; the Māng or Mangia make screens and mats, while their women serve as midwives; the Dholias make baskets; the Doms skin cattle and the Nagārchis play on nakkāras or drums. Panka is also returned as a subcaste of Gānda, but in the Central Provinces the Pankas are now practically a separate caste, and consist of those Gāndas who have adopted Kabīrpanthism and have thereby obtained some slight rise in status. In Bengal Sir H. Risley mentions a group called Patradias, or slaves and menials of the Khonds, and discusses the Patradias as follows:—“The group seems also to include the descendants of Pāns, who sold themselves as slaves or were sold as Merias or victims to the Khonds. We know that an extensive [15]traffic in children destined for human sacrifice used to go on in the Khond country, and that the Pāns were the agents who sometimes purchased, but more frequently kidnapped, the children, whom they sold to the Khonds, and were so debased that they occasionally sold their own offspring, though they knew of course the fate that awaited them.2 Moreover, apart from the demand for sacrificial purposes, the practice of selling men as agricultural labourers was until a few years ago by no means uncommon in the wilder parts of the Chota Nāgpur Division, where labour is scarce and cash payments are almost unknown. Numbers of formal bonds have come before me, whereby men sold themselves for a lump sum to enable them to marry.” The above quotation is inserted merely as an interesting historical reminiscence of the Pāns or Gāndas.

The Gāndas have exogamous groups or septs of the usual low-caste type, named after plants, animals or other inanimate objects. Marriage is prohibited within the sept, and between the children of two sisters, though the children of brothers and sisters may marry. If a girl arrives at maturity without a husband having been found for her, she is wedded to a spear stuck up in the courtyard of the house, and then given away to anybody who wishes to take her. A girl going wrong with a man of the caste is married to him by the ceremony employed in the case of widows, while her parents have to feed the caste. But a girl seduced by an outsider is permanently expelled. The betrothal is marked by a present of various articles to the father of the bride. Marriages must not be celebrated during the three rainy months of Shrāwan, Bhādon or Kunwār, nor during the dark fortnight of the month, nor on a Saturday or Tuesday. The marriage-post is of the wood of the mahua tree, and beneath it are placed seven cowries and seven pieces of turmeric. An elderly male member of the caste known as the Sethia conducts the ceremony, and the couple go five times round the sacred pole in the morning and thrice in the evening. When the bride and bridegroom return home after the wedding, an image of a deer is made with grass and placed behind the [16]ear of the bride. The bridegroom then throws a toy arrow at it made of grass or thin bamboo, and is allowed seven shots. If he fails to knock it out of her ear after these the bride’s brother takes it and runs away and the bridegroom must follow and catch him. This is clearly a symbolic process representing the chase, of the sort practised by the Khonds and other primitive tribes, and may be taken as a reminiscence among the Gāndas of their former life in the forests. The remarriage of widows is permitted, and the younger brother of the deceased husband takes his widow if he wishes to do so. Otherwise she may marry whom she pleases. A husband may divorce his wife for adultery before the caste committee, and if she marries her lover he must repay to the husband the expenses incurred by the latter on his wedding.

The Gāndas principally worship Dūlha Deo, the young bridegroom who was carried off by a tiger, and they offer a goat to him at their weddings. They observe the Hindu fasts and festivals, and at Dasahra worship their musical instruments and the weaver’s loom. Being impure, they do not revere the tulsi plant nor the banyan or pīpal trees. Children are named on the sixth day after birth without any special ceremony. The dead are generally buried from motives of economy, as with most families the fuel required for cremation would be a serious item of expenditure. A man is laid on his face in the grave and a woman on her back. Mourning is observed for three days, except in the case of children under three years old, whose deaths entail no special observances. On the fourth day a feast is given, and when all have been served, the chief mourner takes a little food from the plate of each guest and puts it in a leaf-cup. He takes another leaf-cup full of water and places the two outside the house, saying ‘Here is food for you’ to the spirit of the departed.

The Gāndas are generally employed either in weaving coarse cloth or as village musicians. They sing and dance to the accompaniment of their instruments, the dancers generally being two young boys dressed as women. They have long hair and put on skirts and half-sleeved jackets, with hollow anklets round their feet filled with stones to [17]make them tinkle. On their right shoulders are attached some peacocks’ feathers, and coloured cloths hang from their back and arms and wave about when they dance. Among their musical instruments is the sing-bāja, a single drum made of iron with ox-hide leather stretched over it; two horns project from the sides for purposes of decoration and give the instrument its name, and it is beaten with thick leather thongs. The dafla is a wooden drum open on one side and covered with a goat-skin on the other, beaten with a cane and a bamboo stick. The timki is a single hemispherical drum of earthenware; and the sahnai is a sort of bamboo flute. The Gāndas of Sambalpur have strong criminal tendencies which have recently called for special measures of repression. Nevertheless they are usually employed as village watchmen in accordance with long-standing custom. They are considered as impure and, though not compelled actually to live apart from the village, have usually a separate quarter and are not permitted to draw water from the village well or to enter Hindu temples. Their touch defiles, and a Hindu will not give anything into the hands of one of the caste while holding it himself, but will throw it down in front of the Gānda, and will take anything from him in the same manner. They will admit outsiders of higher rank into the caste, taking from them one or two feasts. And it is reported that in Raipur a Brāhman recently entered the caste for love of a Gānda girl.

Gārpagāri.1—A caste of village menials whose function it is to avert hailstorms from the crops. They are found principally in the Marātha Districts of the Nāgpur country and Berār, and numbered 9000 persons in 1911. The name is derived from the Marāthi gār, hail. The Gārpagāris are really Nāths or Jogis who have taken to this calling and become a separate caste. They wear clothes coloured with red ochre, and a garland of rudrāksha beads, and bury their dead in a sitting posture. According to their tradition the first Gārpagāri was one Rāut, a Jogi, who accompanied a Kunbi mālguzār on a visit to Benāres, and while there he [20]prophesied that on a certain day all the crops of their village would be destroyed by a hailstorm. The Kunbi then besought him to save the crops if he could, and he answered that by his magic he could draw off the hail from the rest of the village and concentrate it in his own field, and he agreed to do this if the cultivators would recompense him for his loss. When the two came home to their village they found that there had been a severe hailstorm, but it had all fallen in the Jogi’s field. His loss was made good to him and he adopted this calling as a profession, becoming the first Gārpagāri, and being paid by contributions from the proprietor and tenants. There are no subcastes except that the Kharchi Gārpagāri are a bastard group, with whom the others refuse to intermarry.

Marriage is regulated by exogamous groups, two of which, Watāri from the Otāri or brass-worker, and Dhankar from the Dhangar or shepherds, are named after other castes. Some are derived from the names of animals, as Harnya from the black-buck, and Wāgh from the tiger. The Diunde group take their name from diundi, the kotwar’s2 drum. They say that their ancestor was so named because he killed his brother, and was proclaimed as an outlaw by beat of drum. The marriage of members of the same group is forbidden and also that of the children of two sisters, so long as the relationship between them is remembered. The caste usually celebrate their weddings after those of the Kunbis, on whom they depend for contributions to their expenses. Widow-marriage is permitted, but the widow sometimes refuses to marry again, and, becoming a Bhagat or devotee, performs long pilgrimages in male attire. Divorce is permitted, but as women are scarce, is rarely resorted to. The Gārpagāris say, “If one would not throw away a vegetable worth a damri (one-eighth of a pice or farthing), how shall one throw away a wife who is 3½ cubits long.” A divorced wife is allowed to marry again.

The caste worship Mahādeo or Siva and Mahābīr or Hanumān, and do not usually distinguish them. Their principal festival is called Māhi and takes place on the first day of Poush (December), this being the day from which [21]hailstorms may be expected to occur; and next to this Māndo Amāwas, or the first day of Chait (March), after which hailstorms need not be feared. They offer goats to Mahādeo in his terrible form of Kāl Bhairava, and during the ceremony the Kunbis beat the dāheka, a small drum with bells, to enhance the effect of the sacrifice, so that their crops may be saved. When a man is at the point of death he is placed in the sitting posture in which he is to be buried, for fear that after death his limbs may become so stiff that they cannot be made to assume it. The corpse is carried to the grave in a cloth coloured with red ochre. A gourd containing pulse and rice, a pice coin, and a small quantity of any drug to which the deceased may have been addicted in life are placed in the hands, and the grave is filled in with earth and salt. A lamp is lighted on the place where the death occurred, for one night, and on the third day a cocoanut is broken there, after which mourning ends and the house is cleaned. A stone brought from the bed of a river is plastered down on to the grave with clay, and this may perhaps represent the dead man’s spirit.

The occupation of the Gārpagāri is to avert hailstorms, and he was formerly remunerated by a customary contribution of rice from each cultivator in the village. He received the usual presents at seed-time and harvest, and two pice from each tenant on the Basant-Panchmi festival. When the sky is of mixed red and black at night like smoke and flame, the Gārpagāri knows that a hailstorm is coming. Then, taking a sword in his hand, he goes and stands before Mahābīr, and begs him to disperse the clouds. When entreaties fail, he proceeds to threats, saying that he will kill himself, and throws off his clothes. Sometimes his wife and children go and stand with him before Mahābīr’s shrine and he threatens to kill them. Formerly he would cut and slash himself, so it is said, if Mahābīr was obdurate, but now the utmost he does is to draw some blood from a finger. He would also threaten to sacrifice his son, and instances are known of his actually having done so.

Two ideas appear to be involved in these sacrifices of the Gārpagāri. One is the familiar principle of atonement, the blood being offered to appease the god as a substitute [22]for the crops which he seems about to destroy. But when the Gārpagāri threatened to kill himself, and actually killed his son, it was not merely as an atonement, because in that case the threats would have had no meaning. His intention seems rather to have been to lay the guilt of homicide upon the god by slaying somebody in front of his shrine, in case nothing less would move him from his purpose of destroying the crops. The idea is the same as that with which people committed suicide in order that their ghosts might haunt those who had driven them to the act. As late as about the year 1905 a Gond Bhumka or village priest was hanged in Chhindwāra for killing his two children. He owed a debt of Rs. 25 and the creditor was pressing him and he had nothing to pay. So he flew into a rage and exclaimed that the gods would do nothing for him even though he was a Bhumka, and he seized his two children and cut off their heads and laid them before the god. In this it would appear that the Bhumka’s intention was partly to take revenge on his master for the neglect shown to him, the god’s special servant. The Gārpagāri diverts the hail by throwing a handful of grain in the direction in which he wishes it to go. When the storm begins he will pick up some hailstones, smear them with his blood and throw them away, telling them to rain over rivers, hills, forests and barren ground. When caterpillars or locusts attack the crops he catches one or two and offers them at Mahābīr’s shrine, afterwards throwing them up in the air. Or he buries one alive and this is supposed to stay the plague. When rust appears in the crops, one or two blades are in like manner offered to Mahābīr, and it is believed that the disease will be stayed. Or if the rice plants do not come into ear a few of them are plucked and offered, and fresh fertile blades then come up. He also has various incantations which are believed to divert the storm or to cause the hailstones to melt into water. In some localities, when the buffalo is slaughtered at the Dasahra festival, the Gārpagāri takes seven different kinds of spring-crop seeds and dips them in its blood. He buries them in a spot beside his hearth, and it is believed that when a hailstorm threatens the grains move about and give out a humming sound like water boiling. Thus the Gārpagāri has [23]warning of the storm. If the Gārpagāri is absent and a storm comes his wife will go and stand naked before Mahābīr’s shrine. The wives know the incantations, but they must not learn them from their husbands, because in that case the husband would be in the position of a guru or spiritual preceptor to his wife and the conjugal relation could no longer continue. No other caste will learn the incantations, for to make the hailstones melt is regarded as equivalent to causing an abortion, and as a sin for which heavy retribution would be incurred in a future life.

In Chhattīsgarh the Baiga or village priest of the aboriginal tribes averts hailstorms in the same manner as the Gārpagāri, and elsewhere the Barais or betel-vine growers perform this function, which is especially important to them because their vines are so liable to be injured by hailstorms. In ancient Greece there existed a village functionary, the Chalazo phulax, who kept off hailstorms in exactly the same manner as the Gārpagāri. He would offer a victim, and if he had none would draw blood from his own fingers to appease the storm.3

The same power has even been imputed to Christian priests as recorded by Sir James Frazer: “In many villages of Provence the priest is still required to possess the faculty of averting storms. It is not every priest who enjoys this reputation; and in some villages when a change of pastors takes place, the parishioners are eager to learn whether the new incumbent has the power (pouder) as they call it. At the first sign of a heavy storm they put him to the proof by inviting him to exorcise the threatening clouds; and if the result answers to their hopes, the new shepherd is assured of the sympathy and respect of his flock. In some parishes where the reputation of the curate in this respect stood higher than that of the rector, the relations between the two have been so strained in consequence that the bishop has had to translate the rector to another benefice.”4

Of late years an unavoidable scepticism as to the Gārpagāri’s efficiency has led to a reduction of his earnings, and the cultivators now frequently decline to give him anything, or [24]only a sheaf of corn at harvest. Some members of the caste have taken to weaving newār or broad tape for beds, and others have become cultivators.

The Gārpagāris eat flesh and drink liquor. They will take cooked food from a Kunbi, though the Kunbis will not take even water from them. They are a village menial caste and rank with others of the same position, though on a somewhat lower level because they beg and accept cooked food at the weddings of Kunbis. Their names usually end in nāth, as Rāmnāth, Kisannāth and so on.

Ghasia, Sais.1—A low Dravidian caste of Orissa and Central India who cut grass, tend horses and act as village musicians at festivals. In the Central Provinces they numbered 43,000 in 1911, residing principally in the Chhattīsgarh Division and the adjoining Feudatory States. The word Ghasia is derived from ghās (grass) and means a grass-cutter. Sir H. Risley states that they are a fishing and cultivating caste of Chota Nāgpur and Central India, who attend as musicians at weddings and festivals and also perform menial offices of all kinds.2 In Bastar they are described as an inferior caste who serve as horse-keepers and also make and mend brass vessels. They dress like the Māria Gonds and subsist partly by cultivation and partly by labour.3 Dr. Ball describes them in Singhbhūm as gold-washers and musicians. Colonel Dalton speaks of them as “An extraordinary tribe, foul parasites of the Central Indian hill tribes and submitting to be degraded even by them. If the Chandāls of the Purānas, though descended from the union of a Brāhmini and a Sūdra, are the lowest of the low, the Ghasias are Chandāls and the people further south who are called Pariahs are no doubt of the same distinguished lineage.”4 [28]

The Ghasias generally, however, appear now to be a harmless caste of labourers without any specially degrading or repulsive traits. In Mandla their social position and customs are much on a par with those of the Gonds, from whom a considerable section of the caste seems to be derived. In other localities they have probably immigrated into the Central Provinces from Bundelkhand and Orissa. Among their subdivisions the following may be mentioned: the Udia, who cure raw hides and do the work of sweepers and are generally looked down on; the Dingkuchia, who castrate cattle and ponies; the Dolboha, who carry dhoolies or palanquins; the Nagārchi, who derive their name from the nakkāra or kettle-drum and are village musicians; the Khaltaha or those from Raipur; the Laria, belonging to Chhattīsgarh, and the Uria of the Uriya country; the Rāmgarhia, who take their name from Rāmgarh in the Mandla District, and the Mahobia from Mahoba in Bundelkhand. Those members of the caste who work as grooms have become a separate group and call themselves Sais, dropping the name of Ghasia. They rank higher than the others and marry among themselves, and some of them have become cultivators or work as village watchmen. They are also called Thānwar by the Gonds, the word meaning stable or stall. In Chota Nāgpur a number of Ghasias have become tailors and are tending to form a separate subcaste under the name of Darzi.

Their septs are of the usual low-caste type, being named after animals, inanimate objects or nicknames of ancestors. One of them is Pānch-biha or ‘He who had five wives,’ and another Kul-dīp or ‘The sept of the lamp.’ Members of this sept will stop eating if a lamp goes out. The Janta Ragda take their name from the mill for grinding corn and will not have a grinding-mill in their houses. They say that a female ancestor was delivered of a child when sitting near a grinding-mill and this gave the sept its name. Three septs are named after other castes: Kumhārbans, descended from a potter; Gāndbans, from a Gānda; and Luha, from a Lohār or blacksmith, and which names indicate that members of these castes have been admitted into the community.

Marriage is forbidden within the sept, but is permitted [29]between the children of brothers and sisters. Those members of the caste who have become Kabīrpanthis may also marry with the others. Marriages may be infant or adult. A girl who is seduced by a member of the caste is married to him by a simple ceremony, the couple standing before a twig of the ūmar5 tree, while some women sprinkle turmeric over them. If a girl goes wrong with an outsider she is permanently expelled and a feast is exacted from her parents. The boy and his relatives go to the girl’s house for the betrothal, and a present of various articles of food and dress is made to her family, apparently as a sort of repayment for their expenditure in feeding and clothing her. A gift of clothes is also made to her mother, called dudh-sāri, and is regarded as the price of the milk with which the mother nourished the girl in her infancy. A goat, which forms part of the bride-price, is killed and eaten by the parties and their relatives. The binding portion of the marriage is the bhānwar ceremony, at which the couple walk seven times round the marriage-post, holding each other by the little fingers. When they return to the bridegroom’s house, a cock or a goat is killed and the head buried before the door; the foreheads of the couple are marked with its blood and they go inside the house. If the bride is not adult, she goes home after a stay of two days, and the gauna or going-away ceremony is performed when she finally leaves her parents’ house. The remarriage of widows is permitted, no restriction being imposed on the widow in her choice of a second husband. Divorce is permitted for infidelity on the part of the wife.

Children are named on the sixth day after birth, special names being given to avert ill-luck, while they sometimes go through the ceremony of selling a baby for five cowries in order to disarm the jealousy of the godlings who are hostile to children. They will not call any person by name when they think an owl is within hearing, as they believe that the owl will go on repeating the name and that this will cause the death of the person bearing it. The caste generally revere Dūlha Deo, the bridegroom god, whose altar stands near the cooking place, and the goddess Devi. [30]Once in three years they offer a white goat to Bura Deo, the great god of the Gonds. They worship the sickle, the implement of their trade, at Dasahra, and offer cocoanuts and liquor to Ghāsi Sādhak, a godling who lives by the peg to which horses are tied in the stable. He is supposed to protect the horse from all kinds of diseases. At Dasahra they also worship the horse. Their principal festival is called Karma and falls on the eleventh day of the second half of Bhādon (August). On this day they bring a branch of a tree from the forest and worship it with betel, areca-nut and other offerings. All through the day and night the men and women drink and dance together. They both burn and bury the dead, throwing the ashes into water. For the first three days after a death they set out rice and pulse and water in a leaf cup for the departed spirit. They believe that the ghosts of the dead haunt the living, and to cure a person possessed in this manner they beat him with shoes and then bury an effigy of the ghost outside the village.

The Ghasias usually work as grass-cutters and grooms to horses, and some of them make loom-combs for weavers. These last are looked down upon and called Madarchawa. They make the kūnch or brushes for the loom, like the Kūchbandhias, from the root of the babai or khas-khas grass, and the rāchh or comb for arranging the threads on the loom from the stalks of the bharru grass. Other Ghasias make ordinary hair combs from the kathai, a grass which grows densely on the borders of streams and springs. The frame of the comb is of bamboo and the teeth are fixed in either by thread or wire, the price being one pice (farthing) in the former case and two in the latter.

The caste admit outsiders by a disgusting ceremony in which the candidate is shaved with urine and forced to eat a mixture of cowdung, basil leaves, dub6 grass and water in which a piece of silver or gold has been dipped. The women do not wear the choli or breast-cloth nor the nose-ring, and in some localities they do not have spangles on the forehead. Women are tattooed on various parts of the body before marriage with the idea of enhancing their [31]beauty, and sometimes tattooing is resorted to for curing a pain in some joint or for rheumatism. A man who is temporarily put out of caste is shaved on readmission, and in the case of a woman a lock of her hair is cut. To touch a dead cow is one of the offences entailing temporary excommunication. They employ a Brāhman only to fix the dates of their marriages. The position of the caste is very low and in some places they are considered as impure. The Ghasias are very poor, and a saying about them is ‘Ghasia ki jindagi hasia’, or ‘The Ghasia is supported by his sickle,’ the implement used for cutting grass. The Ghasias are perhaps the only caste in the Central Provinces outside those commonly returning themselves as Mehtar, who consent to do scavenger’s work in some localities.

The caste have a peculiar aversion to Kāyasths and will not take food or water from them nor touch a Kāyasth’s bedding or clothing. They say that they would not serve a Kāyasth as horse-keeper, but if by any chance one of them was reduced to doing so, he at any rate would not hold his master’s stirrup for him to mount. To account for this hereditary enmity they tell the following story:

On one occasion the son of the Kāyasth minister of the Rāja of Ratanpur went out for a ride followed by a Ghasia sais (groom). The boy was wearing costly ornaments, and the Ghasia’s cupidity being excited, he attacked and murdered the child, stripped him of his ornaments and threw the body down a well. The murder was discovered and in revenge the minister killed every Ghasia, man, woman or child that he could lay his hands on. The only ones who escaped were two pregnant women who took refuge in the hut of a Gānda and were sheltered by him. To them were born a boy and a girl and the present Ghasias are descended from the pair. Therefore a Ghasia will eat even the leavings of a Gānda but will accept nothing from the hands of a Kāyasth.

This story is an instance of the process which has been called the transplantation of myth. Sir H. Risley tells a similar legend of the Ghasias of Orissa,7 but in their case it was a young Kāyasth bridegroom who was killed, and before dying he got leave from his murderers to write a [32]letter to his relatives informing them of his death, on condition that he said nothing as to its manner. But in the letter he disclosed the murder, and the Ghasias, who could not read, were duly brought to justice. In the Ratanpur story as reported from Bilāspur it was stated that “Somehow, even from down the well, the minister’s son managed to get a letter sent to his father telling him of the murder.” And this sentence seems sufficient to establish the fact that the Central Provinces story has merely been imported from Orissa and slightly altered to give it local colour. The real reason for the traditional aversion felt by the Ghasias and other low castes for the Kāyasths will be discussed in the article on that caste.

Gosain, Gusain, Sanniāsi, Dasnāmi.1—A name for the orders of religious mendicants of the Sivite sect, from which a caste has now developed. In 1911 the Gosains numbered a little over 40,000 persons in the Central Provinces and Berār, being distributed over all Districts. The name Gosain signifies either gao-swāmi, master of cows, or go-swāmi, master of the senses. Its significance sometimes varies. Thus in Bengal the heads of Bairāgi or Vaishnava monasteries are called Gosain, and the priests of the Vishnuite Vallabhachārya sect are known as Gokulastha Gosain. But over most of India, as in the Central Provinces, Gosain appears to be a name applied to members of the Sivite orders. Sanniāsi means one who abandons the desires of the world and the body. Properly every Brāhman should become a Sanniāsi in the fourth stage or ashrām of his life, when after marrying and begetting a son to celebrate his funeral rites in the second stage, he should retire to the forest, become a hermit and conquer all the appetites and passions of the body in the third stage. Thereafter, when [151]the process of mortification is complete he should beg his bread as a Sanniāsi. But only those who enter the religious orders now become Sanniāsis, and the name is therefore confined to them. Dasnāmi means the ten names, and refers to the ten orders in which the Gosains or Sivite anchorites are commonly classified. Sādhu is a generic term for a religious mendicant. The name Gosain is now more commonly applied to the married members of the caste, who pursue ordinary avocations, while the mendicants are known as Sādhu or Sanniāsi.

Gosain mendicant

The Gosains consider their founder to have been Shankar Achārya, the great apostle of the revival of the worship of Siva in southern India, who lived between the eighth and tenth centuries. He had four disciples from whom the ten orders of Gosains are derived. These are commonly stated as follows:

• 1. Giri (peak or top of a hill).
• 2. Puri (a town).
• 3. Parbat (a mountain).
• 4. Sāgar (the ocean).
• 5. Ban or Van (the forest).
• 6. Tīrtha (a shrine of pilgrimage).
• 7. Bhārthi (the goddess of speech).
• 8. Sāraswati (the goddess of learning).
• 9. Aranya (forest).
• 10. Ashrām (a hermitage).

The names may perhaps be held to refer to the different places in which the members of each order would pursue their austerities. The different orders have their headquarters at great shrines. The Sāraswati, Bhārthi and Puri orders are supposed to be attached to the monastery at Sringeri in Mysore; the Tīrtha and Ashrām to that at Dwārka in Gujarāt; the Ban and Aranya to the Govardhan monastery at Puri; and the Giri, Parbat and Sāgara to the shrine of Badrināth in the Himalayas.

Alakhwāle Gosains with faces covered with ashes

Dandi is sometimes shown as one of the ten orders, but it seems to be the special designation of certain ascetics who carry a staff and may belong to either the Tīrtha, Ashrām, Bhārthi or Sāraswati groups. Another name for Gosain [152]ascetics is Abdhūt, or one who has separated himself from the world. The term Abdhūt is sometimes specially applied to followers of the Marātha saint, Dattatreya, an incarnation of Siva.

The commonest orders in the Central Provinces are Giri, Puri and Bhārthi, and the members frequently use the name of the order as their surname. Members of the Aranya, Sāgara and Parbat orders are rarely met with at present.

A notice of the Gosains who have become an ordinary caste will be given later. Formerly only Brāhmans or members of the twice-born castes could become Gosains, but now a man of any caste, as Kurmi, Kunbi or Māli, from whom a Brāhman takes water, may be admitted. In some localities it is said that Gonds and Kols can now be made Gosains, and hence the social position of the Gosains has greatly fallen, and high-caste Hindus will not take water from them. It is supposed, however, that the Giri order is still recruited only from Brāhmans.

At initiation the body of a neophyte is cleaned with the five products of the sacred cow, milk, curds, ghī, dung and urine. He drinks water in which the great toe of his guru has been dipped and eats the leavings of the latter’s food, thus severing himself from his own caste. His sacred thread is taken off and broken, and it is sometimes burned and he eats the ashes. All the hair of his head is shaved, including the scalp-lock, which every secular Hindu wears. A mantra or text is then whispered or blown into his ear.

The novice is dressed in a cloth coloured with geru or red ochre, such as the Gosains usually wear. It is probable that the red or pink colour is meant to symbolise blood and to signify that the Gosains allow the sacrifice of animals and the consumption of flesh, and on this account they are called Lāl Pādri or red priest, while Vishnuite mendicants, who dress in white, are called Sīta Pādri. He has a necklace or rosary of the seeds of the rudrāksha tree,2 sacred to Siva, consisting of 32 or 64 beads. These are like nuts with a rough indented shell. On his forehead he marks with bhabhūt or ashes three horizontal lines to [153]represent the trident of Siva, or sometimes the eye of the god. Others make only two lines with a dot above or below, and this sign is said to represent the phallic emblem. A crescent moon or a triangle may also be made.3 The marks are often made in sandalwood, and the Gosains say that the original sandalwood grows on a tree in the Himalayas, which is guarded by a great snake so that nobody can approach it; but its scent is so strong that all the surrounding trees of the grove are scented with it and sandalwood is obtained from them. Those who worship Bhairon make a round mark with vermilion between the eyes, taking it from beneath the god’s foot. A mendicant usually has a begging-bowl and a pair of tongs, which are useful for kindling a fire. Those who have visited Badrināth or one of the other Himalayan shrines have a ring of iron, brass or copper on the arm, often inscribed with the image of a deity. If they have been to the temple of Devi at Hinglāj in the Lāsbela State of Beluchistān they have a necklace of little white stone beads called thumra; and one who has made a pilgrimage to Rāmeshwaram at the extreme southern point of India has a ring of conch-shell on the wrist. When he can obtain it a Gosain also carries a tiger- or panther-skin, which he wears over his shoulders and uses to sit and lie down on. Among the ancient Greeks it was the custom to sleep in a temple or its avenue either on the bare ground or on the skin of a sacred animal, in order to obtain visions or appearances of the god in a dream or to be cured of diseases.4 Formerly the Gosains were accustomed to go about naked, and at the religious festivals they would go in procession naked to bathe in the river. At Amarnāth in the Punjab they would throw themselves naked on the block of ice which represented Siva.5 The Nāga Gosains, so called because they were once accustomed to go naked into battle, were a famous fighting corps. Though they shave the head and scalp-lock on initiation the Gosains usually let the hair grow, and either have it hanging down [154]in matted locks over the shoulders, which gives them a wild and unkempt appearance, or wind it on the top of the head into a coil often thickened with strips of sheep’s wool. They say that they let the hair grow in imitation of the ancient forest ascetics, who could not but let it grow as they had no means to shave it, and also of the matted locks of the god Siva. Sometimes they let the hair grow during the whole period of a pilgrimage, and on arrival at the shrine of their destination shave it off and offer it to the god. Those who are initiated on the banks of the Nerbudda throw the hair cut from their head into the sacred river.

Gosain mendicants with long hair

They have various rules about begging. Some will never turn back to receive alms. They may also make a rule only to accept the surplus of food cooked for the family, and to refuse any of special quality or cooked expressly for them. One Gosain, noticed by Mr. A. K. Smith, always begged hopping, and only from five houses; he took from them respectively two handfuls of flour, a pinch of salt, and sufficient quantities of vegetables, spices and butter for his meal, and then went hopping home. Those who are performing the perikrama or circuit of the Nerbudda from its source to its mouth and back, do not cut their hair or nails during the whole period of about three years. They may not enter the Nerbudda above their knees nor wash their vessels in it. After crossing any tributary river or stream in their path they may not re-cross this; and if they have forgotten or left any article behind, must abandon it unless they can persuade somebody to go back and fetch it for them. Some carry a gourd with a single string stretched on a stick, on which they twang some notes; others have a belt of sheep’s hair hung with the bells of bullocks which they tie round the waist, so that the tinkling of the bells may announce their coming. A common begging cry is Alakh, which is said to mean ‘apart,’ and to refer to themselves as being apart or separated from the world. The beggar gives this cry and stands at the door of the house for half a minute, shaking his body about all the time. If no alms are brought in this time he moves on.

When an ordinary Hindu meets a Gosain he says ‘Nāmu Nārāyan’ or ‘I go to Nārāyan,’ and the Gosain [155]answers ‘Nārāyan.’ Nārāyan is a name of Vishnu, and its use by the Gosains is curious. Those who have performed the circuit of the Nerbudda say ‘Har Nerbudda,’ and the person addressed answers ‘Nerbudda Mai ki Jai’ or ‘Victory to Mother Nerbudda.’

The Dandis are a special group of ascetics belonging to several of the ten orders. According to one account a novice who desires to become a Sanniāsi must serve a period of probation for twelve years as a Dandi. Others say that only a Brāhman can be a Dandi, while members of other castes may become Sanniāsis, and a Brāhman can only become one if he is without father, mother, wife or child.6 The Dandi is so called because he has a dand or bamboo staff like the ancient Vedic students. He must always carry this and never lay it down, but when sleeping plant it in the ground. Sometimes a piece of red cloth is tied round the staff. The Dandi should live in the forest, and only come once a day to beg at a Brāhman’s house for a part of such food as the family may have cooked. He should not ask for food if any one else, even a dog, is waiting for it. He must not accept money, or touch fire or any metal. As a matter of fact these rules are disregarded, and the Dandi frequents towns and is accompanied by companions who will accept all kinds of alms on his behalf.7 Dandis and Sanniāsis do not worship idols, as they are themselves considered to have become part of the deity. They repeat the phrase ‘Sevoham,’ which signifies ‘I am Siva.’

Another curious class of Gosains are the Rāwanvansis, who go about in the character of Rāwan, the demon king of Ceylon, as he was when he carried off Sīta. The legend is that in order to do this, Rāwan first sent his brother in the shape of a golden deer before Rāma’s palace. Sīta saw it and said she must have the head of the deer, and sent Rāma to kill it. So Rāma pursued it to the forest, and from there Rāwan cried out, imitating Rāma’s voice. Then Sīta thought Rāma was being attacked and told his brother Lachman to go to his help. But Lachman had been left [156]in charge of her by Rāma and refused to leave her, till Sīta said he was hoping Rāma would be killed, so that he might marry her. Then he drew a circle round her on the ground, and telling her not to step outside it until his return, went off. Then Rāwan took the disguise of a beggar and came and begged for alms from Sīta. She told him to come inside the magic circle and she would give him alms, but he refused. So finally Sīta came outside the circle, and Rāwan at once seized her and carried her off to Ceylon. The Rāwanvansi Gosains wear rings of hair all up their arms and a rope of hair round the waist, and the hair of their head hanging down. It would appear that they are intended to represent some animal. They smear vermilion on the forehead, and beg only at twilight and never at any other time, whether they obtain food or not. In begging they will never move backwards, so that when they have passed a house they cannot take alms from it unless the householder brings the gift to them.

Famous Gosain Mahant. Photograph taken after death

Unmarried Sanniāsis often reside in Maths or monasteries. The superior is called Mahant, and he appoints his successor by will from the members. The Mahant admits all those willing and qualified to enter the order. If the applicant is young the consent of the parents is usually obtained; and parents frequently vow to give a child to the order. Many convents have considerable areas of land attached to them, and also dependent institutions. The whole property of the convent and its dependencies seems to be at the absolute disposal of the Mahant, but he is bound to give food, raiment and lodging to the inmates, and he entertains all travellers belonging to the order.8

In former times the Gosains often became soldiers and entered the service of different military chiefs. The most famous of these fighting priests were the Nāga Gosains of the Jaipur State of Rājputāna, who are said to have been under an obligation from their guru or religious chief to fight for the Rāja of Jaipur whenever required. They received rent-free lands and pay of two pice (½d.) a day, which latter was put into a common treasury and expended on the purchase of arms and ammunition whenever needed [157]for war. They would also lend money, and if a debtor could not pay would make him give his son to be enrolled in the force. The 7000 Nāga Gosains were placed in the vanguard of the Jaipur army in battle. Their weapons were the bow, arrow, shield, spear and discus. The Gosain proprietor of the Deopur estate in Raipur formerly kept up a force of Nāga Gosains, with which he used to collect the tribute from the feudatory chiefs of Chhattīsgarh on behalf of the Rāja of Nāgpur. It is said that he once invaded Bastar with this object, where most of the Gosains died of cholera. But after they had fasted for three days, the goddess Danteshwari appeared to them and promised them her protection. And they took the goddess away with them and installed her in their own village in Raipur. Forbes records that in Gujarāt an English officer was in command of a troop known as the Gosain’s wife’s troops. These Nāga Gosains wore only a single white garment, like a sleeveless shirt reaching to the knees, and hence it is said that they were called naked. The Gosains and Bairāgis, or adherents of Siva and Vishnu, were often engaged in religious quarrels on the merits of their respective deities, and sometimes came to blows. A favourite point of rivalry was the right of bathing first in the Ganges on the occasion of one of the great religious fairs at Allahābād or Hardwār. The Gosains claim priority of bathing, on the ground that the Ganges flows from the matted locks of Siva; while the Bairāgis assert that the source of the river is from Vishnu’s foot. In 1760 a pitched battle on this question ended in the defeat of the Bairāgis, of whom 1800 were slain. Again in 1796 the Gosains engaged in battle with the Sikh pilgrims and were defeated with the loss of 500 men.9 During the reign of Akbar a combat took place in the Emperor’s presence between the two Sivite sects of Gosains, or Sanniāsis and Jogis, having been apparently arranged for his edification, to decide which sect had the best ground for its pretensions to supernatural power. The Jogis were completely defeated.10 [158]

A dead Sanniāsi is always buried in the sitting attitude of religious contemplation with the legs crossed. The grave may be dug with a side receptacle for the corpse so that the earth, on being filled in, does not fall on it. The corpse is bathed and rubbed with ashes and clad in a new reddish-coloured shirt, with a rosary round the neck. The begging-wallet with some flour and pulse are placed in the grave, and also a gourd and staff. Salt is put round the body to preserve it, and an earthen pot is put over the head. Sometimes cocoanuts are broken on the skull, to crack it and give exit to the soul. Perhaps the idea of burial and of preserving the corpse with salt is that the body of an ascetic does not need to be purified by fire from the appetites and passions of the flesh like that of an ordinary Hindu; it is already cleansed of all earthly frailty by his austerities, and the belief may therefore have originally been that such a man would carry his body with him to the afterworld or to absorption with the deity. The burial of a Sanniāsi is often accompanied with music and signs of rejoicing; Mr. Oman describes such a funeral in which the corpse was seated in a litter, open on three sides so that it could be seen; it was tied to the back of the litter, and garlands of flowers partly covered the body, but could not conceal the hideousness of death as the unconscious head rolled helplessly from side to side with the movement of the litter. The procession was headed by a European brass band and by men carrying censers of incense.11

Celibacy is the rule of the Gosain orders, and a man’s property passes in inheritance to a selected chela or disciple. But the practice of keeping women is very common, even outside the large section of the community which now recognises marriage. Women could be admitted into the order, when they had to shave their heads, assume the ochre-coloured shirt and rub their bodies with ashes. Afterwards, with the permission of the guru and on payment of a fine, they could let their hair grow again, at least temporarily. These women were supposed to remain quite chaste and live in nunneries, but many of them lived with men of the order. It is not known to what extent women are admitted at [159]present. The sons born of such unions would be adopted as chelas or disciples by other Gosains, and made their heirs by a reciprocal arrangement. Women who are convicted of some social offence, or who wish to leave their husbands, often join the order nominally and live with a Gosain or are married into the caste. Many of the wandering mendicants lead an immoral life, and scandals about their enticing away the wives of rich Hindus are not infrequent.12 During their visits to villages they also engage in intrigues, and a ribald Gond song sung at the Holi festival describes the pleasure of the village women at the arrival of a Gosain owing to the sexual gratification which they expected to receive from him.

Nevertheless the wandering Gosains have done much to foster and maintain the Hindu religion among the people. They are the gurus or spiritual preceptors of the middle and lower castes, and though their teaching may be of little advantage, it perhaps quickens and maintains to some extent the religious feelings of their clients. In former times the Gosains travelled over the wildest tracts of country, proselytising the primitive non-Aryan tribes, for whose conversion to Hinduism they are largely responsible. On such journeys they necessarily carried their lives in their hands, and not infrequently lost them.

The majority of the Gosains are, however, now married and form an ordinary caste. Buchanan states that the ten different orders became exogamous groups, the members of which married with each other, but it is doubtful whether this is the case at present. It is said that all Giri Gosains marry, whether they are mendicants or not, while the Bhārthi order can marry or not as they please. They prohibit any marriage between first cousins, but permit widow remarriage and divorce. They eat the flesh of all clean animals and also of fowls, and drink liquor, and will take cooked food from the higher castes, including Sunārs and Kunbis. Hence they do not rank high socially, and Brāhmans do not take water from them, but their religious character gives them some prestige. Many Gosains have become landholders, obtaining their estates either as charitable grants from clients or through moneylending transactions. In this capacity they do not [160]usually turn out well, and are often considered harsh landlords and grasping creditors.

Gowāri.1—The herdsman or grazier caste of the Marātha country, corresponding to the Ahīrs or Gaolis. The name is derived from gai or gao, the cow, and means a cowherd. The Gowāris numbered more than 150,000 persons in 1911, of whom nearly 120,000 belonged to the Nāgpur division and nearly 30,000 to Berār. In localities where the Gowāris predominate, Ahīrs or Gaolis, the regular herdsman caste, are found only in small numbers. The honorific title of the Gowāris is Dhare, which is said to mean ‘One who keeps cattle.’ The Gowāris rank distinctly below the Ahīrs or Gaolis. The legend of their origin is that an Ahīr, who was tending the cows of Krishna, stood in need of a helper. He found a small boy in the forest and took him home and brought him up. He then gave to the boy the work of grazing cows in the jungle, while he himself stayed at home and made milk and butter. This boy was the ancestor of the Gowāri caste. His descendants took to eating fowls and peacocks and drinking liquor, and hence were degraded below the Gaolis. But the latter will allow Gowāris to sit at their feasts and eat, they will carry the corpse of a Gowāri to the grave, and they will act as members of the panchāyat in readmitting a Gowāri who has been put out of caste. In the Marātha country any man who touches the corpse of a man of another caste is temporarily excommunicated, and the fact that a Gaoli will do this for a Gowāri demonstrates the close relationship of the castes. The legend, in fact, indicates quite clearly and correctly the origin of the Gowāris. The small boy in the forest was a Gond, and the Gowāri caste is of mixed descent from Ahīrs and Gonds. The Ahīrs or Gaolis of the Marātha country have largely abandoned the work of grazing cattle in the forest, and have taken to the more profitable business of making milk and ghī. The herdsman’s duties have been relegated to the mixed class of Gowāris, produced from the unions of Ahīrs and Gonds in the forests, and not improbably [161]including a considerable section of pure Gond blood. At present only Gaolis and no other caste are admitted into the Gowāri community, though there is evidence that the rule was not formerly so strict.

The Gowāris have three divisions, the Gai Gowāri, Inga, and Māria or Gond Gowāri. The Gai or cow Gowāris are the highest and probably have more Gaoli blood in them. The Inga and Māria or Gond Gowāris are more directly derived from the Gonds. Māria is the name given to a large section of the Gond tribe in Chānda. Both the other two subcastes will take cooked food from the Gai Gowāris and the Gond Gowāris from the Inga, but the Inga subcaste will not take it from the Gond, nor the Gai Gowāris from either of the other two. The Gond Gowāris have been treated as a distinct caste and a separate article is given on them, but at the census Mr. Marten has amalgamated them with the Gowāris. This is probably more correct, as they are locally held to be a branch of the caste. But their customs differ in some points from those of the other Gowāris. They will admit outsiders from any respectable caste and worship the Gond gods,2 and there seems no harm, therefore, in allowing the separate article on them to remain.

The Gowāris have exogamous sections of the titular and totemistic types, such as Chachania from chachan, a bird, Lohār from loha iron, Ambadāre a mango-branch, Kohria from the Kohri or Kohli caste, Sarwaina a Gond sept, and Rāwat the name of the Ahīr caste in Chhattīsgarh. Some septs do not permit intermarriage between their members, saying that they are Dūdh-Bhais or foster-brothers, born from the same mother. Thus the Chachania, Kohria, Senwaria, Sendua (vermilion) and Wāgare (tiger) septs cannot intermarry. They say that their fathers were different, but their mothers were related or one and the same. This is apparently a relic of polyandry, and it is possible that in some cases the Gonds may have allowed Ahīrs sojourning in the forest to have access to their wives during the period of their stay. If this was permitted to Ahīrs of different sections coming to the same Gond village in successive years, the offspring might be the ancestors of [162]sections who consider themselves to be related to each other in the manner of the Gowāri sections.

Marriage is prohibited within the same section or kur, and between sections related to each other as Dūdh-Bhais in the manner explained above. A man can marry his daughter to his sister’s son, but cannot take her daughter for his son. The children of two sisters cannot be married.

Girls are usually married after attaining maturity, and a bride-price is paid which is normally two khandis (800 lbs.) of grain, Rs. 16 to 20 in cash, and a piece of cloth. The auspicious date of the wedding is calculated by a Mahār Mohturia or soothsayer. Brāhmans are not employed, the ceremony being performed by the bhānya or sister’s son of either the girl’s father or the boy’s father. If he is not available, any one whom either the girl’s father or the boy’s father addresses as bhānja or nephew in the village, according to the common custom of addressing each other by terms of relationship, even though he may be no relative and belong to another caste, may be substituted; and if no such person is available a son-in-law of either of the parties. The peculiar importance thus attached to the sister’s son as a relation is probably a relic of the matriarchate, when a man’s sister’s son was his heir. The substitution of a son-in-law who might inherit in the absence of a sister’s son perhaps strengthens this view. The wedding is held mainly according to the Marātha ritual.3 The procession goes to the girl’s house, and the bridegroom is wrapped in a blanket and carries a spear, in the absence of which the wedding cannot be held. A spear is also essential among the Gonds. The ancestors of the caste are invited to the wedding by beating a drum and calling on them to attend. The original ancestors are said to be Kode Kodwan, the names of two Gond gods, Bāghoba (the tiger-god), and Meghnāth, son of Rāwan, the demon king of Ceylon, after whom the Gonds are called Rāwanvansi, or descendants of Rāwan. The wedding costs about Rs. 50, all of which is spent by the boy’s father. The girl’s father only gives a feast to the caste out of the amount which he receives as bride-price. Divorce and the remarriage of widows are permitted. [163]

The dead are either buried or burnt, burial being more common. The corpse is laid with head to the south and feet to the north. On returning from the funeral they go and drink at the liquor-shop, and then kill a cock on the spot where the deceased died, and offer some meat to his spirit, placing it outside the house. The caste-fellows sit and wait until a crow comes and pecks at the food, when they think that the deceased has enjoyed it, and begin to eat themselves. If no crow comes before night the food may be given to a cow, and the party can then begin to eat. When the next wedding is held in the family, the deceased is brought down from the skies and enshrined among the deified ancestors.

The principal deities of the Gowāris are the Kode Kodwan or deified ancestors. They are worshipped at the annual festivals, and also at weddings. When a man or woman dies without children their spirits are known as Dhal, and are worshipped in the families to which they belonged. A male Dhal is represented by a stick of bamboo with one cross-piece at the top, and a female Dhal by a stick with two others crossing each other lashed to it at the top. These sticks are worshipped at the Diwāli festival, and carried in procession. Dudhera is a godling worshipped for the protection of cattle. He is represented by a clay horse placed near a white ant-hill. If a cow stops giving milk her udder is smoked with the burning wood of a tree called sānwal, and this is supposed to drive away the spirits who drink the milk from the udder. All Gowāris revere the haryal, or green pigeon. They say that it gives a sound like a Gowāri calling his cows, and that it is a kinsman. They would on no account kill this bird. They say that the cows will go to a tree from which green pigeons are cooing, and that on one occasion when a thief was driving away their cows a green pigeon cooed from a tree, and the cows turned round and came back again. This is like the story of the sacred geese at Rome, who gave warning of the attack of the Goths.

The head of the caste committee is known as Shendia, from shendi, a scalp-lock or pig-tail, perhaps because he is at the top of the caste as the scalp-lock is at the top of the [164]head. The Shendia is elected, and holds office for life. He has to readmit offenders into caste by being the first to eat and drink with them, thus taking their sins on himself. On such occasions it is necessary to have a little opium, which is mixed with sugar and water, and distributed to all members of the caste. If the quantity is insufficient for every one to drink, the man responsible for preparing it is fined, and this mixture, especially the opium, is indispensable on all such occasions. The custom indicates that a sacred or sacrificial character is attributed to the opium, as the drinking of the mixture together is the sign of the readmission of a temporary outcaste into the community. After this has been drunk he becomes a member of the caste, even though he may not give the penalty feast for some time afterwards. The Ahīrs and Sunārs of the Marātha country have the same rite of purification by the common drinking of opium and water. A caste penalty is incurred for the removal of bitāl or impurity arising from the usual offences, and among others for touching the corpse of a man of any other caste, or of a buffalo, horse, cow, cat or dog, for using abusive language to a casteman at any meeting or feast, and for getting up from a caste feast without permission from the headman. For touching the corpse of a prohibited animal and for going to jail a man has to get his head, beard and whiskers shaved. If a woman becomes with child by a man of another caste, she is temporarily expelled, but can be readmitted after the child has been born and she has disposed of it to somebody else. Such children are often made over for a few rupees to Muhammadans, who bring them up as menial servants in their families, or, if they have no child of their own, sometimes adopt them. On readmission a lock of the woman’s hair is cut off. In the same case, if no child is born of the liaison, the woman is taken back with the simple penalty of a feast. Permanent expulsion is imposed for taking food from, or having an intrigue with a member of an impure caste as Mādgi, Mehtar, Pardhān, Mahār and Māng.

The Gowāris eat pork, fowls, rats, lizards and peacocks, and abstain only from beef and the flesh of monkeys, crocodiles and jackals. They will take food from a Māna, [165]Marār or Kohli, and water from a Gond. Kunbis will take water from them, and Gonds, Dhīmars and Dhobis will accept cooked food. All Gowāri men are tattooed with a straight vertical line on the forehead, and many of them have the figures of a peacock, deer or horse on the right shoulder or on both shoulders. A man without the mark on the forehead will scarcely be admitted to be a true Gowāri, and would have to prove his birth before he was allowed to join a caste feast. Women are tattooed with a pattern of straight and crooked lines on the right arm below the elbow, which they call Sīta’s arm. They have a vertical line standing on a horizontal one on the forehead, and dots on the temples. [166]

Gūjar.—A great historical caste who have given their name to the Gujarāt District and the town of Gujarānwāla in the Punjab, the peninsula of Gujarāt or Kāthiāwār and the tract known as Gūjargarh in Gwālior. In the Central Provinces the Gūjars numbered 56,000 persons in 1911, of whom the great majority belonged to the Hoshangābād and Nimār Districts. In these Provinces the caste is thus practically confined to the Nerbudda Valley, and they appear to have come here from Gwālior probably in the middle of the sixteenth century, to which period the first important influx of Hindus into this area has been ascribed. But some of the Nimār Gūjars are immigrants from Gujarāt. Owing to their distinctive appearance and character and their exploits as cattle-raiders, the origin of the Gūjars has been the subject of much discussion. General Cunningham identified them with the Yueh-chi or Tochāri, the tribe of Indo-Scythians who invaded India in the first century of the Christian era. The king Kadphises I. and his successors belonged to the Kushān section of the Yueh-chi tribe, and their rule extended over north-western India down to Gujarāt in the period 45–225 A.D. Mr. V. A. Smith, however, discards this theory and considers the Gūjars or Gurjaras to have been a branch of the white Huns who [167]invaded India in the fifth and sixth centuries. He writes:1 “The earliest foreign immigration within the limits of the historical period which can be verified is that of the Sakas in the second century B.C.; and the next is that of the Yueh-chi and Kushāns in the first century A.D. Probably none of the existing Rājpūt clans can carry back their genuine pedigrees so far. The third recorded great irruption of foreign barbarians occurred during the fifth century and the early part of the sixth. There are indications that the immigration from Central Asia continued during the third century, but, if it did, no distinct record of the event has been preserved, and, so far as positive knowledge goes, only three certain irruptions of foreigners on a large scale through the northern and north-western passes can be proved to have taken place within the historical period anterior to the Muhammadan invasions of the tenth and eleventh centuries. The first and second, as above observed, were those of the Sakas and Yueh-chi respectively, and the third was that of the Hūnas or white Huns. It seems to be clearly established that the Hun group of tribes or hordes made their principal permanent settlements in the Punjab and Rājputāna. The most important element in the group after the Huns themselves was that of the Gurjaras, whose name still survives in the spoken form Gūjar as the designation of a widely diffused middle-class caste in north-western India. The prominent position occupied by Gurjara kingdoms in early mediaeval times is a recent discovery. The existence of a small Gurjara principality in Bharōch (Broach), and of a larger state in Rājputāna, has been known to archaeologists for many years, but the recognition of the fact that Bhoja and the other kings of the powerful Kanauj dynasty in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries were Gurjaras is of very recent date and is not yet general. Certain misreadings of epigraphic dates obscured the true history of that dynasty, and the correct readings have been established only within the last two or three years. It is now definitely proved that Bhoja (circ. A.D. 840–890), his predecessors and successors belonged to the Pratihāra (Parihār) clan of the Gurjara tribe or caste, and, consequently, [168]that the well-known clan of Parihār Rājpūts is a branch of the Gurjara or Gūjar stock.”2

Gūjar village proprietress and her land agent

Sir J. Campbell identified the Gūjars with the Khazar tribe of Central Asia:3 “What is known of the early history of the Gujaras in India points to their arrival during the last quarter of the fifth or the first quarter of the sixth century (A.D. 470–520). That is the Gujaras seem to have formed part of the great horde of which the Juān-Juān or Avārs, and the Ephthalites, Yetas or White Hūnas were leading elements. The question remains: How far does the arrival of the Gujara in India, during the early sixth century, agree with what is known of the history of the Khazar? The name Khazar appears under the following forms: Among Chinese as Kosa, among Russians as Khwalisses, among Byzantines as Chozars or Chazars, among Armenians as Khazirs and among Arabs as Khozar. Other variations come closer to Gujara. These are Gazar, the form Kazar takes to the north of the sea of Asof; Ghysar, the name for Khazars who have become Jews; and Ghusar, the form of Khazar in use among the Lesghians of the Caucasus. Howarth and the writer in the Encyclopædia Britannica follow Klaproth in holding that the Khazars are the same as the White Hūnas....

“Admitting that the Khazar and White Hūna are one, it must also be the case that the Khazars included two distinct elements, a fair or Ak-Khazar, the Akatziroi or Khazaroi of Byzantine historians, and a dark or Kāra Khazar. The Kāra Khazar was short, ugly and as black as an Indian. He was the Ughrian nomad of the steppes, who formed the rank and file of the army. The White Khazar or White Hūna was fair-skinned, black-haired and beautiful, their women (in the ninth and tenth centuries) being sought after in the bazārs of Bāghdād and Byzantium. According to Klaproth, a view adopted by the writer in the Encyclopædia Britannica, the White Khazar represented the white race [169]which, since before Christ has been settled round the Caspian. As White Hūnas, Ephthalites,4 White Ughrians and White Bulgars, this white race were the carriers between Europe and East Asia; they were also the bearers of the brunt of the Tartar inroads. A trace both of the beautiful and coarse clans seems to survive in the complimentary Mārwār proverb, ‘Handsome as a Hūna,’ and in the abusive Gujarāt proverb, ‘Yellow and short as a Hūna’s beard.’ Under its Hindu form Gurjara, Khazar appears to have become the name by which the great bulk of the sixth-century horde was known.” Sir J. Campbell was of opinion that the Sesodia or Gahlot Rājpūts, the most illustrious of all the clans, were of Gūjar stock, as well as the Parihār, Chauhān, and Chalukya or Solankī; these last were three of the Agnikula clans or those created from the firepit,5 and a Solankī dynasty ruled in Gujarāt. He also considered the Nāgar Brāhmans of Gujarāt to be derived from the Gūjars and considerable sections of the Ahīr and Kunbi castes. The Badgūjar (great Gūjar) clan of Rājpūts is no doubt also an aristocratic branch of the caste. In Ajmere it is said that though all Gūjars are not Rājpūts, no Rājpūt becomes a hero unless he is suckled by a Gūjar woman. Gūjarika dudh, nāhari ka dudh; or ‘Gūjar’s milk is tiger’s milk.’ A Rājpūt who has not been suckled by a Gūjar woman is a gidar or jackal.6

The fact of the White Huns being tall and of fine features, in contrast to the horde which invaded Europe under Attila, accounts for these characteristics being found among the highest Rājpūt clans, who, as has been seen, are probably derived from them. The Gūjar caste generally is now, however, no doubt of mixed and impure blood. They were distinguished in the past as vagrant and predatory marauders, and must have assimilated various foreign elements. Mr. Crooke writes of them:7 “The Gūjars as a tribe have always been noted for their turbulence and habit of [170]cattle-stealing. Bābar in his Memoirs describes how the commander of the rearguard captured a few Gūjar ruffians who followed the camp, decapitated them and sent their heads to the Emperor. The Gūjars of Pāli and Pāhal became exceedingly audacious while Sher Shāh was fortifying Delhi, and he marched to the hills and expelled them so that not a vestige of their habitations was left. Jahāngīr remarks that the Gūjars live chiefly on milk and curds and seldom cultivate land; and Bābar says: ‘Every time I entered Hindustān the Jāts and Gūjars have regularly poured down in prodigious numbers from the hills and wilds to carry off oxen and buffaloes. These were the wretches that really inflicted the chief hardships and were guilty of the chief oppression in the country.’ They maintained their old reputation in the Mutiny when they perpetrated numerous outrages and seriously impeded the operations of the British Army before Delhi.” In northern India the Gūjars are a pastoral caste. The saying about them is—

or, ‘The Ahīr, Gadaria and Gūjar want waste land’; that is for grazing their flocks. In Kāngra the Gūjars generally keep buffaloes. Here they are described as “A fine, manly race with peculiar and handsome features. They are mild and inoffensive in manner, and in these hills are not distinguished by the bad pre-eminence which attaches to their race in the plains.”8 Sir D. Ibbetson had a very unfavourable opinion of the Gūjars of the plains, of whom he wrote as follows:9 “The Gūjar is a fine stalwart fellow, of precisely the same physical type as the Jāt; and the theory of aboriginal descent which has been propounded is to my mind conclusively negatived by his cast of countenance. He is of the same social standing as the Jāt, or perhaps slightly inferior; but the two eat and drink in common without any scruple, and the proverb says: ‘The Jāt, Gūjar, Ahīr and Gola are all hail fellow well met.’ But he is far inferior [171]in both personal character and repute to the Jāt. He is lazy to a degree, and a wretched cultivator; his women, though not secluded, will not do field-work save of the lightest kind; while his fondness for cattle extends to those of other people. The difference between a Gūjar and a Rājpūt cattle-thief was once explained to me thus by a Jāt: ‘The Rājpūt will steal your buffalo. But he will not send his old father to say he knows where it is and will get it back for Rs. 20, and then keep the Rs. 20 and the buffalo too. The Gūjar will.’”

The Gūjars of the Central Provinces have, however, entirely given up the predatory habits of their brethren in northern India and have developed into excellent cultivators and respectable law-abiding citizens. In Hoshangābād they have three subcastes, Lekha, Mundle and Jādam. The Mundle or ‘Shaven’ are so called because they take off their turbans when they eat and expose their crowns bare of hair, while the Lekha eat with their turbans on. The Mundle are also known as Rewe, from the Rewa or Nerbudda, near which they reside. The Jādam are probably an offshoot from the cultivating caste of Hoshangābād of that name, Jādam being a corruption of Jādubansi, a tribe of Rājpūts. The Badgūjars, who belong to Nimār, consider themselves the highest, deriving their name from bara or ‘great’ Gūjar. As already seen, there is a Badgūjar clan of Rājpūts. The Nimār Badgūjars, however, were formerly engaged in the somewhat humble calling of clearing cotton of its seeds, and on this account they are also known as Ludhāre, the word lodhna meaning to work the hand-ginning machine (charkhi). It seems possible that the small caste of Lorhas of the Hoshangābād District, whose special avocation is to grow san-hemp, may be derived from these Ludhāre Gūjars. The Kekre or Kanwe subcaste are the lowest and are of illegitimate descent. They are known as Kekre or ‘Crabs,’ but prefer their other name. They will take food from the other subcastes, but these do not return the compliment. Another group in the Sohāgpur Tahsīl of Hoshangābād are the Lilorhia Gūjars. They say that their ancestors were grazing calves when some of them with their herdsmen were stolen by Brahma. [172]Then Krishna created fresh cowherds and the Lilorhias were made from the sweat of his forehead (lilat). Afterwards Brahma restored the original cowherds, who were known as Murelia, because they were the first players on the murli or flute.10 The Badgūjars or highest branch of the clan are descendants of these Murelias. The caste have also a set of exogamous groups, several of which bear the names of Rājpūt clans, while others are called after villages, titles or nicknames or natural objects. A man is not permitted to marry any one belonging either to his own sept or that of his mother or grandmother.

At a Gūjar wedding four plough-yokes are laid out to form a square under the marriage booth, with a copper pot full of water in the centre. At the auspicious moment the bride’s hand is placed on that of the bridegroom, and the two walk seven times round the pot, the bridegroom leading for the first four rounds and the bride for the last three. Widows are allowed to remarry, and, as girls are rather scarce in the caste, a large price is often paid for the widow to her father or guardian, though this is not willingly admitted. As much as Rs. 3000 is recorded to have been paid. A widow marriage is known as Nātra or Pāt. A woman is forbidden to marry any relative of her first husband. When the marriage of a widow is to take place a fee of Rs. 1–4 must be paid to the village proprietor to obtain his consent. The Gūjars of the Bulandshahr District of the United Provinces furnish, Mr. Crooke says,11 perhaps the only well-established instance of polyandry among the Hindus of the plains. Owing to the scarcity of women in the caste it was customary for the wife of one brother, usually the eldest, to be occasionally at the disposal of other unmarried brothers living in the house. The custom arose owing to the lack of women caused by the prevalence of female infanticide, and now that this has been stopped it is rapidly dying out, while no trace of it is believed to exist in the Central Provinces.

The bodies of unmarried persons are buried, and also [173]of those who die of any epidemic disease. Others are cremated. The funeral of an elderly man of good means and family is an occasion for great display. A large feast is given and the Brāhman priests of the caste go about inviting all the Gūjars to attend. Sometimes the number of guests rises to three or four thousand. At the conclusion of the feast one of the hosts claps his hands and all the guests then get up and immediately depart without ceremony or saying farewell. Such an occasion is known as Gūjarwāda, and the Gūjars often spend as much, or more, on a funeral as on a wedding, in the belief that the outlay is of direct benefit to the dead man’s spirit. This idea is inculcated and diligently fostered by the family priests and those Brāhmans who receive gifts for the use of the dead, the greed of these cormorants being insatiable.

The household goddess of the caste is known as Kul Devi, the word kul meaning family. To her a platform is erected inside the house, and she must be worshipped by the members of the family alone, no stranger being present. Offerings of cocoanuts, rice, turmeric and flowers are made to her, but no animal sacrifices. When a son of the family dies unmarried, an image of him, known as Mujia, is made on a piece of silver, copper or brass, and is worshipped on Mondays and Fridays during the month of Māgh (January). On one of these days also a feast is given to the caste. Each member of the caste has a guru or spiritual preceptor, who visits him every second or third year and receives a small present of a cocoanut or a piece of cloth. But he does not seem to perform any duties. The guru may belong to any of the religious mendicant castes. A man who is without a guru is known as Nugra and is looked down on. To meet him in the morning is considered unlucky and portends misfortune. Sir C. Elliot12 characterised the Mundle Gūjars as “A very religious race; they never plough on the new moon nor on the 8th of the month, because it is Krishna’s birthday. Their religious and social head is the Mahant of the Rāmjidās temple at Hoshangābād.” In Nimār many of the Gūjars belong to the Pīrzāda sect, [174]which is a kind of reformed creed, based on a mixture of Hinduism and Islām.

The Gūjars wear the dress of northern India and their women usually have skirts (lahenga) and not sāris or body-cloths. Married women have a number of strings of black beads round the neck and widows must change these for red ones. As a rule neither men nor women are tattooed. The men sometimes have their hair long and wear beards and whiskers. The Gūjars are now considered the best cultivators of the Nimār District. They are fond of irrigation and sink unfaced wells to water their land and get a second crop off it. They are generally prosperous and make good landlords. Members of the caste have the custom of lending and borrowing among themselves and not from outsiders, and this no doubt conduces to mutual economy and solvency. Like keen cultivators elsewhere, such as the Panwārs and Kurmis, the Gūjar sets store by having a good house and good cattle. The return from a Mundle Gūjar’s wedding, Captain Forsyth wrote,13 is a sight to be seen. Every Gūjar from far and near has come with his whole family in his best bullock-cart gaily ornamented, and, whatever the road may be, nothing but a smash will prevent a breakneck race homewards at full gallop, cattle which have won in several such races acquiring a much coveted reputation throughout the District. [175]

Gurao.1—A caste of village priests of the temples of Mahādeo in the Marātha Districts. They numbered about 14,000 persons in the Central Provinces and Berār in 1911. The Guraos say that they were formerly Brāhmans and worshippers of Siva, but for some negligence or mistake in his ritual they were cursed by the god and degraded from the status of Brāhmans, though subsequently the god relented and permitted them to worship him and take the offerings made to him.

Guraos with figures made at the Holi festival called Gangour

It is related that a certain Brāhman, who was a votary of Siva, had to go on a journey. He left his son behind and strictly enjoined on him to perform the worship of the god at midday. The son had bathed and purified himself for this purpose, when shortly before midday his wife came to him and so importuned him to have conjugal intercourse with her that he was obliged to comply. It was then midday and in his impure condition the son went to the shrine of the god to worship him. But Siva cursed him and said that his descendants should be degraded from the status of Brāhmans, though he afterwards relented so far as to permit of their continuing to act as his priests; and this was the origin of the Guraos. It seems doubtful, [176]however, whether the caste are really of Brāhman origin. They were formerly village priests, and Grant-Duff gives the Gurao as one of the village menials in the Marātha villages. They have the privilege of taking the Naivedya or offerings of cooked food made to the god Mahādeo, which Brāhmans will not accept. They also sell leaf-plates and flowers and bel leaves2 which are offered at the temples of Mahādeo; and on the festival of Shivrātri and during the month of Shrāwan (July) they take round the bel leaves which the cultivators require for their offerings and receive presents in return. In Wardha the Guraos get small gifts of grain from the cultivators at seed-time and harvest. They also act as village musicians and blow the conch-shell, beat the drum and play other musical instruments for the morning and evening worship at the temple. They play on the cymbals and drums at the marriages of Brāhmans and other high castes. In the Bombay Presidency3 some are astrologers and fortune-tellers, and others make the bāsing or coronet of flowers which the bridegroom wears. Sometimes they play on the drum or fiddle for their spiritual followers, the dancing-girls or Kalāvants. When a dancing-girl became pregnant she worshipped the Gurao, and he, in return, placed the missi or tooth-powder made from myrobalans on her teeth. If this was not done before her child was born, a Kalāvantin was put out of caste. In some localities the Guraos will take food from Kunbis. And further, as will be seen subsequently, the caste have no proper gotras or exogamous sections, but in arranging their marriages they simply avoid persons having a common surname. All these considerations point to the fact that the caste is not of Brāhmanical origin but belongs to a lower class of the population. Nevertheless in Wardha they are known as Shaiva Brāhmans and rank above the Kunbis. They may study the Sāma Veda only and not the others, and may repeat the Rudra Gayatri or sacred verse of Siva. Clearly the Brāhmans could not accept the offerings of cooked food made at Siva’s shrine; though the larger temples of this deity have Brāhman priests. It seems uncertain whether [177]Siva or Mahādeo was first a village deity and was subsequently exalted to the position of a member of the supreme Hindu Trinity, or whether the opposite process took place and the Guraos obtained their priestly functions on his worship being popularised. But in any case it would appear that they were originally a class of village priests regarded as the servants of the cultivating community, by whose gifts and offerings they were maintained. Grant-Duff in enumerating the village servants says: “Ninth, the Gurao, who is a Sūdra employed to wash the ornaments and attend the idol in the village temples, and on occasions of feasting to prepare the patraoli or leaves which the Hindus substitute for plates. They are also trumpeters by profession and in this capacity are much employed in Marātha armies.”4

The caste has several subdivisions which are principally of a territorial nature, as Warāde from Berār; Jhāde, inhabitants of the forest or rice country; Telanga, of the Telugu country; Dakshne, from the Deccan; Mārwāri, from Mārwār, and so on. Other subcastes are the Ahīr and Jain Guraos, of whom the former are apparently Ahīrs who have adopted the priestly profession, while the Jain Guraos are held in Bombay to be the descendants of Jain temple servants who entered the caste when their own deities were thrown out and their shrines annexed by the votaries of Siva.5 In Bombay, Mr. Enthoven states “That the Koli and Marātha ministrants at the temples of Siva and other deities often describe themselves as Guraos, but they have not formed themselves into separate castes and are members of the general Koli or Marātha community. They cease to call themselves Guraos when they cease to minister at temples.”6 In the Central Provinces one of the subcastes is known as Vājantri because they act as village musicians. The caste have no regular exogamous sections, but a number of surnames which answer the same purpose. These are of a professional type, as Lokhandes, an iron-dealer; Phulzares, a maker of fireworks; Sontake, a gold-merchant; Gaikwād, [178]a cowherd; Nākade, long-nosed, and so on. They say they all belong to the same gotra, Sānkhiāyan, named after Sānkhiāya Rishi, the ancestor of the caste.

Marriage is avoided between persons having the same surname and those within six degrees of descent from a common ancestor whether male or female. The marriage ceremony generally resembles that of the Brāhmans. Before the wedding the bridegroom’s father prepares an image of Siva from rice and til-seed,7 covers it with a cloth and sends it to the bride’s house. In return her mother prepares and sends back a similar image of Gauri, Siva’s consort. Girls are married as infants, and when a woman arrives at adolescence the following ritual is observed: She goes to her husband’s house and is there secluded for three or four days while her impurity lasts. On its termination she is bathed and clothed in a green dress and yellow choli or breast-cloth, and seated in a gaily decked wooden frame. Her lap is filled with wheat and a cocoanut, and her female friends and relatives and father and father-in-law give her presents of sweets and clothes. This is known as the Shāntik ceremony and is practised by the higher castes in the Marātha country. It may continue for as long as sixteen days. Finally, on an auspicious day the bride and bridegroom are given delicate food and dressed in new clothes. The fire sacrifice is offered and they are taken into a room where a bed, the gift of the bride’s parents, has been prepared for them, and left to consummate the marriage. This is known as Garbhādhān. Next day the bride’s parents give new clothes and a feast to the bridegroom’s family; this feast is known as Godai, and after giving it the bride’s parents may eat at their daughter’s house. A girl seduced by a man of the caste may be properly married to him after her parents have performed Prāyaschit or atonement. But if she has a child out of wedlock, he is relegated to the Vidūr or illegitimate group. Even if a girl be seduced by a stranger, provided he be of higher or equal caste, as the Kunbis and Marāthas, she may be taken back into the community.

If a child is born at an unlucky season, they take two winnowing-fans and tie the baby between them with a thread [179]wound many times round about. A cow is brought and made to lick the child, which is thus supposed to have been born again from it as a calf, the evil omen of the first birth being removed. The father performs the fire sacrifice, and a human figure is made from cooked rice and worshipped. A burning wick is placed in its stomach and it is taken out and left at cross-roads, this being probably a substitute for the member of the family whose death was presaged by the untimely birth of the child. Similarly if any one dies at the astronomical period known as Panchak, they make five figures of wheat-flour and burn or bury them with the body, as it is thought that otherwise five members of the family would die.

Boys are invested with the sacred thread at the age of five, seven or nine years, and until that time they are considered to be Sūdras and not members of the caste. From a hundred to three hundred rupees may be spent on the investiture. On the day before the ceremony a Brāhman and his wife are invited to take food, and a yellow thread with a mango leaf is tied round the boy’s wrist. The spirits of other boys who died before their thread ceremony was performed and of women of the family who died before their husbands are invited to attend. These are represented by young boys and married women of other families who come to the house and are bathed and anointed with turmeric and oil, and given presents of sugar and new clothes. Next day the initiate is seated on a platform in a shed erected for the purpose and puts on the sacred thread made of cotton and also a strip of the skin of the black-buck with a silk apron and cap. The boy’s father takes him on his lap and whispers or, as the Hindus say, blows the Gāyatri mantra or sacred text into his ear. A sacrifice is performed, and the friends and fellow-castemen of the family make presents to the boy of copper and silver coin. The amount thus given is not used by the parents, but is spent on the boy’s education or on the purchase of an ornament for him. On the conclusion of the ceremony the boy mounts a wooden model of a horse and pretends to set out for Benāres. His paternal uncle then says to him, ‘Why are you going away?’ And the boy replies, ‘Because you have not married me.’ His uncle [180]then promises to find a bride for him and he gives up his project. The part played by the maternal uncle in this ceremony is probably a survival of the period of the matriarchate, when a man’s property descended to his sister’s son. He would thus naturally claim the boy as a husband for his own daughter, and such a marriage apparently became customary and in course of time acquired binding force. And although all recollection of the rule of inheritance through women has long been forgotten, the marriage of a brother’s daughter to a sister’s son is still considered peculiarly suitable, and the idea that it is the duty of the maternal uncle to find a bride for his nephew appears to be simply a development of this. The above account also gives reason for supposing that the investiture with the sacred thread was originally a ceremony of puberty.

Group of Gurao musicians with their instruments

The dead are burnt and the ashes thrown into water or carried to the Ganges. A small piece of gold, two or three small pearls, and some basil leaves are put into the mouth, and flowers, red powder and betel leaves are spread over the corpse. The son or male heir of the deceased walks in front carrying fire in an earthen pot. At a small distance from the burning-ground, when the bearers change places, he picks up a stone, known as the life-stone or jivkhada. This is afterwards buried at the burning-ghāt until the priest comes to effect the purification of the mourners on the tenth day. It is then dug up, set up and worshipped, and thrown into a well. A man is burnt naked; a woman in a robe and bodice. The heads of widows are not shaved as a rule, but on the tenth day after her husband’s death a widow is asked whether she would like her head shaved; if she refuses, the people conclude that she intends to marry again. But if the deceased left no male heir to carry behind his bier the burning wood with which the funeral pyre is to be kindled, then the widow must be shaved before the funeral starts and perform this duty. If there is no male relative and no widow, the pot containing fire is tied to the bier. When the corpse of a woman who has died in child-bed is being carried to the burning-ground various rites are observed to prevent her spirit from becoming a Churel and troubling the living. [181]A lemon charmed by a magician is buried under the corpse and a man follows the body strewing the seeds of rala, while nails are driven into the threshold of the house.8

The caste has now a fairly high social status and ranks above the Kunbis. They abstain from all flesh and from liquor and will take food only from the hands of a Marātha Brāhman, while Kunbis and other cultivating and serving castes will accept food from their hands. They worship Siva principally on Mondays, this day being sacred to the deity, who carries the moon as an ornament on his head, crowning the matted locks from which the Ganges flows.

Of the Jain Guraos Mr. Enthoven quotes the following interesting description from the Bombay Gazetteer: “They are mainly servants in village temples which, though dedicated to Brāhmanic gods, have still by their sides broken remains of Jain images. This, and the fact that most of the temple land-grants date from a time when Jainism was the State religion, support the theory that the Jain Guraos are probably Jain temple servants who have come under the influence partly of Lingāyatism and partly of Brāhmanism. A curious survival of their Jainism occurs at Dasahra, Shimga and other leading festivals, when the village deity is taken out of the temple and carried in procession. On these occasions, in front of the village god’s palanquin, three, five or seven of the villagers, among whom the Gurao is always the leader, carry each a long, gaily-painted wooden pole resting against their right shoulder. At the top of the pole is fastened a silver mask or hand and round it is draped a rich silk robe. Of these poles, the chief one, carried by the Gurao, is called the Jain’s pillar, Jainācha khāmb.” [182]

Halba, Halbi.1—A caste of cultivators and farmservants whose home is the south of the Raipur District and the Kānker and Bastar States; from here small numbers of them have spread to Bhandāra and parts of Berār. In 1911 they numbered 100,000 persons in the combined Provinces. The Halbas have several stories relating to their own origin. One of these, reported by Mr. Gokul Prasād, is as follows: One of the Uriya Rājas had erected four scarecrows in his field to keep off the birds. One night Mahādeo and Pārvati were walking on the earth and happened to pass that way, and Pārvati saw them and asked what they were. When it was explained to her she thought that as they had excited her interest something should be done for them, and at her request Mahādeo gave them life [183]and they became two men and two women. Next morning they presented themselves before the Rāja and told him what had happened. The Rāja said, “Since you have come on earth, you must have a caste. Run after Mahādeo and find out what caste you should belong to.” So they ran after the god and inquired of him, and he said that as they had excited his and Pārvati’s attention by waving in the wind they should be called Halba, from halna, to wave. This story is clearly based on one of those fanciful punning derivations so dear to the Brāhmanical mind, but the legend about being created from scarecrows is found among other agricultural castes of non-Aryan origin, as the Lodhis. The story continues that the reason why the Halbas came to settle in Bastar and Kānker was that they had accompanied one of the Rājas of Jagannāth in Orissa, who was afflicted with leprosy, to the Sihāwa jungles, where he proposed to pass the rest of his life in retirement. On a certain day the Rāja went out hunting with his dogs, one of which was quite white. This dog jumped into a spring of water and came out with his white skin changed to copper red. The Rāja, observing this miracle, bathed in the spring himself and was cured of his leprosy. He then wished to return to Orissa, but the Halbas induced him to remain in his adopted country, and he became the ancestor of the Rājas of Kānker. The Halbas are still the household servants of the Kānker family, and when a fresh chief succeeds, one of them, who has the title of Kapardār, takes him to the temple and invests him with the Durbār kī poshak or royal robes, affixing also the tīka or badge of office on his forehead with turmeric, rice and sandalwood, and rubbing his body over with ottar of roses. Until lately the Kapardār’s family had a considerable grant of rent-free land, but this has now been taken away. A Halba is or was also the priest of the temple at Sihāwa, which is said to have been built by the first Rāja over the spring where he was healed of his leprosy. The Halbas are also connected with the Rājas of Bastar, and a suggestion has been made2 that they originally belonged to the Telugu country and came with the Rājas of Bastar from Warangal in the Deccan. Mr. Gilder derives [184]the name from an old Canarese word Halbar or Halbaru, meaning ‘old ones or ancients’ or ‘primitive inhabitants.’ The Halba dialect, however, contains no traces of Canarese, and on the question of their entering Bastar with the Rājas, Rai Bahādur Panda Baijnāth, Diwān of Bastar, writes as follows: In the following saying relating to the coming of the Bastar Rājas, which is often repeated, the Halba’s name does not occur:

Which may be rendered: “The Rāja was of the Chalki race.3 The drum was called Dibdibi. Kosaria Rāwat, Pita Bhatra, Peng Parja and Rāja Muria,4 these four castes came with the Rāja. The tribute paid (to the Rāja) was a comb of tendu wood and a lava quail.” This doggerel rhyme is believed to recall the circumstances of the immigration of the Bastar Rājas. So the Halbas did not perhaps come with the Rāja, but they were his guards for a long time. In the Dasahra ceremony a Halba carried the royal Chhatra or Umbrella, and the Rāja walked under the protection of another Halba’s naked sword. A Halba’s widows were not sold and his intestate property was not taken over by the Rāja.

Ploughing with cows and buffaloes in Chhattīsgarh

Thus the Halbas occupy a comparatively honourable position in Bastar. They are the highest local caste with the exception of the Brāhmans, the Dhākars or illegitimate descendants of Brāhmans, and a few Rājpūt families. The reason for this is no doubt that they have become landholders in the State, a position which it would not be difficult for them to acquire when their only rivals were the Gonds. They are moderately good cultivators, and in Dhamtari can hold their own with Hindus, so that they could well surpass the Gond. Traditions also remain in Bastar of a Halba revolt. It is said that during Rāja [185]Daryao Deo’s reign, about 125 years back, the Halbas rebelled and many were thrown down a waterfall ninety feet high, one only of these escaping with his life. The eyes of some were also put out as a punishment for the oppression they had exercised, and a stone inscription at Donger records the oath of fealty taken by the Halbas before the image of Danteshwari, the tutelary deity of Bastar, after their insurrection was put down in Samvat 1836 or A.D. 1779. The Halbas were thus a caste of considerable influence, since they could attempt to subvert the ruling dynasty. In Bhandāra again the caste have quite a different story, and say that they came from the United Provinces or, according to another version, the Makrai State, where they were of the status of Rājpūts and wore the sacred thread. There a girl of their family, of great beauty, was asked in marriage by a Muhammadan king. The father could not refuse the king, but would not give his daughter in marriage to one not of his own caste. So he fled south and took asylum with the Gond Rāja of Chānda, from whom the Halba zamīndārs subsequently received their estates. It seems unnecessary to attach any importance to this story; the tale of the beautiful daughter is most hackneyed, and the whole has probably been devised by the Brāhmans to give the Halba zamīndārs of Bhandāra a more respectable ancestry than they could claim if they admitted having come from Bastar, certainly no home of Rājpūts. But if this supposition is correct it is interesting to note how a legend may show a caste as originating in some place with which it never had any connection whatever; and it seems a necessary conclusion that no importance can be attached to such traditions without corroborating evidence.

The caste have local divisions known as Bastarha, Chhattīsgarhia and Marethia, according as they live in Bastar, Chhattīsgarh, or Bhandāra and the other Marātha Districts. The last two groups, however, intermarry, so only the Bastar Halbas really form a separate subcaste. But the caste is also everywhere divided into two groups of pure and mixed Halbas. These are known in Bastar and Chhattīsgarh as Purāit or Nekha, and Surāit or Nāyak, respectively, and in Bhandāra as Barpangat and Khālpangat or [186]those of good and bad stock. The Surāits or Khālpangats are said to be of mixed origin, born from Halba fathers and women of other castes. But in past times unions of Halba mothers and men of other castes were perhaps not less frequent. These two sets of groups do not intermarry. A Surāit Halba will take food from a Purāit, but the Purāits do not return the compliment; though in some localities they will accept food which does not contain salt. The two divisions will take water from each other and exchange leaf-pipes. In Bhandāra the Barpangat or pure Halbas have now further split into two groups, the zamīndāri families having constituted themselves into a separate subdivision; they practise hypergamy with the others, taking daughters from them in marriage but not giving their daughters to them. This is simply of a piece with their claim to be Rājpūts, hypergamy being a custom of northern India.

The exogamous sections of the caste afford further evidence of their mixed origin. Many of the names recorded are those of other castes, as Baretha (a washerman), Bhoyar (Bhoi or bearer), Rāwat (herdsman), Barhai (carpenter), Mālia (Māli or gardener), Dhākar (Vidūr or illegitimate Brāhman), Bhandāri (barber), Pardhān (Gond), Mānkar (title of various tribes), Sahara (Saonr), Kanderi (turner), Agri (Agarwāla Bania), Baghel (a sept of Rājpūts), Elmia (from Velama, Telugu cultivators), and Chalki and Ponwār (Chalukya and Panwār Rājpūts). It may be concluded that these groups are descended from ancestors of the caste after which they are named. There are also a number of territorial and titular names of the usual type, and many totemistic names, as Ghorapatia (a horse), Kawaliha (lotus), Aurila (tamarind), Lendia (a tree), Gohi (a lizard), Manjur (a peacock), Bhringrāj (a blackbird) and so on. In Bastar they revere the animal or plant after which their sept is named and will not kill or injure it. If a man accidentally kills his devak or sacred animal he will tear off a small piece of his cloth and throw it away to make a shroud for the corpse. A few of them will break their earthen pots as if a relative had died in their house, but this is not general. In Bastar the totemistic groups are named barags, and many men also belong to a thok, having some titular name which they use as a surname. Nowadays [187]marriage is avoided by persons having the same thok or surname as well as between those of the same barag.

In view of the information available the most probable theory of the origin of the Halbas is that they were a mixed caste, born of irregular alliances between the Uriya Rājas and their retainers with the women of their household servants and between the different servants themselves. Mr. Gokul Prasād points out that many of the names of Halba sections are those of the haguas or household menials of the Uriya chiefs. The Halbas, according to their own story, came here in attendance on one of the chiefs, and are still employed as household servants in Kānker and Bastar. They are clearly a caste of mixed origin as they still admit women of other castes married by Halba men into the community, and one of their two subcastes in each locality consists of families of impure descent. The Dhākars of Bastar are the illegitimate offspring of Brāhmans with women of the country who have grown into a caste, and Mr. Panda Baijnāth quotes a proverb, saying that ‘The Halbas and Dhākars form two portions of a bedsheet.’ Instances of other castes similarly formed are the Audhelias of Bilāspur, who are said to be the offspring of Daharia Rājpūts by their kept women, and the Bargāhs, descended from the nurses of Rājpūt families. The name Halba might be derived from hal, a plough, and be a variant for harwāha, the common term for a farmservant in the northern Districts. This derivation they give themselves in one of their stories, saying that their first ancestor was created from a sod of earth on the plough of Balarām or Haladhara, the brother of Krishna; and it has also the support of Sir G. Grierson. The caste includes no doubt a number of Gonds, Rāwats (herdsmen) and others, and it may be partly occupational, consisting of persons employed as farmservants by the Hindu settlers. The farmservant in Chhattīsgarh has a very definite position, his engagement being permanent and his wages consisting always in a fourth share of the produce, which is divided among them when several are employed. The caste have a peculiar dialect of their own, which Dr. Grierson describes as follows:5 [188]“Linguistic evidence also points to the fact that the Halbas are an aboriginal tribe, who have adopted Hinduism and an Aryan language. Their dialect is a curious mixture of Uriya, Chhattīsgarhi and Marāthi, the proportions varying according to the locality. In Bhandāra it is nearly all Marāthi, but in Bastar it is much more mixed and has some forms which look like Telugu.” If the home of the Halbas was in the debateable land between Chhattīsgarh and the Uriya country to the east and south of the Mahānadi, their dialect might, as Mr. Hīra Lāl points out, have originated here. They themselves give the ruined but once important city of Sihāwa on the banks of the Mahānadi in this tract as that of their first settlement; and Uriya is spoken to the east of Sihāwa and Marāthi to the west, while Chhattīsgarhi is the language of the locality itself and of the country extending north and south. Subsequently the Halbas served as soldiers in the armies of the Ratanpur kings and their position no doubt considerably improved, so that in Bastar they became an important landholding caste. Some of these soldiers may have migrated west and taken service under the Gond kings of Chānda, and their descendants may now be represented by the Bhandāra zamīndārs, who, however, if this theory be correct, have entirely forgotten their origin. Others took up weaving and have become amalgamated with the Koshti caste in Bhandāra and Berār.

Girls are not usually married until they are above ten years old, or nearly adult as age goes in India; but there is no rule on the subject. Many girls reach twenty without entering wedlock. If the parents are too poor to pay for their daughter’s marriage the neighbours will subscribe. In Bastar, however, the Uriya custom prevails, and an unmarried girl in whom the signs of puberty appear is put out of caste. In such a case her father marries her to a mahua tree. The strictness of the rule on this subject among the Uriyas is probably due to the strength of Brāhmanical influence, the priestly caste possessing more power and property in Sambalpur and Orissa than in almost any part of India. If a death occurs in the family of the bridegroom just before the date fixed for the wedding, and the ceremonies of purification cannot be completed prior to [189]it, the bride is formally wedded to an achar6 or mahua tree;7 the marriage crown is tied on to the tree, and the bride walks round it seven times. After the bridegroom’s purification the couple are taken to the same tree, and here the forehead of the bridegroom is marked with turmeric paste and rice. The couple sit one on each side of the tree, and the Tikāwan ceremony or presentation of gifts by the relatives and friends is performed, and the marriage is considered to be complete. If an unmarried girl goes wrong with an outsider of low caste she is expelled from the community; but if with a member of a caste from whom a Halba can take water she may be readmitted to caste, provided she has not eaten food cooked in an earthen pot from the hands of her seducer; but not if she has done so. If there be a child of the seducer she must wait until it be weaned and either taken by the putative father or given away to a Chamār or Gond. The girl can then be given in marriage to any Halba as a widow. Women of other castes married by Halbas are admitted into the community. This happens most frequently in the case of women of the Rāwat (herdsman) caste.

A match which is commonly arranged where practicable is that of a brother’s daughter to a sister’s son. And a man always shows a special regard and respect for his sister’s son, touching his feet as to a superior, while, whenever he desires to make a gift as an offering of thanks or atonement or as a meritorious action, the sister’s son is the recipient. At his death he usually leaves a substantial legacy, such as one or two buffaloes, to his sister’s son, the remainder of the property going to his own family. This recognition of a special relationship is probably a survival of the matriarchate, when property descended through women, and a sister’s son would be his uncle’s heir. Thus a man would naturally desire to marry his daughter to his nephew in order that she might participate in his property, and hence arose the custom of making this match, which is still the most favoured among the Halbas and Gonds, though [190]the reasons which led to it have been forgotten for several centuries.

Matches are usually arranged on the initiative of the boy’s father through a mutual friend who resides in the girl’s village, and is known as the Mahālia or matchmaker. When the contract is concluded the boy’s father sends a present of fixed quantities of grain to the girl, which are in the nature of a bride-price, and subsequently on an auspicious day selected by the family priest he and his friends proceed to the girl’s village. The girl meets them, standing at the entrance of the principal house, dressed in the new clothes sent on behalf of the bridegroom, and holding out her cloth for the reception of presents. The boy’s father goes up to her and smooths her hair with his hand, chucks her under the chin with his right hand, and makes a noise with his lips as if he were kissing her. He then touches her feet, places a rupee on the skirt of her cloth, and retires. The other members of his party follow his example, giving small presents of copper, and afterwards the women of the girl’s party treat the bridegroom in the same manner, but they actually kiss him (chūmna). Betrothals can be held only in the five months from Māgh (January) to Jeth (May), while marriages may be celebrated during the eight dry months. The auspicious date is selected by the Joshi or caste-priest, who is chosen by the community for his personal qualities. If the names of the couple do not point to an auspicious union the bridegroom’s name may be changed either temporarily or permanently. The Joshi takes two pieces of cloth, which should be torn from the scarf of the boy’s father, and ties up in each of them some rice, areca nuts, turmeric and dūb grass (Cynodon dactylon). One of these is marked with red lead, and is intended for the bride, and the other, which is left plain, is for the bridegroom. At the wedding some of this rice with pulse is placed with a twig of mahua in a hole in the marriage-shed and addressed: ‘You are the goddess Lachhmi; you have come to assist in the marriage.’

The Halbas, like the other lower castes of Chhattīsgarh, have two forms of wedding, known as the ‘Small’ and ‘Large,’ the former being held at the bridegroom’s house with curtailed [191]ceremonies, and being much cheaper than the latter or Hindu marriage proper, which is held at the bride’s house. The ‘small’ wedding is more popular among the Halbas, and for this the bride, accompanied by some of her girl and boy friends, arrives at the bridegroom’s village in the evening, her parents following her only on the third day. On entering the lands of the village her party begin singing obscene songs filled with abuse of the bridegroom’s parents and relatives. Nobody goes to receive or welcome them, and on reaching the bridegroom’s house they enter it without ceremony and sit down in the room where the family gods are kept. All this time they continue singing, and the musicians keep up a deafening din in accompaniment. Subsequently the bride’s party are shown to their lodging, known as the Dulhi-kuria or bride’s apartments, and here the bridegroom’s father visits her and washes her big toes first with milk and then with water. The practice of washing the feet of guests, which strikes strangely on our minds when we meet it in Scripture, was obviously a welcome attention when travellers went bare-footed, or at most wore sandals, and arrived at their journey’s end with the feet soiled and bruised by the rigours of the way. Another of the bridegroom’s friends pretends to act as a barber, and shaves all the bride’s men friends with a piece of straw as if it were a razor. For the marriage ceremony proper the bride and bridegroom stand facing each other by the marriage hut with a sheet held between them; the Joshi or caste-priest takes two lamps and mingles their flames, and the cloth between the couple being pulled down the bridegroom drags the bride over to him. If the wedding is held on a Sunday, Tuesday or Saturday the bridegroom stands facing the east, and if on a Monday, Thursday or Friday, to the north. After this the cloths of the couple are tied together, or the end of the bridegroom’s scarf is tucked in the bride’s waistcloth, and they go round the marriage-post seven times, the bride following the bridegroom throughout. A plough-yoke is then brought and placed close by the marriage-post and the couple take their seats on it, the bride sitting on the left of the bridegroom. The bundles of rice consecrated by the Joshi are given to them and they throw it over each other. The bridegroom [192]takes some red lead and smears the bride’s face with it, making a line from the end of her nose up across her forehead and along the parting of her hair. He says her name aloud and covers her head with her cloth. This signifies that she is a married woman, as in Chhattīsgarh unmarried girls go about with the head bare. After this the mother and father of the bride come and wash the feet of the couple with milk and water. This ceremony is known as Dharam Tīka, and after its completion the bride’s parents will take food in the bridegroom’s house, which they abstain from doing from the date of the betrothal up to this washing of the feet. It is on this account that they do not accompany the bride but only follow her on the third day, but the reason for the rule is by no means clear. On the following day more ceremonies are performed, and the friends of the couple touch their foreheads with rice and make presents to them of cowries. Last of all the bride’s parents come and give them cattle and other articles according to their means. These gifts are known as Tikāwan and remain the separate property of the bride which she can dispose of as she pleases. The ceremonies usually extend over four days, the wedding itself taking place on the third. The bride’s party then go home, leaving her with her husband, and after a week or so they return and take the couple to the bride’s house for the ceremony known as Pinar Dhawai or getting their yellow wedding clothes washed. The bridegroom stays here two or three weeks, and during this time he must work at building or repairing the walls of his father-in-law’s house. The custom of serving for a wife still obtains among the Halbas, and the above rule may perhaps indicate that it was once more general. At the end of the bridegroom’s visit his father-in-law gives him a new cloth and pair of shoes and sends him back to his parents’ house with his wife. The expenses of the wedding average about fifty rupees for the bridegroom’s family and from five to thirty rupees for the bride’s family.

After the wedding if the bride is grown up she lives with her husband at once; but if she is a child she goes back to her parents until her adolescence, when the ceremony of Pathoni or ‘Going away’ is performed. On this occasion [193]some people from the bridegroom’s home go to fetch her and their number must be even, so that when she returns with them the party may be an odd one, which is lucky. They take a new cloth for the bride and stay the night at her house; next morning the bride’s parents put some rice, pulse, oil and a comb in a basket for her, and she sets out with the party, wearing her new cloth. But when she gets outside the village this is taken off her and placed in the basket, which she has to carry on her head as far as her husband’s house. As she enters his village the people stretch a rope across the way and prevent her passage until her father-in-law gives them a present. On arriving at his house her feet are washed by her mother-in-law, and she is then made to cook the food brought in her basket. After a fortnight she again goes back to her parents’ house and stays with them for another year, before finally taking up her abode with her husband. It has been remarked that this return of a married woman to her parents’ house for such lengthened periods is likely to be a pregnant source of immorality, and the advantage of the custom has been questioned; the explanation may perhaps be that it is an outcome of the joint family system by which young married couples live with the bridegroom’s parents, and that the object is to accustom the girl gradually to the habits of a fresh household and the yoke, necessarily irksome, of her mother-in-law. The proverb with reference to a young wife, ‘If your husband loves you your mother-in-law can do nothing,’ indicates how formidable this may be in the event of any cooling of marital affection; and it is well known that if she does not please her husband’s family a young wife may be treated as little better than a slave. To throw a young girl, therefore, into a family of complete strangers is probably too severe a trial, and this is the reason of the goings and returnings of the bride after her wedding between her husband’s home and her own.

The remarriage of a widow must be held during the bright fortnight of the month, and on any odd day of the fortnight excluding the first. The couple are seated together on a yoke in a part of the courtyard cleaned with cowdung, and their clothes are tied together, while the [194]husband rubs vermilion on his wife’s hair. A bachelor should not take a widow in marriage, and if he does so he must at the same time also wed a maiden with the regular ceremony, as otherwise he is likely after death to become a masāan or evil spirit. In order to avoid this contingency a bachelor who espouses a widow in Kānker is first wedded to a spear. Turmeric and oil are rubbed on his body and on the spear, and he walks round it seven times. Divorce is freely permitted in Chhattīsgarh at the instance of either party and for the most trivial reasons, as a mere allegation of disagreement; but if a husband puts away his wife when she has not been unfaithful to him he must give her something for her support. In some localities no ceremony is performed at all, but a wife or husband who tires of wedlock simply leaves the other as the case may be. In Bastar a wife cannot divorce her husband. A divorced woman does not break her glass bangles until she marries again, when new ones are given to her by her second husband.

A large proportion of the Halbas of Chhattīsgarh belong to the Kabīrpanthi sect. These are known as Kabīrhas and abjure the consumption of flesh and alcoholic liquor; while the others who indulge in these articles are known as Sakatha or Sakta, that is, a worshipper of Devi or Durga. These latter, however, also revere all the village godlings of Chhattīsgarh.

The dead are always buried by the Kabīrpanthis and usually by other Halbas, cremation being reserved by the latter as a special mark of respect for elders and heads of families. A dead body is wrapped in a new white cloth and laid on an inverted cot. The Kabīrpanthis lay plantain leaves at the sides of the cot and over the body to cover it. One of the mourners carries a burning cowdung cake with the party. Before burial the thread which every male wears round his waist is broken, the clothes are taken off the corpse and given to a sweeper, and the body is wrapped in the shroud and laid in the grave, salt being sprinkled under and over it. If the dead body should be touched by any person of another caste, the deceased’s family has to pay a fine or give a penal caste-feast. After the interment the mourners bathe and return to the deceased’s house in their wet clothes. [195]Before entering it they wash their feet in water, which is kept for that purpose at the door, and chew the leaves of the nīm tree (Melia indica). They smoke their chongis or leaf-pipes and console the deceased’s family and then return home, washing their feet again and changing their clothes at their own houses. On the third day, known as Tīj Nahān, the male members of the family with the relatives and mourners walk in Indian file to a river or tank, where they are all shaved by the barber, the sons of the dead man or woman having the entire head and face cleared of hair, while in the case of other relatives, the scalp-lock and moustache may be left, and the mourning friends are only shaved as on ordinary occasions. For his services the barber receives a cow or a substantial cash present, which he divides with the washerman. The latter subsequently washes all clothes worn at the funeral and on this occasion. On the Akti festival, or commencement of the agricultural year, libations of water and offerings of urad8 cakes are made to the spirits of ancestors. A feast is given to women in honour of all departed female ancestors on the ninth day of the Pitripaksh or mourning fortnight of Kunwār (September), and feasts for male ancestors may be held on the same day of the fortnight as that on which they died at any other time of the year.9 Such observances are practised only by the well-to-do. Nothing is done for persons who die before their marriage or without children, unless they trouble some member of the family and appear in a dream to demand that these honours be paid to them. During an epidemic of cholera all funeral and mourning ceremonies are suspended, and a general purification of the village takes place on its conclusion.

If a person has been killed by a tiger, the people go out, and if any remains of the body are found, these are burnt on the spot. The Baiga is then invoked to bring back the spirit of the deceased, a most essential precaution as will shortly be seen. In order to do this he suspends a copper ring on a long thread above a vessel of water and then burns butter and sugar on the fire, muttering incantations, [196]while the people sing songs and call on the spirit of the dead man to return. The thread swings to and fro, and at length the copper ring falls into the pot, and this is taken as a sign that the spirit has come and entered the vessel. The mouth of this is immediately covered and it is buried or kept in some secure place. The people believe that unless the dead man’s spirit is secured it will accompany the tiger and lure solitary travellers to destruction. This is done by calling out and offering them tobacco to smoke, and when they proceed in the direction of the voice the tiger springs out and kills them. And they think that a tiger directed in this manner grows fiercer and fiercer with every person whom it kills. When somebody has been killed by a tiger the relatives will not even remove the ornaments from the corpse, for they think that these would constitute a link by which its spirit would cause the tiger to track them down. The malevolence thus attributed to persons killed by tigers is explained by their bitter wrath at having encountered such an untimely death and consequent desire to entice others to the same.

During the monthly period of menstruation women are spoken of as ‘Mund maili’ or having the head dirty, and are considered to be impure for four or five days, for which time they sleep on the ground and not on cots. In Kānker they are secluded in a separate room, and forbidden to cook or to touch the clothes or persons of other members of the family. They must not walk on a ploughed field, nor will the men of their family drive the plough or sow seed during the time of their impurity. On the fifth day they wash their heads with earth and boil their clothes in water mixed with wood ashes. Cloth stained with the menstrual blood is usually buried underground; if it is burnt it is supposed that the woman to whom it belonged will become barren, and if a barren woman should swallow the ashes of the cloth the fertility of its owner would be transferred to her.

When pregnant women experience longings for strange kinds of food, it is believed that these really come from the child in the womb and must be satisfied if its development is not to be retarded. Consequently in the fifth [197]month of a wife’s first pregnancy, or shortly before delivery, her mother takes to her various kinds of rich food and feeds her with them. It is a common custom also for pregnant women, driven by perverted appetite, to eat earth of a clayey texture, or the ordinary black cotton soil, or dried clay scraped off the walls of houses, or the ashes of burnt cowdung cakes. This is done by low-caste women in most parts of the Province, and if carried to excess leads to severe intestinal derangement which may prove fatal. A pregnant woman must not cross a river or eat anything with a knife, and she must observe various precautions against the machinations of witches. At the time of delivery the woman sits on the ground and is attended by a midwife, who may be a Chamār, Mahār or Gānda by caste. The navel cord is burnt in the lying-in room, but the after-birth, known as Phul, is usually buried in a rubbish pit outside the house. The portion of the cord attached to the child’s body is also burnt when it falls off, but in the northern Districts it is preserved and used as a cure for the child if it suffers from sore eyes. If a woman who has borne only girl children can obtain the dried navel-string of a male child and swallow it, they believe that she will have a son, and that the mother of the boy will henceforth bear only daughters. This is the reason why the cord is carefully secreted and not simply thrown away. In Bastar on the sixth or naming day the female relatives and friends of the family are invited to take food at the house. The father touches the feet of the child with blades of dūb grass (Cynodon dactylon) steeped first in milk or melted butter, then in sandal-paste, and finally in water, and each time passes the blade over his head as a mark of respect. The blades of grass are afterwards thrown over the roof of the house, so that they may not be trampled under foot. The women guests then bring leaf-cups containing rice and a few copper coins, which they offer to the mother, the younger ones bowing before her with a prayer that the child may grow as old as the speaker. All the women kiss the child, and the elder ones the mother also. The offerings of rice and coins are taken by the midwife.

The names of the Halbas are of the ordinary type [198]found in Chhattīsgarh, but at present they often add the termination Sinha or Singh in imitation of the Rājpūts. Two names are sometimes given, one for daily use and the other for comparison with that of the girl when the marriage is to be arranged. As already seen, either the bride’s or bridegroom’s name may be changed to make their union auspicious. When a daughter-in-law comes into her husband’s house she is usually not called by her own name, but by some nickname or that of her home, as Jabalpurwāli, Raipurwāli (she who comes from Jabalpur or Raipur), and so on. Sometimes men of the caste are addressed by the name of the clan or section and not by their own. A woman must not utter the names of her husband, his parents or brothers, nor of the sons of his elder brother and his sisters. But for these last as well as for her own son-in-law she may invent fictitious names. These rules she observes to show her respect for her husband’s relatives. A child must not be called by name at night, because if an owl hears the name and repeats it the child will probably die. The owl is everywhere regarded as a bird of the most evil omen. Its hoot is unlucky, and a house in which its nest is built will be destroyed or deserted. If it perches on the roof of a house and hoots, some one of the family will probably fall ill, or if a member of the household is already ill, he or she will probably die.

The social customs of the caste present some differences. In Bastar, where they have a fairly high status, the Purāit Halbas abstain from liquor, though they will eat the flesh of clean animals and of the wild pig. The Halbas of Raipur on the other hand, who are usually farmservants, will eat fowls, pigs and rats, and abstain only from beef and the leavings of others. In Bastar, Sunārs, Kurmis and castes of similar position will take water from the hands of a Halba, and Kosaria Rāwats will eat all kinds of food with them. In Chhattīsgarh the Halbas will accept water from Telis, Kahārs and other like castes, and will also allow any of them to become a Halba. In Chhattīsgarh they will take even food cooked with water from the hands of a man of these castes, provided that they are not in their own villages. These differences of custom [199]are probably due to the varying social status of the caste. In Bastar they hold land and behave accordingly, while in Chhattīsgarh they are only labourers. They do not employ Brāhmans for ceremonial purposes but have their own caste priest, known as Joshi, while among the Kabīrpanthis the local Mahant or Bairāgi of the sect takes his place.

They have a caste panchāyat or committee, the headman of which is known as Kursha; he has jurisdiction over ten or twenty villages, and is usually chosen from the Kotwār, Chanap or Nāik sections. It is the duty of the men of these sections to scatter the sonpāni or ‘water of gold’10 as an act of purification over persons who have been temporarily put out of caste for social offences. They are also the first to eat food with such offenders on readmission to social intercourse, and thereby take the sins of these persons upon their own heads. In order to counteract the effect of this the purifier usually asks three or four other men to eat with him at his own house, and passes on a part of his burden to them. For such duties he receives a payment of money varying from four annas to a rupee and a half. Among the offences punished with temporary exclusion from caste are those of rearing the lac insect and tasar silk cocoons, probably because such work involves the killing of the insects and caterpillars which produce the dye and silk. In Bastar a man loses his caste if he is beaten with a shoe except by a Government servant, and is not readmitted to it. If a man seduces a married woman and is beaten with a shoe by her husband he is also finally expelled from caste. But happily, Mr. Panda Baijnāth remarks, shoes are very scarce in the State, and hence such cases do not often arise. They never yoke cows to the plough as other castes do in Bastar, nor do they tie up two cows with the same rope.

The dress of the Halbas, as of other Chhattīsgarh castes, is scanty, and most of them have only a short cloth about the loins and another round the shoulders. They dispense with both shoes and head-cloth, but every man must have a thread tied round his waist. To this thread in former times, Colonel Dalton remarks, the apron of leaves was not [200]improbably suspended. The women do not wear nose-rings, spangles on the forehead or rings on the toes; but girl children have the left nostril pierced, and this must always be done on the full moon day of the month of Pūs (December). A copper ring is inserted in the nostril and worn for a few months, but must be removed before the girl’s marriage. A married woman has a cloth over her head, and smears vermilion on the parting of her hair and also on her forehead. An unmarried girl may have the copper ring already mentioned, and may place a dab of vermilion on her forehead, but must not smear it on the parting of her hair. She goes bare-headed till marriage, as is the custom in Chhattīsgarh. A widow should not have vermilion on her face at all, nor should she use glass bangles or ornaments about the ankles. She may have a string of glass beads about her neck. A woman’s cloth is usually white with a broad red border all round it. The Gonds and Halbas tie the cloth round the waist and carry the slack end from the left side behind up the back and over the head and right shoulder; while women of higher castes take the cloth from the right side over the head and left shoulder.

Girls are tattooed before marriage, usually at the age of four or five years, with dots on the left nostril and centre of the chin, and three dots in a line on the right shoulder. A girl is again tattooed after marriage, but before leaving for her husband’s house. On this occasion four pairs of parallel lines are made on the leg above the ankle, in front, behind, and on the sides. As a rule, the legs are not otherwise tattooed, nor the trunk of the body. Groups of dots, triangles and lines are made on the arms, and on the left arm is pricked a zigzag line known as the sikri or chain, the pattern of which is distinctive. Teli and Gahra (Ahīr) women also have the sikri, but in a slightly different form. The tattooing is done by a woman of the Dewar caste, and she receives some corn and the cloth worn by the girl at the time of the operation. If a child is slow in learning to walk they tattoo it on the loins above the hips, and believe that this is efficacious. Men who suffer from rheumatism also get the affected joints tattooed, and are said to experience much relief. The tattooing acts no [201]doubt as a blister, and may produce a temporarily beneficial effect. It may be compared to the bee-sting cure for rheumatism now advocated in England. Tattooing is believed to enhance the beauty of women, and it is also said that the tattoo marks are the only ornament which will accompany the soul to the other world. From this belief it seems clear that they expect to have the same body in the after-life.

Nearly all the Halbas are now engaged in agriculture as tenants and labourers. Seven zamīndāri estates are held by members of the caste, six in Bhandāra and one in Chānda, and they also have some villages in the south of the Raipur and Drūg Districts. It is probable that they obtained this property in reward for military service, at the period when they were employed in the armies of the Ratanpur kings and of the Gond dynasty of Chānda. In the forest tracts of Dhamtari they are considered the best cultivators next to the Telis, and they show themselves quite able to hold their own in the open country, where their villages are usually prosperous. In Bastar they still practise shifting cultivation, sowing their crops on burnt-out patches of forest. Though hunting is not now one of their regular occupations, Mr. Gokul Prasād describes them as catching game by the following method: Six or seven men go out together at night, tying round their feet ghunghunias or two small hollow balls of brass with stones inside which tinkle as they move, such as are worn by postal runners. They move in Indian file, the first man carrying a lantern and the others walking behind him in its shadow. They walk with measured tread, and the ghunghunias give out a rhythmical harmonious sound. Hares and other small animals are attracted by the sound, and at the same time half-blinded by the light, so that they do not see the line of men. They approach, and are knocked over or caught by the men following the leader.

Hatkar, Hatgar.1—A small caste of Berār, numbering about 14,000 persons in 1911. They are found principally in the Pusad tāluk of Yeotmāl District, their villages being placed like a line of outposts along the Hyderābād border. The Hatkars are a branch of the Dhangar or shepherd caste, and in some localities they are considered as a subcaste of Dhangars. The derivation of the name Hatkar is obscure, but the Hatkars appear to be those Dhangars who first took to military service under Sivaji and hence became a [205]distinct group. “Undisciplined, often unarmed, men of the Māwals or mountain valleys above the Ghauts who were called Māwallees, and of those below the mountains towards the sea, called Hetkurees, joined the young leader.”2 The Hatkars were thus the soldiers of the Konkan in Sivaji’s army. The Ain-i-Akbari states that the Hatkars were driven westward across the Wardha by the Gonds. At this time (A.D. 1600) they were holding the country round Bāsim by force of arms, and are described as a refractory and perfidious race.3 “The Hatkars of Berār are all Bargi or Bangi Dhangars, the shepherds with the spears. They say that formerly when going on any expedition they took only a blanket seven cubits long and a bear-spear. They would appear to have been all footmen. The Nāiks or village headman of Bāsim were principally Hatkars. The duty of a Nāik was to maintain order and stop robbery; but in time they became law-breakers and their men the dacoits of the country. Some of them were very powerful, and in 1818 Nowsāji Nāik’s troops gave battle to the Nizām’s regular forces under Major Pitman before Umarkhar. He was beaten and sent to Hyderābād, where he died, and the power of the Nāiks was broken by Major Sutherland. He hanged so many that the Nāiks pronounce his name to this day with awe. To some of the Nāiks he gave money and told them to settle down in certain villages. Others who also came, expecting money, were at once hanged.”4 But it would appear that only those leaders were hanged who did not come in before a certain fixed date.

The Hatkars are also called Bangi Dhangars, and in Berār rank above other Dhangars because they took to soldiering and obtained grants of land, just as the Marāthas rank above the Kunbis. Another group have given up sheep-tending and keep cattle, which is a more respectable occupation on account of the sanctity of cattle, and these call themselves Gauli Hatkars. These Gauli Hatkars have given up drinking liquor and eating fowls. They will not touch or sell the milk of buffaloes and cows before sunset on Mondays, the day on which they worship Krishna. If [206]any one is in need of milk on that day they will let him milk the animal himself, but will take no price for the milk. On a Monday also they will not give fire from their house to any member of a low caste, such as a Mahār. On the day of Diwāli they worship their cows, tying a bunch of wool to the animal’s forehead and putting rice on it; they make a mud image of Govardhan, the mountain held up by Krishna as an umbrella to protect the people from the rain, and then let the cows trample it to pieces with their hoofs. If a bullock dies with the rope halter through its nose, the owner is put out of caste; this rule also obtains among the Ahīrs and Gaulis, and is perhaps responsible for the objection felt in some localities to putting string through the nostrils of plough- and cart-bullocks, though it is the only means of obtaining any control over them.

Formerly the Hatkars burned the corpses only of men who died in battle or the chase or subsequently of their wounds, cremation being reserved for this honourable end. Others were buried sitting cross-legged, and a small piece of gold was placed in the mouth of the corpse. Now they either burn or bury the dead according to their means. Most of them at the time they were soldiers never allowed the hair on their face to be cut.

The Hatkars of Berār are said to be divided into three exogamous clans who apparently marry with each other, their names being Poli, Gurdi and Muski. In the Central Provinces they have a set of exogamous sections with titular names of a somewhat curious nature; among them are Hakkya, said to be so called because their ancestor was absent when his cow gave birth to a calf; Wakmar, one who left the Pangat or caste feast while his fellows were eating; and Polya, one who did not take off his turban at the feast.

Injhwār.1—A caste of agricultural labourers and fishermen found in the Marātha tract of the Wainganga Valley, comprised in the Bhandāra and Bālāghāt Districts. In 1901 they numbered 8500 persons as against 11,000 in 1891. The name Injhwār is simply a Marāthi corruption of Binjhwār, as īs for bīs (twenty) and Ithoba for Bithoba or Vithoba. In his Census Report of 1891 Sir Benjamin Robertson remarked that the name was often entered in the census books as Vinjhwār, and in Marāthi B and V are practically [214]interchangeable. The Injhwārs are thus a caste formed from the Binjhwārs or highest subdivision of the Baiga tribe of Bālāghāt; they have adopted the social customs of the Marāthi-speaking people among whom they live, and have been formed into a separate caste through a corruption of their name. They still worship Injha or Vindhya Devi, the tutelary deity of the Vindhyan hills, from which the name of the Binjhwārs is derived. The Injhwārs have also some connection with the Gowāri or cowherd caste of the Marātha country. They are sometimes known as Dūdh-Gowāri, and say that this is because an Injhwār woman was a wet-nurse of the first-born Gowāri. The Gowāris themselves, as a low caste of herdsmen frequenting the jungles, would naturally be brought into close connection with both the Baigas and Gonds. Their alliances with the Gonds have produced the distinct caste of Gond-Gowāri, and it is not improbable that one fact operating to separate the Injhwārs from their parent tribe of the Baigas was an admixture of Gowāri blood. But they rank higher than the Gond-Gowāris, who are regarded as impure; this is probably on account of the superior position of the Binjhwārs, who form the aristocracy of the Baiga tribe, and, living in the forests, were never reduced to the menial and servile condition imposed on the Gond residents in Hindu villages. The Injhwārs, however, admit the superiority of the Gowāris by taking food from their hands, a favour which the latter will not reciprocate. Several of the sept or family names of the caste are also taken from the Gonds, and this shows an admixture of Gond blood; the Injhwārs are thus probably a mixed group of Gonds, Gowāris, and Binjhwārs or Baigas.

The Injhwārs have four subcastes, three of the territorial and one of the occupational class. These are the Lānjiwār, or those living round Lānji in Bālāghāt; the Korre, or those of the Korai hill tract in Seoni; the Chāndewār or Marātha Injhwārs who belong to Chānda, and are distinguished by holding their weddings only in the evening after the Marātha custom, while other Injhwārs will perform the ceremony at any time of day; and the Sonjharias, or those who have taken to washing for gold in the beds of streams. Of their sept or family names some, as already stated, are taken from [215]the Gonds, as Mesrām, Tekām, Marai, Ukya.2 Three names, Bhoyar, Kawara and Kohrya (from Kohli), are the names of other castes or tribes, and indicate that members of these became Injhwārs and founded families; and others are of the territorial, titular and totemistic types. Among them may be mentioned the Pīthvālyās, from pīth, flour; all families of this sept should steal a little rice from somebody else’s field as soon as it is ripe, husband and wife making a joint expedition for the purpose. They must not speak a word to each other from the time they start until they have brought back the rice, pounded and cooked it, offered it to the god and made their meal. The Paunpats, named after the lotus, will not touch the flowers or leaves of the lotus plants, or even drink water from a tank in which the lotus grows. The Dobokria Rāwats are so named because they make an offering of two goats to their gods. Some of the septs are subdivided. Thus the Sonwāni or gold-water sept, whose members readmit social culprits, is divided into the Paunpat or lotus Sonwānis; the Gurhiwāl, who revere a brass vessel tied to a bamboo on the first day of the year; the Sati Sonwāni, who worship the spirit of a sati woman ancestor; and the Mūngphātia Sonwānis, whose token is the broken mung pulse. At present these subsepts cannot intermarry, the union of any two Sonwānis being forbidden, but it seems likely that intermarriage may be permitted in the course of time.

The social customs of the Injhwārs resemble those of the lower Marātha castes.3 Marriage is forbidden between members of the same sept and first cousins, and a man should also not take a wife from the sept of his brother or sister-in-law. This rule prevents the marriage of two brothers to two sisters, to which there is of course no objection on the ground of affinity. Girls are usually not married until they are grown up; but in places where they have been much subjected to Hindu influences, the Injhwārs will sometimes wed an adult girl to a basil plant in order to avoid the stigma of keeping her in the house unmarried. The boy’s father goes to make a proposal of marriage, and the girl’s father, if he approves it, intimates his consent by washing [216]his visitor’s feet. A bride-price of about Rs. 20 is usually paid, which is increased somewhat if the bridegroom is a widower, and decreased if the bride has been seduced before marriage. The marriage is performed by throwing coloured rice over the couple. Divorce and the remarriage of widows are permitted. A bachelor who marries a widow must first go through the ceremony with an arka or swallow-wort plant, this being considered his real marriage. The Injhwārs usually bury the dead, and in accordance with Dravidian custom place the corpse in the grave with the feet to the north. When the body is that of a young girl, the face is left exposed as it is carried to the grave. The regular ceremonies are performed for the welfare of the deceased’s soul, and they try to ascertain its fate in the next incarnation by spreading flour on the ground overnight and looking in the morning for anything resembling the foot-mark of a human being, animal or bird. On the festival of Akhātīj and in the month of Kārtik (October) they offer libations to the dead, setting out a large pitcher of water for a male and a small one for a female. On the former they paint five lines of sandalwood to represent a man’s caste-mark, and on the latter five splashes of kunku or the red powder which women rub on their foreheads. A burning lamp is placed before the pitchers, and they feed a male Māli or gardener as representative of a dead man and a female for a woman.

The Injhwārs are generally labourers and cultivators, while the Sonjharias wash for gold. The women of the Marātha or Chāndewār subcaste serve as midwives. Their social status is low, and in the forest tracts they will eat snakes and crocodiles, and in fact almost anything except beef. They will admit members of the Brāhman, Dhīmar (waterman), Māli and Gowāri castes into the community on payment of a premium of five to fifteen rupees and a dinner to the caste-fellows. The candidate for admission, whether male or female, must have his head shaved clean. Both men and women can obtain pardon for a liaison with an outsider belonging to any except the most impure castes by giving a feast to the community. To be beaten with a shoe involves temporary excommunication from caste, unless the [217]striker be a Government official, when no penalty is inflicted. If a man kills a cat, he is required to have an image of it made in silver, which, after being worshipped, is presented to a temple or thrown into a river.

Jāt.1—The representative cultivating caste of the Punjab, corresponding to the Kurmi of Hindustān, the Kunbi of the Deccan, and the Kāpu of Telingāna. In the Central Provinces 10,000 Jāts were returned in 1911, of whom 5000 belonged to Hoshangābād and the bulk of the remainder to Narsinghpur, Saugor and Jubbulpore. The origin of the Jāt caste has been the subject of much discussion. Sir D. Ibbetson stated some of the theories as follows:2 “Suffice it to say that both General Cunningham and Major Tod agree in considering the Jāts to be of Indo-Scythian stock. The former identifies them with the Zanthii of Strabo and the Jatii of Pliny and Ptolemy; and holds that they probably entered the Punjab from their home on the Oxus very shortly after the Meds or Mands, who also were Indo-Scythians, and who moved into the Punjab about a century before Christ.... Major Tod classes the Jāts as [226]one of the great Rājpūt tribes, and extends his identification with the Getae to both races; but here General Cunningham differs, holding the Rājpūts to belong to the original Aryan stock, and the Jāts to a later wave of immigrants from the north-west, probably of Scythian race.” It is highly probable that the Jāts may date their settlement in the Punjab from one of the three Scythian inroads mentioned by Mr. V. A. Smith,3 but I do not know that there is as yet considered to be adequate evidence to identify them with any particular one.

The following curious passage from the Mahābhārata would appear to refer to the Jāts:4

“An old and excellent Brāhman reviling the countries Bāhīka and Madra in the dwelling of Dhritarāshtra, related facts long known, and thus described those nations. External to the Himāvan, and beyond the Ganges, beyond the Sārasvati and Yamuna rivers and Kurukshetra, between five rivers, and the Sindhu as the sixth, are situated the Bāhīkas, devoid of ritual or observance, and therefore to be shunned. Their figtree is named Govardhana (i.e. the place of cow-killing); their market-place is Subhadram (the place of vending liquor: at least so say the commentators), and these give titles to the doorway of the royal palace. A business of great importance compelled me to dwell amongst the Bāhīkas, and their customs are therefore well known to me. The chief city is called Shākāla, and the river Apaga. The people are also named Jarttikas; and their customs are shameful. They drink spirits made from sugar and grain, and eat meat seasoned with garlic; and live on flesh and wine: their women intoxicated appear in public places, with no other garb than garlands and perfumes, dancing and singing, and vociferating indecencies in tones more harsh than those of the camel or the ass; they indulge in promiscuous intercourse and are under no restraint. They clothe themselves in skins and blankets, and sound the cymbal and drum and conch, and cry aloud with hoarse voices: ‘We will hasten to delight, in thick forests and in [227]pleasant places; we will feast and sport; and gathering on the highways spring upon the travellers, and spoil and scourge them!’ In Shākāla, a female demon (a Rākshasi) on the fourteenth day of the dark fortnight sings aloud: ‘I will feast on the flesh of kine, and quaff the inebriating spirit attended by fair and graceful females.’ The Sūdra-like Bāhīkas have no institutes nor sacrifices; and neither deities, manes, nor Brāhmans accept their offerings. They eat out of wooden or earthen plates, nor heed their being smeared with wine or viands, or licked by dogs, and they use equally in its various preparations the milk of ewes, of camels and of asses. Who that has drunk milk in the city Yugandhara can hope to enter Svarga? Bāhi and Hīka were the names of two fiends in the Vipāsha river; the Bāhīkas are their descendants and not of the creation of Brahma. Some say the Arattas are the name of the people and Bāhīka of the waters. The Vedas are not known there, nor oblation, nor sacrifice, and the gods will not partake of their food. The Prasthalas (perhaps borderers), Madras, Gandharas, Arattas, Khashas, Vasas, Atisindhus (or those beyond the Indus), Sauvīras, are all equally infamous. There one who is by birth a Brāhman, becomes a Kshatriya, or a Vaishya, or a Sūdra, or a Barber, and having been a barber becomes a Brāhman again. A virtuous woman was once violated by Aratta ruffians, and she cursed the race, and their women have ever since been unchaste. On this account their heirs are their sisters’ children, not their own. All countries have their laws and gods: the Yavanas are wise, and preeminently brave; the Mlechchas observe their own ritual, but the Madrakas are worthless. Madra is the ordure of the earth: it is the region of inebriety, unchastity, robbery, and murder: fie on the Panchanada people! fie on the Aratta race!”

In the above account the country referred to is clearly the Punjab, from the mention of the five rivers and the Indus. The people are called Bāhīka or Jarttika, and would therefore seem to be the Jāts. And the account would appear to refer to a period when they were newly settled in the Punjab and had not come under Hindu influence. But at the same time the Aryans or Hindus had passed through [228]the Punjab and were settled in Hindustān. And it would therefore seem to be a necessary inference that the Jāts were comparatively late immigrants, and were one of the tribes who invaded India between the second century B.C. and the fifth century A.D. as suggested above.

Sir D. Ibbetson held that the Jāts and Rājpūts must be, to some extent at least, of the same blood. Though the Jāts are represented in the Central Provinces only by a small body of immigrants it will be permissible to quote the following passages from his admirable and classical account of the caste:5

“It may be that the original Rājpūt and the original Jāt entered India at different periods in its history, though to my mind the term Rājpūt is an occupational rather than an ethnological expression. But if they do originally represent two separate waves of immigration, it is at least exceedingly probable, both from their almost identical physique and facial character and from the close communion which has always existed between them, that they belong to one and the same ethnic stock; while, whether this be so or not, it is almost certain that they have been for many centuries and still are so intermingled and so blended into one people that it is practically impossible to distinguish them as separate wholes. It is indeed more than probable that the process of fusion has not ended here, and that the people who thus in the main resulted from the blending of the Jāt and the Rājpūt, if these two were ever distinct, is by no means free from foreign elements....

“But whether Jāts and Rājpūts were or were not originally distinct, and whatever aboriginal elements may have been affiliated to their society, I think that the two now form a common stock, the distinction between Jāt and Rājpūt being social rather than ethnic. I believe that those families of that common stock whom the tide of fortune has raised to political importance have become Rājpūts almost by mere virtue of their rise; and that their descendants have retained the title and its privileges on the condition, strictly enforced, of observing the rules by which the higher are distinguished from the lower castes in the Hindu scale of precedence; of [229]preserving their purity of blood by refusing to marry with families of inferior social rank, of rigidly abstaining from widow-marriage, and of refraining from degrading occupations. Those who transgressed these rules have fallen from their high position and ceased to be Rājpūts; while such families as, attaining a dominant position in their territory, began to affect social exclusiveness and to observe the rules, have become not only Rājas but also Rājpūts or sons of Rājas. For the last seven centuries at least the process of elevation has been almost at a standstill. Under the Delhi Emperors king-making was practically impossible. Under the Sikhs the Rājpūt was overshadowed by the Jāt, who resented his assumption of superiority and his refusal to join him on equal terms in the ranks of the Khālsa, deliberately persecuted him wherever and whenever he had the power, and preferred his title of Jāt Sikh to that of the proudest Rājpūt. On the frontier the dominance of Pathāns and Biloches and the general prevalence of Muhammadan feelings and ideas placed recent Indian origin at a discount, and led the leading families who belonged to neither of these two races to claim connection not with the Kshatriyas of the Sanskrit classics but with the Mughal conquerors of India or the Qureshi cousins of the Prophet; in so much that even admittedly Rājpūt tribes of famous ancestry, such as the Khokha, have begun to follow the example. But in the hills, where Rājpūt dynasties, with genealogies perhaps more ancient and unbroken than can be shown by any other royal families in the world, retained their independence till yesterday, and where many of them still enjoy as great social authority as ever, the twin processes of degradation from and elevation to Rājpūt rank are still to be seen in operation. The Rāja is there the fountain not only of honour but also of caste, which is the same thing in India....

“The Jāt is in every respect the most important of the Punjab peoples. In point of numbers he surpasses the Rājpūt, who comes next to him, in the proportion of nearly three to one; while the two together constitute twenty-seven per cent of the whole population of the Province. Politically he ruled the Punjab till the Khālsa yielded to our arms. [230]Ethnologically he is the peculiar and most prominent product of the plain of the five rivers. And from an economical and administrative point of view he is the husbandman, the peasant, the revenue-payer par excellence of the Province. His manners do not bear the impress of generations of wild freedom which marks the races of our frontier mountains. But he is more honest, more industrious, more sturdy, and no less manly than they. Sturdy independence indeed and patient, vigorous labour are his strongest characteristics. The Jāt is of all Punjab races the most impatient of tribal or communal control, and the one which asserts the freedom of the individual most strongly. In tracts where, as in Rohtak, the Jāt tribes have the field to themselves, and are compelled, in default of rival castes as enemies, to fall back upon each other for somebody to quarrel with, the tribal ties are strong. But as a rule a Jāt is a man who does what seems right in his own eyes and sometimes what seems wrong also, and will not be said nay by any man. I do not mean, however, that he is turbulent; as a rule he is very far from being so. He is independent and he is self-willed; but he is reasonable, peaceably inclined if left alone, and not difficult to manage. He is usually content to cultivate his fields and pay his revenue in peace and quietness if people will let him do so; though when he does go wrong he takes to anything from gambling to murder, with perhaps a preference for stealing other people’s wives and cattle. As usual the proverbial wisdom of the villages describes him very fairly though perhaps somewhat too severely: ‘The soil, fodder, clothes, hemp, grass-fibre, and silk, these six are best beaten; and the seventh is the Jāt.’ ‘A Jāt, a Bhāt, a caterpillar, and a widow woman; these four are best hungry. If they eat their fill they do harm.’ ‘The Jāt, like a wound, is better when bound.’ In agriculture the Jāt is pre-eminent. The market-gardening castes, the Arāin, the Māli, the Saini are perhaps more skilful cultivators on a small scale; but they cannot rival the Jāt as landowners and yeoman cultivators. The Jāt calls himself zamīndār or ‘husbandman’ as often as Jāt, and his women and children alike work with him in the fields: ‘The Jāt’s baby has a plough-handle for a plaything.’ ‘The Jāt stood on his corn heap and said to the king’s [231]elephant-drivers, Will you sell those little donkeys?’ Socially the Jāt occupies a position which is shared by the Ror, the Gūjar, and the Ahīr, all four eating and smoking together. He is, of course, far below the Rājpūt, from the simple fact that he practises widow-marriage. The Jāt father is made to say in the rhyming proverbs of the countryside, ‘Come, my daughter, and be married; if this husband dies there are plenty more.’ But among the widow-marrying castes he stands first. The Bania with his sacred thread, his strict Hinduism, and his twice-born standing, looks down on the Jāt as a Sūdra. But the Jāt looks down upon the Bania as a cowardly, spiritless money-grubber, and society in general agrees with the Jāt. The Khatri, who is far superior to the Bania in manliness and vigour, probably takes precedence of the Jāt. But among the races or tribes of purely Hindu origin, I think that the Jāt stands next after the Brāhman, the Rājpūt, and the Khatri.”

The above account clearly indicates the social position of the Jāt. His is the highest caste except the aristocracy consisting of the Brāhmans and Rājpūts, the Khatris who are derived from the Rājpūts, and the Banias who are recognised as ranking not much below the Rājpūts. The derivation of some of the Rājpūt clans from the Jāts seems highly probable, and is confirmed by other instances of aristocratic selection in such castes as the Marāthas and Kunbis, the Rāj-Gonds and Gonds, and so on. If, however, the Rājpūts are a Jāt aristocracy, it is clear that the Jāts were not the Sūdras, who are described as wholly debased and impure in the Hindu classics; and the present application of the term Sūdra to them is a misnomer arising from modern errors in classification by the Hindus themselves. The Jāts, if Sir D. Ibbetson’s account be accepted, must have been the main body of the invading host, whether Aryan or Scythian, of whom the Rājpūts were the leaders. They settled on the land and formed village communities, and the status of the Jāt at present appears to be that of a member of the village community and part-holder of its land. A slightly undue importance may perhaps have been given in the above passage to the [232]practice of widow-marriage as determining the position of a great caste like the Jāts. Some Rājpūts, Kāyasths and Banias permit widow-marriage, and considerable sections of all these castes, and Brāhmans also, permit the practice of keeping widows, which, though not called a marriage, does not differ very widely from it. The Jāt probably finds his women too valuable as assistants in cultivation to make a pretence at the abolition of widow-marriage in order to improve his social status as some other castes do. The Jāt, of course, ranks as what is commonly called a pure caste, in that Brāhmans take water to drink from him. But his status does not depend on this, because Brāhmans take water from such menials as barbers, Kahārs or bearers, Bāris or household servants, and so on, who rank far below the Jāt, and also from the Mālis and other gardening castes who are appreciably below him. The Jāt is equal to the Gūjar and Ahīr so far as social purity is concerned, but still above them, because they are graziers and vagrants, while he is a settled cultivator. It is from this fact that his status is perhaps mainly derived; and his leading characteristics, his independence, self-sufficiency, doggedness, and industry, are those generally recognised as typical of the peasant proprietor. But the Jāt, in the Punjab at any rate, has also a higher status than the principal cultivating castes of other provinces, the Kurmi and the Kunbi. And this may perhaps be explained by his purer foreign descent, and also by the fact that both as Jāt and as Sikh his caste has been a military and dominant one in history and has furnished princes and heads of states.

The Jāts themselves relate the following Brāhmanical legend of their origin. On one occasion when Himāchal or Daksha Rāja, the father-in-law of Mahādeo, was performing a great sacrifice, he invited all the gods to be present except his son-in-law Mahādeo (Siva). The latter’s wife Pārvati was, however, very anxious to go, so she asked Mahādeo to let her attend, even though she had not been invited. Mahādeo was unwilling to do this, but finally consented. But Daksha treated Pārvati with great want of respect at the sacrifice, so she came home and told Mahādeo about him. When Mahādeo heard this he was [233]filled with wrath, and untying his matted hair (jata) dashed it on the ground, when two powerful beings arose from it. He sent them to destroy Daksha’s sacrifice and they went and destroyed it, and from these were descended the race of the Jāts, and they take their name from the matted locks (jata) of the lord Mahādeo. Another saying of the caste is that “The ancestor of the Rājpūts was Kashyap6 and of the Jāts Siva. In the beginning these were the only two races of India.”

No detailed description of the Jāts need be attempted here, but some information which has been obtained on their customs in this Province may be recorded. They entered the Hoshangābād District, Sir C. Elliot states,7 in the eighteenth century, and came originally from Bharatpur (Bhurtpur), but halted in Mārwār on the way. “They are the best cultivators in the District after the Pardeshi Kurmis, and though they confine themselves to ordinary crops they are very laborious, and the tilth of their fields is pleasant to look on.” For the purposes of marriage the caste is divided into exogamous sections in the usual manner. The bulk of the section-names cannot be explained, being probably corrupted forms of the names of villages, but it is noticeable that several pairs of them are considered to be related so that their members cannot intermarry. Thus no marriages can take place between the Golia and Gwalwa, the Choyala and Sārana, the Bhukar and Bhāri, and the Lathial and Lālar sections, as each pair is considered to be descended from a common ancestor.

A man may not take a wife either from his own section or that of his mother or his grandmother, nor from those of the husbands of his father’s sisters. For a Jāt wedding a square enclosure is marked out with pegs, and a thread is wound seven times round the pegs touching the ground, and covered over with rice or wheat so that it may not be burnt. The enclosure is known as Chaonri, and inside it the hom or fire sacrifice is performed with butter, [234]barley, sesamum, sugar and saffron placed on the top of a heap of wheat-flour. After the sacrifice the bride and bridegroom walk seven times round the Chaonri with their right hands inwards. After this tufts of cotton are thrown over the bodies of the bridegroom and bride and they have to pick it off each other, the one who finishes first being considered the winner. This is apparently a symbolical imitation of the agricultural operation of cotton-picking. The remarriage of widows is permitted, the ceremony being usually performed on a Saturday. A bachelor who is to marry a widow must first walk seven times round a pīpal tree. Contrary to the usual custom, a widow is forbidden to espouse her deceased husband’s younger brother or any of his relations within three degrees of consanguinity.

The dead are burnt, with the exception of children under seven whose bodies are buried. After the death of a married man his widow walks round his body seven times with her left hand inwards, or in the reverse direction to the perambulation of the Chaonri at marriage. This ceremony is therefore, as it were, a sort of undoing of the marriage. The women wear lac or ivory bangles, and the widow breaks a few of these when the corpse of her husband is lifted up to be carried outside the house. She breaks the remaining ones on the twelfth day after the death and throws them on the chūlha or earthen hearth.

An important occasion for display among the Jāts is known as the Paida ceremony. This is sometimes performed by wealthy families when the head of the household or his wife dies or a daughter is married. They get a long pole of teakwood and plant it in the ground so that it stands some forty feet high. Before being raised the pole is worshipped with offerings of milk; a cart-wheel is tied to the upper end and it is then pulled erect with ropes, and if any difficulty is experienced the celebrant believes himself to be in fault and gives away some cows in charity. On the axle of the cart-wheel is secured a brass pot called kaseri, containing wheat and money, with a cloth tied over the mouth. The pole is left standing for three days, and during this time the celebrant feasts the Bhāts or genealogists of the caste and all the caste-fellows from his own and [235]the surrounding villages. If the occasion of the ceremony be a death, male and female calves are taken and their marriage is performed; oil and turmeric are rubbed on their bodies, and they are led seven times round the high pole. The heifer is then given to a Brāhman, and the male, being first branded on one flank with a figure of a trident and on the other with a representation of the sun and moon, is set at liberty for life, and no Hindu will injure it. This last practice is, however, falling into desuetude, owing to the injury which such animals inflict on the crops. A Jāt who performs the Paida ceremony obtains great consideration in the community, and his opinion is given weight in caste disputes. A similar liberality is observed in other ways by wealthy men; thus one rich proprietor in Hoshangābād, whose son was to be married, gave a feast to all the residents of every village through which the wedding procession passed on its way to the bride’s house. Another presented each of his wedding guests with new cloth to the value of ten or twelve rupees, and as in the case of a prominent family the number of guests may be a thousand or more, the cost of such liberality can be easily realised. Similarly Colonel Tod states that on the occasion of their weddings the Jāts of Bikaner even blocked up the highways to obtain visitors, whose numbers formed the measure of the liberality and munificence of the donor of the fête. Indeed, the desire for the social distinction which accrues to generous hosts on such occasions has proved to be the undoing of many a once notable family.

If a woman is barren, she is taken to the meeting of the boundaries of three villages and bathed there. On the birth of a boy a brass dish is hammered to announce the event, but on that of a girl only a winnowing-fan. The navel-string is buried in the lying-in room. When the newborn child is a few days old, it is taken out of doors and made to bow to the sun. When a man proposes to adopt a son the caste-fellows are invited, and in their presence the boy is seated in his lap, while music is played and songs are sung by the women. Each of the guests then comes up and presents the boy with a cocoanut, while sugar is distributed and a feast is afterwards given. [236]

The favourite deity of the caste is Siva or Mahādeo, whom they consider to be their ultimate ancestor. On the festival of Shivrātri (Siva’s night) they observe a total fast, and pass the whole day and night singing songs in honour of the god, while offerings of bel8 leaves, flowers, rice and sandalwood are made on the following morning. In Hoshangābād the caste have two minor deities, Rāmjī Deo and Bairam Deo, who are presumably the spirits of defunct warriors. These are worshipped on the eleventh day of every month, and many Jāts wear an impression of their images on a piece of gold or silver round the neck. On the Dasahra festival the caste worship their swords and horses in memory of their soldier ancestors, and they revere their implements of husbandry on the Akshaya Tritiya of Baisākh (June), the commencement of the agricultural year, while each cultivator does the same on the days that he completes the sowing of his rain crops and winter crops.

The caste employ Brāhmans for the performance of their ceremonies, and also as their gurus or spiritual preceptors. They eat flesh and drink liquor in the Central Provinces, but in Hoshangābād they do not consume either birds or fish; and when they eat mutton or the flesh of the wild pig, they do this only outside the house, in order not to offend their women, who will not eat flesh. In Hoshangābād the Jāts, like other immigrants from Mārwār, commonly wear their hair long and keep the face unshaven, and this gives them rather a wild and farouche appearance among the neatly shorn Hindus of the Nerbudda Valley.9 They are of light complexion, the difference in shade between the Jāts and ordinary residents in the locality being apparent to the casual observer. Their women are fond of the hollow anklets known as bora, which contain small balls or pebbles, and tinkle as they walk. Girls are tattooed before marriage, and while the operation is being carried out the women of the caste collect and sing songs to divert the sufferer’s attention from the pain. The men have pagris or turbans made of many little strings of twisted cloth, which come down over the ears. If a man kills a cow or a squirrel, he must stay outside the village for five weeks and nobody looks upon his [237]face. After this he should go and bathe in the Ganges, but if he is too poor the Nerbudda may be substituted for it with the permission of the caste committee. The penalty for killing a cat is almost as severe, but to slay a dog involves no sin. If a man who has committed a murder escapes conviction but his guilt is known to the caste, it is absolutely incumbent on him to go and bathe in the Ganges and be purified there, having his head and face shaved. After this he may be readmitted to caste intercourse. The caste observe some curious rules or taboos: they never drink the milk of a black cow; their women do not have their noses bored for nose-rings, but if a woman loses several children she will have the nose bored of the next one which is born; women never wear glass bangles, but have them made of ivory or lac and clay; they never wear the bāzuband or armlet with bars crossed on hinges which can be pulled in or out, but instead of it the kara or rigid bangle; and the caste never keep a basil plant in the house for worship, though they may revere it outside the house. As the basil is the emblem of Vishnu, and the Jāts consider themselves to be descended from Siva, they would naturally not be inclined to pay any special respect to the plant.

The Jāts are good cultivators, and at the thirty years’ settlement (1865) several members of the caste held considerable estates; but a number of these have now been lost, owing probably to extravagance of living. In Saugor the Jāts are commonly employed as masons or navvies. [238]

Jhādi Telenga.1—A small caste in the Bastar State who appear to be a mixture of Gonds and the lower Telugu castes, the name meaning ‘The jungly Telugus.’ Those living in the open country are called Māndar Telengas. In the census of 1901 these Telengas were wrongly classified under the Balji or Balija caste. They numbered about 5000 persons. The caste have three divisions according to their comparative purity of descent, which are named Purāit, Surāit and Pohni. The son of a Purāit by a woman of different caste will be a Surāit, and the son of a Surāit by such a woman will be a Pohni. Such alliances are now, however, infrequent, and most of the Telengas in Bastar belong to the Purāit or legitimate group. A Pohni will take cooked food from the two higher groups and a Surāit from a Purāit. The last will take water from the two lower groups, but not food.

For the purposes of marriage the caste is divided into the usual exogamous septs, and these are further arranged in two groups. The first group contains the following septs: Kudmulwādu, from kudmul, a preparation of rice; Kolmulwādu, from kolmul, a treasure-pit; Lingawādu, from the linga emblem; and Nāgulwādu, a ploughman. The second group contains the following septs: Kodamajjiwādu, [239]a hunter and trapper of animals; Wargaiwādu, one who makes ropes from wood-fibre; Paspulwādu, one who prepares turmeric; Pankiwādu, one who distributes cooked food; Bhandārīwādu, a rich man; and one or two others. The rule is that no man or woman of a sept belonging to the first group should marry in any other sept of that group, but always from some sept of the other. This, therefore, appears to be a relic of the classificatory system of marriage, which obtains among the Australian aborigines. The rule is now, however, sometimes violated. The caste say that their ancestors came from Warangal with the ruling family of Bastar.

They will admit Brāhmans, Rājpūts and Halbas into the community. If a man of any of these castes has a child by a Telenga woman, this child will be considered to belong to the same group of the Jhādi Telengas as its mother. If a man of lower caste, such as Rāwat, Dhākar, Jangam, Kumhār or Kalār has such a child it will be admitted into the next lower group than that to which the mother belonged. Thus the child of a Purāit woman by one of these castes will become a Surāit. A Telenga woman having a child by a Gond, Sunār, Lohār or Mehra man is put out of caste.

A girl cannot be properly married unless the ceremony is performed before she arrives at puberty. After this she can only be married by an abridged rite, which consists of rubbing her with oil and turmeric, investing her with glass bangles and a new cloth, and giving a feast to the caste. In such a case the bridegroom first goes through a sham marriage with the branch of a mahua tree. The boy’s father looks out for a girl, and the most suitable match is considered to be his sister’s daughter. Before giving away his daughter he must ask his wife’s brother and his own sister whether they want her for one of their sons. When setting out to make a proposal they take the omens from a bird called Usi. The best omen is to hear this bird’s call on both sides of them as they go into the jungle. When asking for the girl the envoys say to her father, ‘You have got rice and pulse; give them to us for our friend’s son.’ The wedding should be held on a Monday or Thursday, and the bridegroom should arrive at the bride’s village on a Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday [240]or Friday. The sacred post in the centre of the marriage-shed must be of the mahua2 tree, which is no doubt held sacred by these people, as by the Gonds, because spirituous liquor is made from its fruit. A widow must mourn her husband for a month, and can then marry again. But she may not marry her late husband’s brother, nor his first cousin, nor any member of her father’s sept. Divorce is allowed, but no man will divorce his wife unless she leaves him of her own accord or is known to be intriguing with a man of lower caste.

Each sept has a deity of its own who is usually some local god symbolised by a wooden post or a stone. Instances of these are Kondrāj of Santoshpur represented by a wooden pillar carved into circular form at the top; Chikat Rāj of Bijāpur by two bamboos six feet in length leaning against a wall; Kaunam Rāj of Gongla by a stone image, and at fairs by a bamboo with peacock’s feathers tied at the top. They offer incense, rice and a fowl to their ancestors in their own houses in Chait (March) at the new year, and at the festival of the new rice in Bhādon (August). At the sowing festival they go out hunting, and those who return empty-handed think they will have ill-luck. Each tenant also worships the earth-goddess, whose image is then decorated with flowers and vermilion. He brings a goat, and rice is placed before it at her shrine. If the animal eats the sacrifice is held to be accepted, but if not it is returned to the owner, and it is thought that some misfortune will befall him. The heads of all the goats offered are taken by the priest and the bodies returned to the worshippers to be consumed at a feast. Each village has also its tutelary god, having a hut to himself. Inside this a post of mahua wood is fixed in the ground and roughly squared, and a peg is driven into it at the top. The god is represented by another bamboo peg about two inches long, which is first worshipped in front of the post and then suspended from it in a receptacle. In each village the smallpox goddess is also present in the form of a stone, either with or without a hut over it. A Jangam or devotee of the Lingāyat sect is usually the caste priest, and at a funeral he follows the [241]corpse ringing his bell. If a man is put out of caste through getting maggots in a wound or being beaten by a shoe, he must be purified by the Jangam. The latter rubs some ashes on his own body and places them in the offender’s mouth, and gives him to drink some water from his own lota in place of water from a sacred river. For this the offender pays a fee of five rupees and a calf to the Jangam and must also give a feast to the caste. The dead are either buried or burnt, the head being placed to the east. The eldest son has his head and face shaved on the death of the father of the family, and the youngest on that of the mother.

A child is named on the seventh or eighth day after birth by the old women. If it is much given to crying they consider the name unsuitable and change it, repeating those of deceased relatives. When the child stops crying at the mention of a particular name, they consider that the relative mentioned has been born again in the child and name it after him. Often the name of the sept is combined with the personal name as Lingam-Lachha, Lingam-Kachchi, Pānki-Samāya, Pānki-Ganglu, Pānki-Buchcham, Nāgul-Sama, Nāgul-Mutta.

When a man wishes to destroy an enemy he makes an image of him with earth and offers a pig and goat to the family god, praying for the enemy’s destruction. Then the operator takes a frog or a tree-lizard which has been kept ready and breaks all its limbs, thinking that the limbs of his enemy will similarly be broken and that the man will die. Or he takes some grains of kossa, a small millet, and proceeds to a sāj3 or mahua tree. A pigeon is offered to the tree and to the family god, and both are asked to destroy the foe. The man then ascends the tree, and muttering incantations throws the grains in the direction of his enemy thinking that they will enter his body and destroy him. To counteract these devices a man who thinks himself bewitched calls in the aid of a wizard, who sucks out of his body the grains or other evil things which have been caused to enter it as shown above. Occasionally a man will promise a human sacrifice to his god. For this he must get [242]some hair or a piece of cloth belonging to somebody else and wash it in water in the name of the god, who may then kill the owner of the hair or cloth and thus obtain the sacrifice. Or the sacrificer may pick a quarrel and assault the other person so as to draw blood from him. He picks up a drop or two of the blood and offers it to the deity with the same end in view.

The caste are cultivators and farmservants, and are, as a rule, very poor, living from hand to mouth. They practise shifting cultivation and are too lazy to grow the more valuable crops. They eat grain twice a day during the four months from October to January only, and at other times eke out their scanty provision with edible roots and leaves, and hunt and fish in the forest like the Muria and Māria Gonds. [243]

Joshi, Jyotishi, Bhadri, Parsai.—The caste of village priests and astrologers. They numbered about 6000 persons in 1911, being distributed over all Districts. The Joshis are nearly all Brāhmans, but have now developed into a separate caste and marry among themselves. Their social customs resemble those of Brāhmans, and need not be described in detail. The Joshi officiates at weddings in the village, selects auspicious names for children according to the nakshatra or constellation of the moon under which they were born, and points out the auspicious time or mahūrat for all such ceremonies and for the commencement of agricultural operations. He is also sometimes in charge of the village temples. He is supported by the contributions from the villagers, and often has a plot of land rent-free from the proprietor. The social position of the Joshis is not very good, and, though Brāhmans, they are considered to rank somewhat below the cultivating castes, [256]the Kurmis and Kunbis, by whose patronage they are supported.1

The Bhadris are a class of Joshis who wander about and live by begging, telling fortunes and giving omens. They avert the evil influences of the planet Saturn and accept the gifts offered to this end, which are always black, as black blankets, charcoal, tilli or sesamum oil, the urad pulse,2 and iron. People born on Saturday or being otherwise connected with the planet are especially subject to his malign influence. The Joshi ascertains who these unfortunate persons are from their horoscopes, and neutralises the evil influence of the planet by the acceptance of the gifts already mentioned, while he sometimes also receives a buffalo or a cow. He computes by astrological calculations the depth at which water will be found when a cultivator wishes to dig a well. He also practises palmistry, classifying the whorls of the fingers into two patterns, called the Shank or conch-shell and Chakra or discus of Vishnu. The Shank is considered to be unfortunate and the Chakra fortunate. The lines on the balls of the toes and on the forehead are similarly classified. When anything has been lost or stolen the Joshi can tell from the daily nakshatra or mansion of the moon in which the loss or theft occurred whether the property has gone to the north, south, east or west, and within what interval it is likely to be found. The people have not nowadays much faith in his prophetic powers, and they say, “If clouds come on Friday, and the sky is black on Saturday, then the Joshi foretells that it will rain on Sunday.” The Joshi’s calculations are all based on the rāshis or signs of the zodiac through which the sun passes during the year, and the nakshatras or those which mark the monthly revolutions of the moon. These are given in all Hindu almanacs, and most Joshis simply work from the almanac, being quite ignorant of astronomy. Since the measurement of the sun’s apparent path on the ecliptic, and the moon’s orbit mapped out by the constellations are of some interest, and govern the arrangement of the Hindu calendar, it has been thought desirable to give some account of them. And in order to make this intelligible [257]it is desirable first to recapitulate some elementary facts of astronomy.

The universe may be conceived for the purpose of understanding the sun’s path among the stars as if it were a huge ball, of which looking from the earth’s surface we see part of the inside with the stars marked on it, as on the inside of a dome. This imaginary inside of a ball is called the celestial sphere, and the ancients believed that it actually existed, and also, in order to account for the varying distances of the stars, supposed that there were several of them, one inside the other, and each with a number of stars fixed to it. The sun and earth may be conceived as smaller solid balls suspended inside this large one. Then looking from the surface of the earth we see the sun outlined against the inner surface of the imaginary celestial sphere. And as the earth travels round the sun in its orbit, the appearance to us is that the sun moves over the surface of the celestial sphere. The following figure will make this clear.3

Fig. 1.—The Orbit of the Earth and the Zodiac.

Thus when the earth is at A in its orbit the sun will appear to be at M, and as the earth travels from A to B the sun will appear to move from M to N on the line of the ecliptic. It will be seen that as the earth in a year makes a [258]complete circuit round the sun, the sun will appear to have made a complete circuit among the stars, and have come back to its original position. This apparent movement is annual, and has nothing to do with the sun’s apparent diurnal course over the sky, which is caused by the earth’s daily rotation on its axis. The sun’s annual path among the stars naturally cannot be observed during the day. Professor Newcomb says: “But the fact of the motion will be made very clear if, day after day, we watch some particular fixed star in the west. We shall find that it sets earlier and earlier every day; in other words, it is getting continually nearer and nearer the sun. More exactly, since the real direction of the star is unchanged, the sun seems to be approaching the star.

“If we could see the stars in the daytime all round the sun, the case would be yet clearer. We should see that if the sun and a star were together in the morning, the sun would, during the day, gradually work past the star in an easterly direction. Between the rising and setting it would move nearly its own diameter, relative to the star. Next morning we should see that it had got quite away from the star, being nearly two diameters distant from it. This motion would continue month after month. At the end of the year the sun would have made a complete circuit relative to the star, and we should see the two once more together. This apparent motion of the sun in one year round the celestial sphere was noticed by the ancients, who took much trouble to map it out. They imagined a line passing round the celestial sphere, which the sun always followed in its annual course, and which was called the ecliptic. They noticed that the planets followed nearly the same course as the sun among the stars. A belt extending on each side of the ecliptic, and broad enough to contain all the known planets, as well as the sun, was called the zodiac. It was divided into twelve signs, each marked by a constellation. The sun went through each sign in a month, and through all twelve signs in a year. Thus arose the familiar signs of the zodiac, which bore the same names as the constellations among which they are situated. This is not the case at present, owing to the precession of the equinoxes.” It [259]was by observing the paths of the sun and moon round the celestial sphere along the zodiac that the ancients came to be able to measure the solar and lunar months and years.

As is well known, the celestial sphere is imagined to be spanned by an imaginary line called the celestial equator, which is in the same plane as the earth’s equator, and as it were, a vast concentric circle. The points in the celestial sphere opposite the north and south terrestrial poles are called the north and south celestial poles, and the celestial equator is midway between these. Owing to the special form of the earth the north celestial pole is visible to us in the northern hemisphere, and marked very nearly by the pole-star, its height above the horizon being equal to the latitude of the place where the observer stands. Owing to the daily rotation of the earth the whole celestial sphere seems to revolve daily on the axis of the north and south celestial poles, carrying the sun, moon and stars with it. To this the apparent daily course of the sun and moon is due. Their course seems to us oblique, as we are north of the equator.

If the earth’s axis were set vertically to the plane of its orbit round the sun, then it would follow that the plane of the equator would pass through the centre of the sun, and that the line drawn by the sun in its apparent revolution against the background of the celestial sphere would be in the same plane. That is, the sun would seem to move round a circle in the heavens in the same plane as the earth’s equator, or round the celestial equator. But the earth’s axis is inclined at 23½° to the plane of its orbit, and therefore the apparent path traced by the sun in the celestial sphere, which is the same path as the earth would really follow to an observer on the surface of the sun, is inclined at 23½° to the celestial equator. This is the ecliptic, and is really the line of the plane of the earth’s orbit extended to cut the celestial sphere.

All the planets move round the sun in orbits whose planes are slightly inclined to that of the earth, the plane of Mercury having the greatest inclination of 6°. The plane of the moon’s orbit round the earth is also inclined at 5° 9′ [260]to the ecliptic. The orbits of the moon and all the planets must necessarily intersect the plane of the earth’s orbit on the ecliptic at two points, and these are called the nodes of the moon and each planet respectively. In consequence of the inclination being so slight, though the course of the moon and planets is not actually on the ecliptic, they are all so close to it that they are included in the belt of the zodiac. Thus the moon and all the planets follow almost the same apparent course on the zodiac or belt round the ecliptic in the changes of position resulting from their own and the earth’s orbital movements with reference to what are called the fixed stars.

As the sun completes his circuit of the ecliptic or zodiac in the course of a year, it followed that if his course could be measured and divided into periods, these periods would form divisions of time for the year. This was what the ancients did, and it is probable that the measurement and division of time was the primary object of the science of astronomy, as apart from the natural curiosity to ascertain the movements of the sun, moon and planets, when they were looked upon as divine beings controlling the world. They divided the zodiac or the path of the sun into twelve parts, and gave to each part the name of the principal constellation situated on, or adjacent to, that section of the line of the ecliptic. When they had done this and observed the dates of the sun’s entry into each sign or rāshi, as it is called in Hindi, they had divided the year into twelve solar months. The following are the Hindu names and meanings of the signs of the zodiac:

[261]

The signs of the zodiac were nearly the same among the Greeks, Egyptians, Persians, Babylonians and Indians. They are supposed to have originated in Chaldea or Babylonia, and the fact that the constellations are indicated by nearly the same symbols renders their common origin probable. It seems likely that the existing Hindu zodiac may have been adopted from the Greeks.

The solar year begins with the entrance of the sun into Mesha or Aries.4 The day on which the sun passes into a new sign is called Sankrānt, and is to some extent observed as a holy day. But the Til Sankrānt or entry of the sun into Makara or Capricorn, which falls about the 15th January, is a special festival, because it marks approximately the commencement of the sun’s northern progress and the lengthening of the days, as Christmas roughly does with us. On this day every Hindu who is able bathes in a sacred river at the hour indicated by the Joshis of the sun’s entrance into the sign. Presents of til or sesamum are given to the Joshi, owing to which the day is called Til Sankrānt. People also sometimes give presents to each other.

The Sankrānts do not mark the commencement of the Hindu months, which are still lunar and are adjusted to the solar year by intercalation. It is probable that long before they were able to measure the sun’s progress along the ecliptic the ancients had observed that of the moon, which it was much easier to do, as she is seen among the stars at night. Similarly there is little reason to doubt that the first division of time was the lunar month, which can be remarked by every one. Ancient astronomers measured the progress of the moon’s path along the ecliptic and divided it into twenty-seven sections, each of which represented roughly a day’s march. Each section was distinguished [262]by a group of stars either on the ecliptic or so near it, either in the northern or southern hemisphere, as to be occultated by the moon or capable of being in conjunction with it or the planets. These constellations are called nakshatras. Naturally, some of these constellations are the same as those subsequently chosen to mark the sun’s path or the signs of the zodiac. In some cases a zodiacal constellation is divided into two nakshatras. Like the signs, the nakshatras were held to represent animals or natural objects. The following is a list of them with their corresponding stars, and the object which each was supposed to represent:5

All the zodiacal constellations are thus included in the nakshatras except Capricorn, for which Aquila and Delphinis are substituted. These, as well as Hydra, are a considerable distance from the ecliptic, but may perhaps be nearer the moon’s path, which, as already seen, slightly diverges from it. But this point has not been ascertained by me. The moon completes the circuit of the heavens in its orbit round the earth in a little less than a lunar month or 27 days 8 hours. As twenty-seven nakshatras were demarcated, it seems clear that a nakshatra was meant to represent the distance travelled by the moon in a day. Subsequently a twenty-eighth small nakshatra was formed called Abhijit, out of Uttarāshādha and Sravana, and this may have been meant to represent the fractional part of the day. The days of the lunar month have each, as a matter of fact, a nakshatra allotted to them, which is recorded in all Hindu almanacs, and enters largely into the Joshi’s astrological calculations. It may have been the case that prior to the [264]naming of the days of the week, the days of the lunar month were distinguished by the names of their nakshatras, but this could only have been among the learned. For though there was a nakshatra for every day of the moon’s path round the ecliptic, the same days in successive months could not have the same nakshatras on account of what is called the synodical revolution of the moon. The light of the moon comes from the sun, and we see only that part of it which is illuminated by the sun. When the moon is between the earth and the sun, the light hemisphere is invisible to us, and there is no moon. When the moon is on the opposite side of the earth to the sun we see the whole of the illuminated hemisphere, and it is full moon. Thus in the time between one new moon and the next, the moon must proceed from its position between the earth and the sun to the same position again, and to do this it has to go somewhat more than once round the ecliptic, as is shown by the following figure.6

Fig. 2.—Revolution of the Moon round the Earth.

As during the moon’s circuit of the earth, the earth is also travelling on its orbit, the moon will not be between the earth and the sun again on completion of its [265]orbit, but will have to traverse the further arc shown in the figure to come between the earth and the sun. When the moon has completed the circle of the ecliptic from the position ME, its position relative to the earth has become as NF and it has not yet come between the earth and the sun. Hence while the moon completes the circuit of the ecliptic7 in 27 days 8 hours, the time from one new moon to another is 29 days 13 hours. Hence the nakshatras will not fall on the same days in successive lunar months, and would not be suitable as names for the days. It seems that, recognising this, the ancient astronomers had to find other names. They had the lunar fortnights of 14 or 15 days from new to full and full to new moon. Hence apparently they hit on the plan of dividing these into half and regulating the influence which the sun, moon and planets were believed to exercise over events in the world by allotting one day to each of them. They knew of five planets besides the sun and moon, and by giving a day to each of them the seven-day week was formed. The term planet signifies a wanderer, and it thus perhaps seemed suitable that they should give their names to the days which would revolve endlessly in a cycle, as they themselves did in the heavens. The names of the days are:

The termination vāra means a day. The weekdays were similarly named in Rome and other countries speaking Aryan languages, and they are readily recognised in French. In English three days are named after the sun, moon and Saturn, but four, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, are called after Scandinavian deities, the last three being Woden or Odin, Thor and Freya. I do not know whether these were identified with the planets. It is supposed that the Hindus obtained the seven-day week from the Greeks.8 [266]

Four seven-day weeks were within a day and a fraction of the lunar month, which was the nearest that could be got. The first method of measuring the year would be by twelve lunar months, which would bring it back nearly to the same period. But as the lunar month is 29 days 13 hours, twelve months would be 354 days 12 hours, or nearly eleven days less than the tropical solar year. Hence if the lunar year was retained the months would move back round the year by about eleven days annually. This is what actually happens in the Muhammadan calendar where the twelve lunar months have been retained and the Muharram and other festivals come earlier every year by about eleven days.

In order to reconcile the lunar and solar years the Hindus hit upon an ingenious device. It was ordained that any month in which the sun did not enter a new sign of the zodiac would not count and would be followed by another month of the same name. Thus in the month of Chait the sun must enter the sign Mesha or Aries. If he does not enter it during the lunar month there will be an intercalary Chait, followed by the proper month of the same name during which the sun will enter Mesha.9 Such an intercalary month is called Adhika. An intercalary month, obtained by having two successive lunar months of the same name, occurs approximately once in three years, and by this means the reckoning by twelve lunar months is adjusted to the solar year. On the other hand, the sun very occasionally passes two Sankrānts or enters into two fresh signs during the lunar month. This is rendered possible by the fact that the time occupied by the sun in passing through different signs of the zodiac varies to some extent. It is said that the zodiac was divided into twelve equal signs of 30° each or 1° for each day, as at this period it was considered that the year was 360 days.10 Possibly in adjusting the signs to 365 odd days some alterations may have been made in their length, or errors discovered. At any rate, whatever may be the reason, the length of the sun’s periods in the signs, or of the solar months, varies from [267]31 days 14 hours to 29 days 8 hours. Three of the months are less than the lunar month, and hence it is possible that two Sankrānts or passages of the sun into a fresh sign may occasionally occur in the same lunar month. When this happens, following the same rule as before, the month to which the second Sankrānt properly belongs, that is the one following that in which two Sankrānts occur, is called a Kshaya or eliminated month and is omitted from the calendar. Intercalary months occur generally in the 3rd, 5th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 16th and 18th years of a cycle of nineteen years, or seven times in nineteen years. It is found that in each successive cycle only one or two months are changed, so that the same month remains intercalary for several cycles of nineteen years and then gives way generally to one of the months preceding and rarely to the following month. Suppressed months occur at intervals varying from 19 to 141 years, and in a year when a suppressed month occurs there must always be one intercalary month and not infrequently there are two.11

This method of adjusting the solar and lunar years, though clumsy, is so far scientific that the solar and lunar years are made to agree without any artificial intercalation of days. It has, however, the great disadvantages of the frequent intercalary month, and also of the fact that the lunar months begin on different dates in the English solar calendar, varying by nearly twenty days.

It seems not improbable that the unlucky character of the number thirteen may have arisen from its being the number of the intercalary month. Though the special superstition against sitting down thirteen to a meal is, no doubt, associated particularly with the Last Supper, the number is generally unlucky as a date and in other connections. And this is not only the case in Europe, but the Hindus, Persians and Pārsis also consider thirteen an unlucky number; and the Muhammadans account for a similar superstition by saying that Muhammad was ill for the first thirteen days of the month Safar. Twelve, as being the number of the months in the lunar and solar years, is an auspicious number; thirteen would be one extra, and as being the intercalary [268]month would be here this year and missing next year. Hence it might be supposed that one of thirteen persons met together would be gone at their next meeting like the month. Similarly, the auspicious character of the number seven may be due to its being the total of the sun, moon and five planets, and of the days of the week named after them. And the number three may have been invested with mystic significance as representing the sun, moon and earth. In the Hindu Trinity Vishnu and Siva are the sun and moon, and Brahma, who created the earth, and has since remained quiescent, may have been the personified representative of the earth itself.

The names of the Hindu months were selected from among those of the nakshatras, every second or third being taken and the most important constellations apparently chosen. The following statement shows the current names for the months, the nakshatras from which they are derived, and the constellations they represent:

	Month.		Nakshatra.		Constellation.
1.	Chait.		Chitra.		Virgo.
2.	Baisākh.		Visacha.		Libra.
3.	Jeth.		Jyestha.		Scorpio.
4.	Asārh.		Pūrva Ashādha.		Sagittarius.
			Uttara Ashādha.
5.	Shrāwan.		Sravana.		Aquila.
6.	Bhādon.		Pūrva (E) Bhadrapada.		Pegasus.
			Uttara (N) Bhadrapada.
7.	Kunwār or Aswīn.		Aswini.		Aries.
8.	Kārtik.		Krittika.		Pleiades (Part of Taurus).
9.	Aghan or Mārgashīr.		Mrigasiras.		Orion.
10.	Pūs.		Pushya.		Cancer.
11.	Māgh.		Magha.		Leo.
12.	Phāgun.		Pūrva (E) Phālguni.		Leo.
			Uttara (N) Phālguni.

Thus if the Pleiades are reckoned as part of Taurus,12 eight zodiacal signs give their names to months as well as Orion, Pegasus and Aquila, while two months are included in Leo. It appears that in former times the year began with Pūs or December, as the month Mārgashīr was also called Aghan or Agrahana, or ‘That which went before,’ that is [269]the month before the new year. But the renewal of vegetation in the spring has exercised a very powerful effect on the primitive mind, being marked by the Holi festival in India, corresponding to the Carnival in Europe. The vernal equinox was thus perhaps selected as the most important occasion and the best date for beginning the new year, which now commences in northern India with the new moon of Chait, immediately following the Holi festival, when the sun is in the sign of Mesha or Aries. At first the months appear to have travelled round the year, but subsequently they were fixed by ordaining that the month of Chait should begin with the new moon during the course of which the sun entered the sign Aries.13 The constellation Chitra, from [270]which the sign is named, is nearly opposite to this in the zodiac, as shown by the above figure.14

Fig. 3.—The Hindu Ecliptic showing the relative position of Zodiacal Signs and Nakshatras.

Consequently, the full moon, being nearly opposite the sun on the ecliptic, would be in the sign Chitra or near it. In southern India the months begin with the full moon, but in northern India with the new moon; it seems possible that the months were called after the nakshatra, of the full moon to distinguish them from the solar months which would be called after the sign of the zodiac in which the sun was. But no authoritative explanation seems to be available. Similarly, the nakshatras after which the other months are named, fall nearly opposite to them at the new moon, while the full moon would be in or near them.

The periods during which the sun passes through each nakshatra are also recorded, and they are of course constant in date like the solar months. As there are twenty-seven nakshatras, the average time spent by the sun in each is about 13½ days. These periods are well known to the people as they have the advantage of not varying in date like the lunar months, while over most of India the solar months are not used. The commencement of the various agricultural operations is dated by the solar nakshatras, and there are several proverbs about them in connection with the crops. The following are some examples: “If it does not rain in Pushya and Punarvasu Nakshatras the children of Nimār will go without food.” ‘Rain in Magha Nakshatra (end of August) is like food given by a mother,’ because it is so beneficial. “If there is no wind in Mrigasiras (beginning of June), and no heat in Rohini (end of May), sell your plough-cattle and go and look for work.” ‘If it rains during Uttara (end of September) dogs will turn up their noses at grain,’ because the harvest will be so abundant. “If it rains during Aslesha (first half of August) the wheat-stalks will be as stout as drum-sticks” (because the land will be well ploughed). ‘If rain falls in Chitra or Swāti Nakshatras (October) there won’t be enough cotton for lamp-wicks.’

The lunar month was divided into two fortnights called paksha or wing. The period of the waxing moon was known as sukla or sudi paksha, that is the light fortnight, [271]and that of the waning moon as krishna or budi paksha, that is the dark fortnight.

Each lunar month was also divided into thirty equal periods, called tithis or lunar days. Since there are less than thirty days in the lunar month, a tithi does not correspond to an ordinary day, but begins and ends at odd hours of the day. Nevertheless the tithis are printed in all almanacs, and are used for the calculation of auspicious moments.15

The day is divided for ordinary purposes of measuring time into eight pahars or watches, four of the day and four of the night; and into sixty gharis or periods of twenty-four minutes each. The pahars, however, are not of equal length. At the equinox the first and fourth pahar of the day and night each contain eight gharis, and the two middle ones seven gharis. In summer the first and fourth pahars of the day contain nine gharis each, and the two middle ones eight each, while the first and fourth pahars of the night contain seven and the two middle ones six each. Thus in summer the four day pahars contain 13 hours 36 minutes and the night ones 10 hours 24 minutes. And in winter the exact opposite is the case, the night pahars being lengthened and the day ones shortened in precisely the same manner. No more unsatisfactory measure of time could well be devised. The termination of the second watch or do pahar always corresponds with midday and midnight respectively.

The apparatus with which the hours were measured and announced consisted of a shallow metal pan, named from its office, ghariāl, and suspended so as to be easily struck with a wooden mallet by the ghariāli. He measured the passing of a ghari by an empty thin brass cup or katori, perforated at the bottom, and placed on the surface of a large vessel filled with water, where nothing could disturb it; the water came through the small hole in the bottom of the cup and filled it, causing it to sink in the period of one ghari. At the expiration of each ghari the ghariāl struck its number from one to nine with a mallet on a brass plate, and at the end of each pahar he struck a gujar or eight strokes to announce the fact, followed by one to four hollow-sounding [272]strokes to indicate the number of the pahar. This custom is still preserved in the method by which the police-guards of the public offices announce the hours on a gong and subsequently strike four, eight and twelve strokes to proclaim these hours of the day and night by our clock. Only rich men could afford to maintain a ghariāl, as four persons were required to attend to it during the day and four at night.16

The Joshi calculates auspicious17 seasons by a consideration of the sun’s zodiacal sign, the moon’s nakshatra or daily mansion, and other rules. From the monthly zodiacal signs and daily nakshatras in which children are born, as recorded in their horoscopes, he calculates whether their marriage will be auspicious. Thus the zodiacal signs are supposed to be divided among the four castes, Pisces, Cancer and Scorpio belonging to the Brāhman; Aries, Leo and Sagittarius to the Kshatriya; Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn to the Vaishya; and Gemini, Libra and Aquarius to the Sūdra. If the boy and girl were born under any of the three signs of the same caste it is a happy conjunction. If the boy’s sign was of a caste superior to the girl’s, it is suitable, but if the girl’s sign is of a superior caste to the boy’s it is an omen that she will rule the household; and though the marriage may take place, certain ceremonies should be performed to obviate this effect. There is also a division of the zodiacal signs according to their nature. Thus Virgo, Libra, Gemini, Aquarius and half of Sagittarius are considered to be of the nature of man, or formed by him; Aries, Taurus, half of Sagittarius and half of Capricorn are of the nature of animals; Cancer, Pisces and half of Capricorn are of a watery nature; Leo is of the desert or wild nature; and Scorpio is of the nature of insects. If the boy and girl were both born under signs of the same nature their marriage will be auspicious, but if they were born under signs of different [273]natures, they will share only half the blessings and comforts of the marriage state, and may be visited by strife, enmity, misery or distress. As Leo and Scorpio are looked upon as being enemies, evil consequences are much dreaded from the marriage of a couple born under these signs. There are also numerous rules regarding the nakshatras or mansions of the moon and days of the week under which the boy and girl were born, but these need not be reproduced. If on the day of the wedding the sun or any of the planets passes from one zodiacal sign to another, the wedding must be delayed for a certain number of gharis or periods of twenty-four minutes, the number varying for each planet. The hours of the day are severally appointed to the seven planets and the twelve zodiacal signs, and the period of ascendancy of a sign is known as lagan; this name is also given to the paper specifying the day and hour which have been calculated as auspicious for the wedding. It is stated that no weddings should be celebrated during the period of occultation of the planets Jupiter and Venus, nor on the day before new moon, nor the Sankrānt or day on which the sun passes from one zodiacal sign to another, nor in the Singhast year, when the planet Jupiter is in the constellation Leo. This takes place once in twelve years. Marriages are usually prohibited during the four months of the rainy season, and sometimes also in Pūs, Jeth or other months.

The Joshi names children according to the moon’s daily nakshatra under which they were born, each nakshatra having a letter or certain syllables allotted to it with which the name must begin. Thus Magha has the syllables Ma, Mi, Mu and Me, with which the name should begin, as Mansāram, Mithu Lāl, Mukund Singh, Meghnāth; Purwa Phālguni has Mo and Te, as Moji Lāl and Tegi Lāl; Punarvasu has Ke, Ko, Ha and Hi, as Kesho Rao, Koshal Prasād, Hardyāl and Hīra Lāl, and so on. The primitive idea connecting a name with the thing or person to which it belongs is that the name is actually a concrete part of the person or object, containing part of his life, just as the hair, nails and all the body are believed to contain part of the life, which is not at first localised in any part of the body nor conceived of as separate from it. The primitive mind could conceive no abstract [274]idea, that is nothing that could not be seen or heard, and it could not think of a name as an abstract appellation. The name was thought of as part of that to which it was applied. Thus, if one knew a man’s name, it was thought that one could use it to injure him, just as if one had a piece of his hair or nails he could be injured through them because they all contained part of his life; and if a part of the life was injured or destroyed the remainder would also suffer injury, just as the whole body might perish if a limb was cut off. For this reason savages often conceal their real names, so as to prevent an enemy from obtaining power to injure them through its knowledge. By a development of the same belief it was thought that the names of gods and saints contained part of the divine life and potency of the god or saint to whom they were applied. And even separated from the original owner the name retained that virtue which it had acquired in association; hence the power assigned to the names of gods and superhuman beings when used in spells and incantations. Similarly, if the name of a god or saint was given to a child it was thought that some part of the nature and virtue of the god might be conferred on the child. Thus Hindu children are most commonly named after gods and goddesses under the influence of this idea; and though the belief may now have decayed the practice continues. Similarly the common Muhammadan names are epithets of Allah or god or of the Prophet and his relations. Jewish children are named after the Jewish patriarchs. In European countries the most common male names are those of the Apostles, as John, Peter, James, Paul, Simon, Andrew and Thomas; and the names of the Evangelists were, until recently, also given. The most common girl’s name in several European countries is Mary, and a generation or two ago other Biblical names, as Sarah, Hannah, Ruth, Rachel, and so on, were very usually given to girls. In England the names next in favour for boys and girls are those of kings and queens, and the same idea perhaps originally underlay the application of these names. The following are some of the best-known Hindu names, taken from those of gods:— [275]

Names of Vishnu.

• Nārāyan. Probably ‘The abode of mortals,’ or else ‘He who dwelt on the waters (before creation)’; now applied to the sun.
• Wāman. The dwarf, one of Vishnu’s incarnations.
• Janārdan. Said to mean protector of the people.
• Narsingh. The man-lion, one of Vishnu’s incarnations.
• Hari. Yellow or gold-colour or green. Perhaps applied to the sun.
• Parashrām. From Parasurāma or Rāma with the axe, one of the incarnations of Vishnu.
• Gadadhar. Wielder of the club or gada.
• Jagannāth. Lord of the world.
• Dīnkar. The sun, or he who makes the days (dīn karna).
• Bhagwān. The fortunate or illustrious.
• Anant. The infinite or eternal.
• Madhosūdan. Destroyer of the demon Madho (Madho means honey or wine).
• Pāndurang. Yellow-coloured.

Names of Rāma, or Vishnu’s Great Incarnation as King Rāma of Ayodhia.

• Rāmchandra, the moon of Rāma, and Rāmbaksh, the gift of Rāma, are the commonest Hindu male names.
• Atmārām. Soul of Rāma.
• Sitārām. Rāma and Sita his wife.
• Rāmcharan. The footprint of Rāma.
• Sakhārām. The friend of Rāma.
• Sewārām. Servant of Rāma.

Names of Krishna.

• Krishna and its diminutive Kishen are very common names.
• Kanhaiya. A synonym for Krishna.
• Dāmodar. Because his mother tied him with a rope to a large tree to keep him quiet and he pulled up the tree, roots and all.
• Bālkishen. The boy Krishna. [276]
• Ghansiām. The dark-coloured or black one (like dark clouds); probably referring to the belief that Krishna belonged to the non-Aryan races.
• Madan Mohan. The enchanter of love.
• Manohar. The heart-stealer.
• Yeshwant. The glorious.
• Kesho. Having long, fine hair. A name of Krishna. Also the destroyer of the demon Keshi, who was covered with hair. It would appear that the epithet was first applied to Krishna himself and afterwards to a demon whom he was supposed to have destroyed.
• Balwant. Strong. An epithet of Krishna, used in conjunction with other names.
• Mādhava. Honey-sweet or belonging to the spring, vernal.
• Girdhāri. He who held up the mountain. Krishna held up the mountain Govardhan, balancing the peak on his finger to protect the people from the destructive rains sent by Indra.
• Shiāmsundar. The dark and beautiful one.
• Nandkishore, Nandkumār. Child of Nand the cowherd, Krishna’s foster-father.

Names of Siva.

• Sadāsheo. Siva the everlasting.
• Mahādeo. The great god.
• Trimbak. The three-eyed one (?).
• Gangādhar. The holder of the Ganges, because it flows from Siva’s hair.
• Kāshināth. The lord of Benāres.
• Kedārnāth. The lord of cedars (referring to the pine-forests of the Himālayas).
• Nīlkanth. The blue-jay sacred to Siva. Name of Siva because his throat is bluish-black either from swallowing poison at the time of the churning of the ocean or from drinking large quantities of bhāng.
• Shankar. He who gives happiness.
• Vishwanāth. Lord of the universe.
• Sheo Prasād. Gift of Siva.

[277]

Names of Ganpati or Ganesh.

• Ganpati is itself a very common name.
• Vidhyādhar. The lord of learning.
• Vināyak. The remover of difficulties.
• Ganesh Prasād. Gift of Ganesh. A child born on the fourth day of any month will often be given this name, as Ganesh was born on the 4th Bhādon (August).

Names of Hanumān.

• Hanumān itself is a very common name.
• Māroti, son of Mārut the god of the wind.
• Mahāvīra or Mahābīr. The strong one.

Other common sacred names are: Amrit, the divine nectar, and Moreshwar, lord of the peacock, perhaps an epithet of the god Kartikeya. Men are also often named after jewels, as: Hīra Lāl, diamond; Panna Lāl, emerald; Ratan Lāl, a jewel; Kundan Lāl, fine gold. A child born on the day of full moon may be called Pūran Chand, which means full moon. There are of course many other male names, but those here given are the commonest. Children are also frequently named after the day or month in which they were born.

Common terminations of male names are: Charan, footprint; Dās, slave; Prasād, food offered to a god; Lāl, dear; Datta, gift, commonly used by Maithil Brāhmans; Dīn or Baksh, which also means gift; Nāth, lord of; and Dulāre, dear to. These are combined with the names of gods, as: Kālicharan, footprint of Kāli; Rām Prasād or Kishen Prasād, an offering to Rāma or Krishna; Bishen Lāl, dear to Vishnu; Ganesh Datta, a gift from Ganesh; Ganga Dīn, a gift from the Ganges; Sheo Dulāre, dear to Siva; Vishwanāth, lord of the universe. Boys are sometimes given the names of goddesses with such terminations, as Lachmi or Jānki Prasād, an offering to these goddesses. A child born on the 8th of light Chait (April) will be called Durga Prasād, as this day is sacred to the goddess Durga or Devi.

Women are also frequently named after goddesses, as: [278]Pārvati, the consort of Siva; Sīta, the wife of Rāma; Jānki, apparently another name for Sīta; Lakshmi, the consort of Vishnu, and the goddess of wealth; Sāraswati, the goddess of wisdom; Rādha, the beloved of Krishna; Dasoda, the foster-mother of Krishna; Dewāki, who is supposed to have been the real mother of Krishna; Durga, another name for Siva’s consort; Devi, the same as Durga and the earth-goddess; Rukhmini, the bright or shining one, a consort of Vishnu; and Tulsi, the basil-plant, sacred to Vishnu.

Women are also named after the sacred rivers, as: Ganga, Jamni or Yamuni (Jumna); Gomti, the river on which Lucknow stands; Godha or Gautam, after the Godāvari river; and Bhāgirathi, another name for the Ganges. The river Nerbudda is commonly found as a man’s name, especially in places situated on its banks. Other names of women are: Sona, gold; Puna, born at the full moon; Manohra, enchanting; Kamala, the lotus; Indumati, a moonlight night; Sumati, well-minded; Sushila, well-intentioned; Srimati, wealthy; Amrita, nectar; Phulwa, a flower; Imlia, the tamarind; Malta, jasmine; and so on.

If a girl is born after four sons she will be called Pancho or fifth, and one born in the unlucky Mul Nakshatra is called Mulia. When a girl is married and goes to her husband’s house her name is always changed there. If two girls have been married into the household, they may be called Bari Bohu and Choti Bohu, or the elder and younger daughters-in-law; or a girl may be called after the place from which she comes, as Jabalpurwāli, Raipurwāli, and so on.

The higher castes have two names, one given by the Joshi, which is called rāshi-ka-nām or the ceremonial name, rāshi meaning the Nakshatra or moon’s daily mansion under which the child was born. This is kept secret and only used in marriage and other ceremonies, though the practice is now tending to decay. The other is the chaltu or current name, and may either be a second ordinary name, such as those already given, or it may be taken from some peculiarity of the child. Names of the latter class are: Bhūra, brown; Putro, a doll, given to a pretty child; Dukāli, born in [279]famine-time; Mahinga, dear or expensive; Chhota, little; Bābu, equivalent to little prince or noble; Pāpa, father; Kakku, born in the cucumber season; Lada, pet; Pattu, a somersault; Judāwan, cooling, and so on. Bad names are also given to avert ill-luck and remove the enmity of the spirits hostile to children, if the mother’s previous babies have been lost. Instances of these are Raisa, short in stature; Lūla, having a maimed arm; Ghasīta, dragged along on a board; Damru, bought for a farthing; Khairāti, alms; Dukhi, pain; Kubra, hunch-back; Gudri, rag; Kāna, one-eyed; Birla, thin or lean; Bisāhu, bought or purchased; and Bulāki and Chedi, having a pierced nostril; these names are given to a boy whose nostril has been pierced to make him resemble a girl and thus decrease his value.18 Further instances of such names have been given in other articles.

Kachera,1 Kachāra (from kānch, glass).—The functional caste of makers of glass bangles. The Kacheras numbered 2800 persons in the Central Provinces in 1911, of whom 1800 were found in the Jubbulpore District. The caste say that in former times glass bangles were made only by Turk or Muhammadan Kacheras. The present name of Turkāri is probably derived from Turk. But when Gauri Pārvati was to be married to Mahādeo, she refused to wear the bangles made by a Turkāri. So Mahādeo constructed a vedi or furnace, and from this sprang the first Hindu Kachera, who was employed to make bangles for Pārvati. A later variant of the legend, having a sufficiently obvious deduction, is that Mahādeo did not create a man, but caught hold of a Kshatriya who happened to be present and ordered him to make the bangles. His descendants followed the new profession and thus came to be known as Kacheras. It is a possible conclusion from the story that the art of making glass bangles was introduced by the Muhammadans and, as suggested in the article on Lakhera, it may be the case that Hindu women formerly wore ornaments made of lac.

The exogamous sections of the Kacheras show that the caste is of very mixed origin. Several of them are named [282]after other castes, as Bharia (forest tribe), Gadaria (shepherd), Sunār, Naua (Nai), Thakurel (Thākur or Rājpūt), Kachhwāha and Chauhān (septs of Rājpūts), and Kuria or Kori (weaver), and indicate that members of these castes took to the profession of bangle-making and became Kacheras. It may be surmised that, in the first instance perhaps, when the objection to using the product of the Muhammadan workman arose, if the theory of the prior use of lac bangles be correct, members of different castes took to supplying bangles for their own community, and from these in the course of time the Kachera caste was developed. Other names of sections worth mentioning are Jharrāha, one who frets or worries; Kharrāha, a choleric person; Dukesha, one who carries a begging-bowl; Thuthel, a maimed man, and Khajha, one suffering from the itch.

The exogamous sections are known as baink. The marriage of persons belonging to the same section and of first cousins is forbidden. Girls are generally married at an early age, as there is a scarcity of women in the caste, and they are snapped up as soon as available. As a natural consequence a considerable bride-price is paid, and the desire of the Kachera to make a profit by the marriage of his daughter is ridiculed in the following saying, supposed to be his prayer: “O God, give me a daughter. In exchange for her I shall get a pair of bullocks and a potful of rupees, and I shall be rich for the rest of my life. As her dowry I shall give her a sickle, a hoe and a spinning-machine, and these will suffice for my daughter to earn her livelihood.” The usual sum paid for a girl is Rs. 50. The marriage ceremony is performed by walking round the sacred pole, and after it the couple try their strength against each other, the bride trying to push a stone pestle on to a slab with her foot and the groom pushing it off with his. At the end of the wedding an omen is taken, a silver ornament known as dhāl2 which women wear in the ear being fixed on to a wall and milk poured over it. If the ornament is displaced by the stream of milk and falls down, it is considered that the union will be a happy one. The proceeding perhaps symbolises roughly the birth of a child. The marriage of [283]widows is permitted, and in consequence of the scarcity of women the widow is usually married to her late husband’s younger brother, if there be one, even though he may be only a child. Divorce is permitted. Liaisons within the caste are usually overlooked, but a woman going wrong with an outsider is expelled from the community. The Kacheras commonly burn the dead. They employ Brāhmans for ceremonial purposes, but their social status is low and no high caste will take water from them. They eat flesh and fish, and some of them drink liquor, while others have given it up. They have a caste committee or panchāyat for the punishment of social offences, which is headed by officials known as Mālik and Dīwān. Their favourite deity is Devi, and in her honour they sow the Jawaras or pots of wheat corresponding to the gardens of Adonis during the nine days prior to the Rāmnaomi and Dasahra festivals in March and September. Some of them carry their devotion so far as to grow the plants of wheat on their bodies, sitting in one posture for nine days and almost giving up food and drink. At the Diwāli festival they worship the furnace in which glass bangles are made.

The traditional occupation of the caste is the manufacture of glass bangles. They import the glass in lumps from northern India and melt it in their furnace, after which the colouring matter is applied and the ring is turned on a slab of stone. Nearly all Hindu married women have glass bangles, which are broken or removed if their husbands die. But the rule is not universal, and some castes do not wear them at all. Mārwāri women have bangles of ivory, and Dhangar (shepherd) women of cocoanut-shell. Women of several castes who engage in labour have glass bangles only on the left wrist and metal ones on the right, as the former are too fragile. Low-caste women sometimes wear the flat, black bangles known as khagga on the upper arm. In many castes the glass bangles are also broken after the birth of a child. Bangles of many colours are made, but Hindus usually prefer black or indigo-blue. Among Hindus of good caste a girl may wear green bangles while she is unmarried; at her wedding black bangles are put on her wrists, and thereafter she may have them of black, blue, red or yellow, but [284]not green. Muhammadans usually wear black or dark-green bangles. A Hindu woman has the same number of bangles on each wrist, not less than five and more if she likes. She will never leave her arms entirely without bangles, as she thinks this would cause her to become a widow. Consequently when a new set are purchased one or two of the old ones are kept on each arm. Similarly among castes who wear lac bangles like Banjāras, five should be worn, and these cover the greater part of the space between the wrist and the elbow. The men of the caste usually stay at home and make the bangles, and the women travel about to the different village markets, carrying their wares on little ponies if they can afford them. It is necessary that the seller of bangles should be a woman, as she has to assist her customers to work them on to their wrists, and also display her goods to high-caste women behind the purda in their homes.

The Kacheras’ bangles are very cheap, from two to fourteen being obtainable for a pice (farthing), according to quality. Many are also broken, and the seller has to bear the loss of all those broken when the purchaser is putting them on, which may amount to 30 per cent. And though an improvement on the old lac bangles, the colours are very dull, and bracelets of better and more transparent glass imported from Austria now find a large sale and tend to oust the indigenous product. The Kachera, therefore, is, as a rule, far from prosperous. The incessant bending over the furnace tends to undermine his constitution and often ruins his eyesight. There is in fact a Hindi saying to the effect that, “When the Kachera has a son the rejoicings are held in the Kundera’s (turner’s) house. For he will go blind and then he will find nothing else to do but turn the Kundera’s lathe.” [285]

Kāchhi.—An important cultivating caste of the northern Districts, who grow vegetables and irrigated crops requiring intensive cultivation. The distinction between the Kāchhis and Mālis of the Hindustāni Districts is that the former grow regular irrigated crops, while the latter confine their operations to vegetables and flower-gardens; whereas the Māli or Marār of the Marātha country is both a cultivator and a gardener. The Kāchhis numbered about 120,000 persons in 1911, and resided mainly in the Saugor, Damoh, Jubbulpore and Narsinghpur Districts. The word Kāchhi may be derived from kachhār, the name given to the alluvial land lying on river banks, which they greatly affect for growing their vegetables. Another derivation is from kāchhni, a term used for the process of collecting the opium from the capsules of the poppy.1 The caste are probably an offshoot of the Kurmis. Owing to the resemblance of names they claim a connection with the Kachhwāha sept of Rājpūts, but this is not at all probable.

The caste is divided into a number of subcastes, most of which take their names from special plants which they grow. Thus the Hardia Kāchhis grow haldi or turmeric; the Alias cultivate the āl or Indian madder, from which the well-known red dye is obtained; the Phūlias are flower-gardeners; the Jirias take their name from jira or cumin; the Murai or Murao Kāchhis are called after the muli or radish; the Pirias [286]take their name from the piria or basket in which they carry earth; the Sanias grow san or hemp; the Mor Kāchhis are those who prepare the maur or marriage-crown for weddings; and the Līlia subcaste are called after the indigo plant (īl or nīl). In some localities they have a subcaste called Kāchhwāhi, who are considered to have a connection with the Rājpūts and to rank higher than the others.

The social customs of the Kāchhis resemble those of the Kurmis. The descendants of the same parents do not intermarry for three generations. A man may have two sisters to wife at the same time. In the Damoh District, on the arrival of the bridegroom’s party, the bride is brought into the marriage-shed, and is there stripped to the waist while she holds a leaf-cup in her hand; this is probably done so that the bridegroom may see that the bride is free from any bodily defect. Girls are usually married before they are ten years old, and if the parents are too poor to arrange a match for their daughter, the caste-fellows often raise a subscription when she attains this age and get her married. The bridegroom should always be older than the bride, and the difference is generally from five to ten years. The bridegroom wears a loin-cloth and long coat reaching to the ground, both of which are stained yellow with turmeric; the bride wears a red cloth or one in which red is the main colour. The girl’s father gives her a dowry of a cow or jewels, or at least two rupees; while the boy’s father pays all the expenses of the wedding with the exception of one feast. The bridegroom gives the bride a present of three shoulder-cloths and three skirts, and one of these is worn by her at the wedding; this is the old northern method of dress, but married women do not usually adhere to it and have adopted the common sāri or single body-cloth. The principal ceremony is the bhānwar or walking round the sacred post. While the bride and bridegroom are engaged in this the parents and elderly relatives shut themselves into the house and weep. During the first four rounds of the post the bride walks in front bowing her head and the bridegroom places his right hand on her back; while during the last three the bridegroom walks in front holding the bride by her third finger. After this the bride is hidden somewhere in the house and the [287]bridegroom has to search for her. Sometimes the bride’s younger sister is dressed up in her clothes and the bridegroom catches her in mistake for his wife, whereupon the old women laugh and say to him, ‘Do you want her also?’ If finally he fails to find the bride he must give her some ornament.

After the wedding the bridegroom’s marriage-crown is hung to the roof in a basket. And on the sixth day of the following month of Bhādon (August), he again dresses himself in his wedding clothes, and taking his marriage-crown on a dish, proceeds to the nearest stream or river accompanied by his friends. Here he throws the crown into the water, and the wedding coat is washed clean of the turmeric and unsewn and made up into ordinary clothes. This ceremony is known as moschatt and is common to Hindu castes generally. Widows are permitted to marry again, and the most usual match is with the younger brother of the deceased husband. Divorce is allowed at the instance either of the husband or wife, and may be effected by a simple declaration before the caste committee.

After a birth neither the mother nor child are given anything to eat the first day; and on the second they bring a young calf and give a little of its urine to the child, and to the mother a little sugar and the half of a cocoanut. In the evening of this day they buy all kinds of hot spices and herbs from a Bania and make a cake with them and give it to the mother to eat. On the second day the child begins to drink its mother’s milk. The navel-string is cut and buried in the room on the first day, and over it a fire is kept burning continuously during the period of impurity. The small piece which falls from the child’s body is buried beneath the mother’s bed. The period of impurity after the birth of a girl lasts for four days and five days for a boy. On the sixth day the mother is given rice to eat. Twelve days after a child is born the barber’s wife cuts its nails for the first time and throws the clippings away.

The ears of boys and girls are pierced when they are four or five years old; until this is done they are not considered as members of the caste and may take food from anyone. The ear is always pierced by a Sunār (goldsmith), who travels about the country in the pursuit of this calling. [288]A brass pin is left in the ear for fifteen days, and is then removed and a strip of wood is substituted for it in a boy’s ear and a peacock’s feather in that of a girl to enlarge the hole. Girls do not have their nostrils pierced nor wear nose-rings, as the Kāchhis are a comparatively low caste. They are tattooed before or after marriage with patterns of a scorpion, a peacock, a discus, and with dots on the chin and cheek-bones. During the period of her monthly impurity a girl is secluded in the house and does not eat flesh or fish. When the time is finished she goes to the river and bathes and dresses her hair with earth, which is a necessary ceremony of purification.

The bodies of children under five and of persons dying from smallpox, snake-bite or cholera are buried, and those of others are cremated. In Chhindwāra they do not wash or anoint the corpses of the dead, but sprinkle on them a little turmeric and water. On the day of the funeral or cremation the bereaved family is supplied with food by friends. The principal deity of the Kāchhis is Bhainsāsur, who is regarded as the keeper of the vegetable garden and is represented by a stone placed under a tree in any part of it. He is worshipped once a year after the Holi festival with offerings of vermilion, areca-nuts and cocoanuts, and libations of liquor. The Kāchhis raise all kinds of vegetables and garden crops, the principal being chillies, turmeric, tobacco, garlic, onions, yams and other vegetables. They are diligent and laborious, and show much skill in irrigating and manuring their crops.

Kadera, Kandera, Golandāz, Bāndar, Hawāidar.1—A small occupational caste of makers of fireworks. The Kaderas numbered 2200 persons in 1911, and were most numerous in the Narsinghpur District. They consider themselves to have come from Bundelkhand, where the caste is also found, but it is in greatest strength in the Gwālior State. In former times Kaderas were employed to manufacture gunpowder and missiles of iron, and serve cannon in the Indian armies. The term Golandāz or ‘ball-thrower’ was also applied to native artillerymen. The Bāndar or ‘rocket-throwers’ were a separate class, who fired rockets containing [289]missiles, the name being derived from vān, an arrow. With them may be classed the Deg-andāz or ‘mortar-throwers,’ who used thick earthenware pots filled with powder and having fuses attached, somewhat resembling the modern bomb—missiles which inflicted dreadful wounds.2 Mr. Irvine writes of the Mughal artillery as follows: “The fire was never very rapid. Orme speaks of the artillery firing once in a quarter of an hour. In 1721 the usual rate of fire of heavy guns was once every three hours. Artillery which fired once in two gharis or forty-four minutes was praised for its rapidity of action. The guns were usually posted behind the clay walls of houses; or they might take up a commanding position on the top of a brick-kiln; or a temporary entrenchment might be formed out of the earthen bank and ditch which usually surround a grove of mango-trees.” Hawāidār is a term for a maker of fireworks, while the name Kandera itself may perhaps be derived from kand, an arrow.

In Narsinghpur the Kaderas have three subcastes, Rājpūt or Dāngiwāra, Dhunka, and Matwāla. The first claim to be Rājpūts, but the alternative name of Dāngiwāra indicates that they are a mixed group, perhaps partly of Rājpūt descent like the Dāngis of Saugor. It is by no means unlikely that the lower classes of Rājpūts should have been employed in the avocations of the Kaderas. The term Dhunka signifies a cotton-cleaner, and some of the Kaderas may have taken up this calling, when they could no longer find employment in the native armies. Matwāla means a drinker of country liquor, in which members of this group indulge. But with the exception of the Rājpūt Kaderas in Narsinghpur, other members of the caste also drink it.

They celebrate their marriages by walking round the sacred post. Divorce and the remarriage of widows are permitted. They have a caste committee, with a headman called Chaudhri or Mehtar, and an inferior officer known as Diwān. When a man has been put out of caste the Chaudhri first takes food with him on readmission, and for this is entitled to a fee of a rupee and a turban, while the [290]Diwān receives a smaller cloth. These offices are hereditary. The Kaderas have no purda system, and a wife may speak freely to her father-in-law. They bury the milk-teeth of children below the ghinochi, or stand for water-pots, with the idea probably of preventing heat and inflammation in the gums. A child’s jhāla or birth-hair is usually cut for the first time on the occasion of some marriage in the family, and is thrown into the Nerbudda or buried at a temple. Names are given by the Brāhman on the day of birth or soon afterwards, and a second pet name is commonly used in the family. If a child sees a lamp on the chhati or sixth day after its birth they think that it will squint.

The caste employ Brāhmans for religious ceremonies, but their social position is low, and they rank with castes from whom a Brāhman cannot take water. On the tenth day of Jeth (May) they worship Lukmān Hakīm, a personage whom they believe to have been the inventor of gunpowder. He is popularly identified with Solomon, and is revered with Muhammadan rites in the shop and not in the house. A Fakīr is called in who sacrifices a goat, and makes an offering of the head, which becomes his perquisite; sugar-cakes and sweet rice are also offered and given away to children, and the flesh of the goat is eaten by the family of the worshipper. Since the worship is paid only in the shop it would appear that Lukmān Hakīm is considered a deity foreign to the domestic religion, and is revered as having invented the substance which enables the caste to make their livelihood; and since he is clearly a Muhammadan deity, and is venerated according to the ritual of this religion by the Kaderas, who are otherwise Hindus, a recognition seems to be implied that as far at least as the Kaderas are concerned the introduction of gunpowder into India is attributed to the Muhammadans. It is not stated whether or not the month of May was selected of set purpose for the worship of the inventor of gunpowder, but it is at any rate a most appropriate season in India. At present the Kadera makes his own gunpowder and manufactures fireworks, and in this capacity he is also known as Atashbāz. The ingredients for gunpowder in Narsinghpur are a pound of saltpetre, two ounces of sulphur, and four ounces of charcoal [291]of a light wood, such as sāleh3 or the stalks of arhar.4 Water is sprinkled on the charcoal and the ingredients are pounded together in a mortar, a dangerous proceeding which is apt to cause occasional vacancies in the family circle. Arsenic and potash are also used for different fireworks, and sesamum oil is added to prevent smoke. Fireworks form a very popular spectacle in India, and can be obtained of excellent quality even in small towns. Bharbhūnjas or grain-parchers now also deal in them.

Kahār,1 Bhoi.—The caste of palanquin-bearers and watermen of northern India. No scientific distinction can be made between the Kahārs and Dhīmars, both names being applied to the same people. In northern India the term Kahār is generally used, and Mr. Crooke has an article on Kahār, but none on Dhīmar. In the Central Provinces the latter is the more common name for the caste, and in 1911 23,000 Kahārs were returned as against nearly 300,000 Dhīmars. Berār had also 27,000 Kahārs. The social customs of the caste are described in the article on Dhīmar, but a short separate notice is given to the Kahārs on account of their special social interest. Some Kahārs refuse to clean household cooking-vessels and hence occupy a slightly higher social position than the Dhīmars generally. Mr. Crooke derives the name of the caste from the Sanskrit Skandha-kāra, or ‘One who carries things on his shoulder.’ The Brāhmanical genealogists represent the Kahār as descended from a Brāhman father and a Chandāl or sweeper mother, and this is typical of the position occupied by the caste, who, though probably derived from the primitive non-Aryan tribes, have received a special position on account of their employment as household servants, so that all classes may take water and cooked food at their hands. As one of Mr. Crooke’s correspondents remarks: “This caste is so low that they clean the vessels of almost all castes except menials like the Chamār and Dhobi, and at the same time so high that, except Kanaujia Brāhmans, all other castes eat [292]pakki and drink water at their hands.” Sir D. Ibbetson says of the Kahār: “He is a true village menial, receiving customary dues and performing customary service. His social standing is in one respect high; for all will drink water at his hands. But he is still a servant, though the highest of his class.” This comparatively high degree of social purity appears to have been conferred on the Kahārs and Dhīmars from motives of convenience, as it would be intolerable to have a palanquin-bearer or indoor servant from whom one could not take a drink of water.

The proper occupation of the Kahār is that of doli or litter-bearer. When carts could not travel owing to the absence of roads this was the regular mode of conveyance of those who could afford it and did not ride. Buchanan remarks: “Few or none except some chief native officers of Government keep bearers in constant pay; but men of large estates give farms at low rents to their bearers, who are ready at a call and receive food when employed.”2 A superior kind of litter used by rich women had a domed roof supported on eight pillars with side-boards like Venetian blinds; and was carried on two poles secured to the sides beneath the roof. This is perhaps the progenitor of the modern Calcutta ghāri or four-wheeler, just as the body of the hansom-cab was modelled on the old sedan-chair. It was called Kharkhariya in imitation of the rattling of the blinds when in motion.3 The pālki or ordinary litter consisted of a couch slung under a long bamboo, which formed an arch over it. Over the arch was suspended a tilt made of cloth, which served to screen the passenger from sun and rain. A third kind was the Chaupala or square box open at the sides and slung on a bamboo; the passenger sat doubled up inside this. If as was sometimes the case the Chaupala was hung considerably beneath the bamboo the passenger was miserably draggled by dust and mud. Nowadays regular litters are so little used that they are not to be found in villages; but when required because one cannot ride or for travelling at night they are readily improvised by slinging a native wooden cot from two poles by strings of bamboo-fibre. Most of the Kahārs and Dhīmars have forgotten how to carry a litter, and proceed very [293]slowly with frequent stops to change shoulders or substitute other bearers. But the Kols of Mandla still retain the art, and will do more than four miles an hour for several hours if eight men are allowed. Under native governments the privilege of riding in a palanquin was a mark of distinction; and a rule was enforced that no native could thus enter into the area of the forts in Madras and Bombay without the permission of the Governor; such permission being recorded in the order book at the gates of the fort and usually granted only to a few who were lame or otherwise incapacitated. When General Medows assumed the office of Governor of Bombay in 1788 some Parsis waited on him and begged for the removal of this restriction; to which the Governor replied, “So long as you do not force me to ride in this machine he may who likes it”; and so the rule was abrogated.4 A passage from Hobson-Jobson, however, shows that the Portuguese were much stricter in this respect: “In 1591 a proclamation of the Viceroy, Matthias d’Albuquerque, ordered: ‘That no person of what quality or condition soever, shall go in a palanquy without my express licence, save they be over sixty years of age, to be first proved before the Auditor-General of Police ... and those who contravene this shall pay a penalty of 200 cruzados, and persons of mean estate the half, the palanquys and their belongings to be forfeited, and the bois or mouços who carry such palanquys shall be condemned to His Majesty’s galleys.’”5 The meaning of the last sentence appears to be that the bearers were considered as slaves, and were forfeited to the king’s service as a punishment to their owner. As the unauthorised use of this conveyance was so severely punished it would appear that riding in a palanquin must have been a privilege of nobility. Similarly to ride on a horse was looked upon in something of the same light; and when a person of inferior consequence met a superior or a Government officer while riding, he had to dismount from his horse as a mark of respect until the other had passed. This last custom still obtains to some extent, though it is rapidly disappearing.

As a means of conveyance the litter would be held sacred [294]by primitive people, and Mr. Crooke gives an instance of the regard paid to it: “At the Holi festival eight days before Diwāli in the western Districts the house is plastered with cowdung and figures of a litter (doli) and bearers are made on the walls with four or five colours, and to them offerings of incense, lights and flowers are given.”6 Even after passable roads were made tongas or carts drawn by trotting-bullocks were slow in coming into general use owing to the objection felt by the Hindus to harnessing the sacred ox.

At royal courts women were employed to carry the litters of the king and the royal ladies into the inner precincts of the palace, the male bearers relinquishing their charge outside. “Another class of attendants at the palace peculiar to Lucknow were the female bearers. Their occupation was to carry the palanquins and various covered conveyances of the king and his ladies into the inner courts of the harem. These female bearers were also under military discipline. They had their officers, commissioned and non-commissioned. The head of them, a great masculine woman of pleasing countenance, was an especial favourite of the king. The badinage which was exchanged between them was of the freest possible character—not fit for ears polite, of course; but the extraordinary point in it was that no one hearing it or witnessing such scenes could have supposed it possible that a king and a slave stood before him as the two chief disputants.”7 Similarly female sepoys were employed to guard the harem, dressed in ordinary uniform and regularly drilled and taught to shoot.8 A battalion of female troops for guarding the zenāna is still maintained in Hyderābād.9

From being a palanquin-bearer the Kahār became the regular indoor servant of Hindu households. Originally of low caste, and derived from the non-Aryan tribes, they did not object to eat the leavings of food of their masters, a relation which is naturally very convenient, if not essential, in poor Hindu houses. Sir H. Risley notes, however, that in Bengal a Kahār engaged in personal service with a Brāhman, [295]Rājpūt, Bābhan, Kāyasth or Agarwāl, will only eat his master’s leavings so long as he is himself unmarried.10 It seems that the marriage feast may be considered as the sacrificial meal conferring full membership of the caste, after which the rules against taking food from other castes must be strictly observed. Slaves were commonly employed as indoor servants, and hence the term Kahār came to be almost synonymous with a slave. “In the eighteenth century the title Kahār was at Patna the distinctive appellation of a Hindu slave, as Maulazādah was of a Muhammadan, and the tradition in 1774 was that the Kahār slavery took its rise when the Muhammadans first invaded northern India.”11

As the Kahār was the common indoor servant in Hindu houses so apparently he came to be employed in the same capacity by the English. But he was of too high a caste to serve the food of a European, which would have involved touching the cooked flesh of the cow, and thus lost him his comparatively good status and social purity among the Hindus. Hence arose the anomaly of a body servant who would not touch his master’s food, and confined himself to the duties of a valet; while the name of bearer given to this servant indicates clearly that he is the successor of the old-time Kahār or palanquin-bearer. The Uriya bearers of Bengal were well known as excellent servants and most faithful; but in time the inconvenience of their refusal to wait at table has led to their being replaced by low-caste Madrasis and by Muhammadans. The word ‘boy’ as applied to Indian servants is no doubt of English origin, as it is also used in China and the West Indies; but the South Indian term boyi or Hindi bhoi for a palanquin-bearer also appears to have been corrupted into boy and to have made this designation more common. The following instances of the use of the word ‘boy’ from Hobson-Jobson12 may be quoted in conclusion: “The real Indian ladies lie on a sofa, and if they drop their handkerchief they just lower their voices and say ‘Boy,’ in a very gentle tone” (Letters from Madras in 1826). ‘Yes, Sāhib, I Christian Boy. Plenty poojah do. Sunday time never no work do’ (Trevelyan, The Dawk Bungalow, [296]in 1866). The Hindu term Bhoi or bearer is now commonly applied to the Gonds, and is considered by them as an honorific name or title. The hypothesis thus appears to be confirmed that the Kahār caste of palanquin-bearers was constituted from the non-Aryan tribes, who were practically in the position of slaves to the Hindus, as were the Chamārs and Mahārs, the village drudges and labourers. But when the palanquin-bearer developed into an indoor servant, his social status was gradually raised from motives of convenience, until he grew to be considered as ceremonially pure, and able to give his master water and prepare food for cooking. Thus the Kahārs or Dhīmars came to rank considerably above the primitive tribes from whom they took their origin, their ceremonial purity being equal to that of the Hindu cultivating castes, while the degrading status of slavery which had at first attached to them gradually fell into abeyance. And thus one can understand why the Gonds should consider the name of Bhoi or bearer as a designation of honour.

Kaikāri, Kaikādi (also called Bargandi by outsiders).1—A disreputable wandering tribe, whose ostensible profession is to make baskets. They are found in Nimār and the Marātha Districts, and number some 2000 persons in the Central Provinces. The Kaikāris here, as elsewhere, claim to have come from Telingāna or the Deccan, but there is no caste of this name in the Madras Presidency. They may not improbably be the caste there known as Korva or Yerūkala, whose occupations are similar. Mr. Kitts2 has stated that the Kaikāris are known as Korāvars in Arcot and as Korvas in the Carnatic. The Kaikāris speak a gipsy language, which according to the specimen given by Hislop3 contains Tamil and Telugu words. One derivation of Kaikāri is from the Tamil kai, hand, and kude, basket, and if this is correct it is in favour of their identification with the Korvas, who always carry their tattooing and other implements in a basket in the hand.4 The Kaikāris of the [297]Central Provinces say that their original ancestor was one Kānoba Ramjān who handed a twig to his sons and told them to earn their livelihood by it. Since then they have subsisted by making baskets from the stalks of the cotton-plant, the leaves of the date-palm and grass. They themselves derive their name from Kai, standing for Kānoba Ramjān and kādi, a twig, an etymology which may be dismissed with that given in the Berār Census Report5 that they are the remnants of the Kaikeyas, who before the Christian era dwelt north of the Jalandhar Doāb. Two subcastes exist in Nimār, the Marāthas and the Phirasti or wandering Kaikāris, the former no doubt representing recruits from Marātha castes, not improbably from the Kunbis. The Marātha Kaikāris look down on the Phirastis as the latter take cooked food from a number of castes including the Telis, while the Marāthas refuse to do this. In the Nāgpur country there are several divisions which profess to be endogamous, as the Kāmāthis or those selling toys made of palm-leaves, the Bhāmtis or those who steal from bazārs, the Kunbis or cultivators, the Tokriwālas or makers and sellers of baskets and the Boriwālas or those who carry bricks, gravel and stone. Kunbi and Bhāmti are the names of other castes, and Kāmāthi is a general term applied in the Marātha country to Telugu immigrants; the names thus show that the Kaikāris, like other vagrant groups, are largely recruited from persons expelled from their own caste for social offences. These groups cannot really be endogamous as yet, but as in the case of several other wandering tribes they probably have a tendency to become so. In Berār6 an entirely different set of 12½ subcastes is recorded, several of which are territorial, and two, the Pungis or blowers of gourds, and the Wājantris or village musicians, are occupational. In Nimār as in Khāndesh7 the Kaikāris have only two exogamous clans, Jādon and Gaikwār, who must marry with each other. In the southern Districts there are a number of exogamous divisions, as Jādon, Māne, Kūmre, Jeshti, Kāde, Dāne and others. Jādon is a well-known Rājpūt sept, and the Kaikāris do not explain [298]how they came by the name, but claim to have fought as soldiers under several kings, during which occasions the name may have been adopted from some Rājpūt leader in accordance with the common practice of imitation. Māne and Gaikwār are family names of the Marātha caste. The names and varied nomenclature of the subdivisions show that the Kaikāris, as at present constituted, are a very mixed caste, though they may not improbably have been originally connected with the Korvas of Madras.

Kaikaris making baskets

Marriage within the same gotra or section is prohibited, but with one or two exceptions there are no other restrictions on intermarriage between relatives. A sister’s son may marry a brother’s daughter, but not vice versa. A man may not marry his wife’s elder sister either during his wife’s lifetime or after her death, and he may marry her younger sister, but not the younger but one. Girls are generally married between 8 and 12 years of age. If a girl cannot get a partner nothing is done, but when the marriage of a boy has not been arranged, a sham rite is performed with an akao plant (swallow-wort) or with a silver ring, all the ceremonies of a regular marriage being gone through. The tree is subsequently carefully reared, or the ring worn on the finger. Should the tree die or the ring be lost, funeral obsequies are performed for it as for a member of the family. A bride-price is paid which may vary from Rs. 20 to Rs. 100. In the southern Districts the following custom is in vogue at weddings. After the ceremony the bridegroom pretends to be angry and goes out of the mandap or shed, on which the bride runs after him, and throwing a piece of cloth round his neck, drags him back again. Her father then gives him some money or ornaments to pacify him. After this the same performance is gone through with the bride. The bride is taken to her husband’s house, but is soon brought back by her relatives. On her second departure the husband himself does not go to fetch her, and she is brought home by his father and other relations, her own family presenting her with new clothes on this occasion. Widow-marriage is permitted, and the widow is expected to marry the next younger brother of the deceased husband. She may not marry any except the next younger, and if [299]another should take her he is expelled from the caste until the connection is severed. If she marries somebody else he must repay to her late husband’s brother a half of the expenses incurred on the first marriage. In the southern Districts she may not marry a brother of her husband’s at all. A widow cannot be married in her late husband’s house, but is taken to her parents’ house and married from there. In Nimār her family do not take anything, but in the south they are paid a small sum. Here also the marriage is performed at the second husband’s house; the woman carries to it a new earthen pitcher filled with water, and, placing it on the chauk or pattern of lines traced with flour in the courtyard, touches the feet of the Panch or caste committee, after which her skirt is tied to her husband’s cloth. The pair are seated on a blanket and new bangles are placed on the woman’s wrist, widows officiating at the ceremony. The couple then leave the village and pass the night outside it, returning next morning, when the woman manages to enter the house without being perceived by a married woman or unmarried girl. A bachelor marrying a widow must first go through the ceremony with a ring or akao plant, as already described, this being his real marriage; if he omits the rite his daughters by the widow will not be considered as members of the caste, though his sons will be admitted. Polygamy is allowed, but the consent of the first wife must be obtained to the taking of a second, and she may require a written promise of good treatment after the second marriage. A second wife is usually only taken if the first is barren, and if she has children her parents usually interfere to dissuade the husband, while other parents are always averse to giving their daughter in marriage to a man under such circumstances. Divorce is permitted for the usual reasons, a deed being drawn up and attested by the panchāyat, to whom the husband pays a fine of Rs. 8 or Rs. 10.

The tutelary god of the Kaikāris is the Nāg or cobra, who is worshipped at marriages and on the day of Nāg-Panchmi. Every family has in the house a platform dedicated to Khandoba, the Marātha god of war. They also worship Marīmāta, to whom flowers are offered at [300]festivals, and a little ghī is poured out in her honour by way of incense. When the juāri harvest is gathered, dalias or cakes of boiled juāri and a ewe are offered to Marīmāta. They do not revere the Hindu sacred trees, the pīpal and banyan, nor the basil plant, and will readily cut them down. They both burn and bury the dead. The Jādons burn all married persons, but if they cannot afford firewood they touch the corpse with a burning cinder and then bury it. The Gaikwārs always bury their dead, the corpse being laid naked on its back with the feet pointing to the south. On returning from the burial-ground each relative of the deceased gives one roti or wheaten cake to the bereaved family, and they eat, sharing the cakes with the panchāyat. Bread is also presented on the second day, and on the third the family begin to cook again. Mourning lasts for ten days, and on the last day the house is cleaned and the earthen pots thrown out; the clothes of the family are washed and the males are shaved. Ten balls of rice cooked in milk are offered to the soul of the dead person and a feast is given to the caste. After a birth the mother remains impure for five weeks. For the first five days both the mother and child are bathed daily. The navel cord and after-birth are buried by the midwife in a rubbish heap. When the milk teeth fall out they are placed in a ball of the dung of an ass and thrown on to the roof of the house. It is considered that the rats or mice, who have very good and sharp teeth, will take them and give the child good teeth in exchange. Women are impure for five days during the menstrual period. When a girl attains maturity a ceremony called god-bharni is performed. The neighbours are invited and songs are sung and the girl is seated in the chauk or pattern of lines traced with flour. She is given new clothes and bangles by her father, or her father-in-law if she is married, and rice and plantains, cocoanuts and other fruits are tied up in her skirt. This is no doubt done so that the girl may in like manner be fruitful, the cocoanuts perhaps being meant to represent human heads, as they usually do.

The Kaikāris eat flesh, including pork and fowls, but not beef. In Nimār the animals which they eat must have [301]their throats cut by a Muhammadan with the proper formula, otherwise it is considered as murder to slaughter them. Both men and women drink liquor. They take food cooked with water from Kunbis and Mālis and take water from the same castes, but not from Dhīmars, Nais or Kahārs. No caste will take food from a Kaikāri. Their touch is considered to defile a Brāhman, Bania, Kalār and other castes, but not a Kunbi. They are not allowed to enter temples but may live inside the village. Their status is thus very low. They have a caste panchāyat or committee, and punishments are imposed for the usual offences. Permanent exclusion from caste is rarely or never inflicted, and even a woman who has gone wrong with an outsider may be readmitted after a peculiar ceremony of purification. The delinquent is taken to a river, tank or well, and is there shaved clean. Her tongue is branded with a ring or other article of gold, and she is then seated under a wooden shed having two doors. She goes in by one door and sits in the shed, which is set on fire. She must remain seated until the whole shed is burning and is then allowed to escape by the other door. A young boy of the caste is finally asked to eat from her hand, and thus purified she is readmitted to social intercourse. Fire is the great purifier, and this ceremony probably symbolises the immolation of the delinquent and her new birth. A similar ordeal is practised among the Korvas of Bombay, and this fact may be taken as affording further evidence of the identity of the two castes.8 The morals of the caste are, however, by no means good, and some of them are said to live by prostituting their women. The dog is held especially sacred as with all worshippers of Khandoba, and to swear by a dog is Khandoba’s oath and is considered the most binding. The Kaikāris are of dark colour and have repulsive features. They do not bathe or change their clothes for days together. They are also quarrelsome, and in Bombay the word Kaikārin is a proverbial term for a dirty shrew. Women are profusely tattooed, because tattooing is considered to be a record of the virtuous acts performed in this world and must be displayed to the deity after death. If no marks [302]of tattooing are found the soul is sent to hell and punished for having acquired no piety.

Basket-making is the traditional occupation of the Kaikāris and is still followed by them. They do not however make baskets from bamboos, but from cotton-stalks, palm-leaves and grass. In the south they are principally employed as carriers of stone, lime, bricks and gravel. Like most wandering castes they have a bad character. In Berār the Rān Kaikāris are said to be the most criminal class.9 They act under a chief who is elected for life, and wander about in the cold weather, usually carrying their property on donkeys. Their ostensible occupations are to make baskets and mend grinding mills. A notice of them in Lawrence’s Settlement Report of Bhandāra (1867) stated that they were then professional thieves, openly avowing their dependence on predatory occupations for subsistence, and being particularly dexterous at digging through the walls of houses and secret pilfering.

Kalanga.—A cultivating caste of Chhattīsgarh numbering 1800 persons in 1911. In Sambalpur they live principally in the Phuljhar zamīndāri on the border, between Chhattīsgarh and the Uriya track. The Kalangas appear to be a Dravidian tribe who took up military service and therefore adopted a territorial name, Kalanga being probably derived from Kalinga, the name of the sea-board of the Telugu country. The Kalangas may be a branch of the great Kalingi tribe of Madras. They have mixed much with the Kawars, and in Phuljhar say that they have three branches, the Kalingia, Kawar and Chero Kalangas; Kawar and Chero are names for the same tribe, and the last two branches are thus probably a mixture of Kalingis and Kawars, while the first comprises the original Kalingis. The Kalangas themselves, like the Kawars, say that they are the descendants of the Kauravas of the Mahābhārata, and that they came from northern India with the Rājas of Patna, whom they still serve. But their features indicate their Dravidian descent as also their social customs, especially that of killing a cock with the bare hands on [303]the birth of a child, and anointing the infant’s forehead with its blood. They have not retained their Telugu language, however, and like the Kawars now speak a dialect of Chhattīsgarhi at home, while many also know Uriya.

The Kalangas have no real endogamous divisions but a large number of exogamous groups or bargas, the names of which are derived from animals, plants, or material objects, nicknames, occupations or titles. Instances of the totemistic groups are Barha the wild boar, Magar the crocodile, Bichhi the scorpion, Saria a variety of rice, Chhati a mushroom, Khumri a leaf umbrella, and several others. The members of the group revere the animal, plant or other object from which it takes its name and would refuse to injure it or use it for food. They salute the object whenever they see it. Instances of other group names are Mānjhi a headman, Behra a cook, Gunda dusty, Kapāt a shutter, Bhundi a hole, Chīka muddy, Bhīl a tribe, Rendia quarrelsome, and Bersia a Thug or strangler. Some of the nicknames or titles are curious, as for instance Kapāt, a shutter, which stands for gate-keeper, and Bhundi, a hole, which indicates a defective person. Some of the group names are those of other castes, and this probably indicates the admission of families of other castes among the Kalangas. One of the groups is called Kusundi, the meaning of which is not known, but whenever any one of the caste gets maggots in a wound and is temporarily expelled, it is a member of the Kusundi group, if one is available, who gives him water on his readmission into caste. This is a dangerous service, because it renders the performer liable to the burden of the other’s sin, and when no Kusundi is present five or seven men of other groups combine in doing it so as to reduce the risk to a fraction. But why this function of a scapegoat should be imposed upon the Kusundi group, or whether it possesses any peculiar sanctity which protects it from danger, cannot be explained.

Marriage within the same barga or group is prohibited and also the union of first cousins. Marriage is usually adult and matches are arranged between the parents of the parties. A considerable quantity of grain with five pieces of cloth and Rs. 5 are given to the father of the bride. A [304]marriage-shed is erected and a post of the mahua tree fixed inside it. Three days before the wedding a Gānda goes to the shed with some pomp and worships the village gods there. In the ceremony the bridegroom and bride proceed separately seven times round the post, this rite being performed for three days running. During the four days of the wedding the fathers of the bride and bridegroom each give one meal to the whole caste on two days, while the other meal on all four days is given to the wedding party by the members of the caste resident in the village. This may be a survival of the time when all members of the village community were held to be related. Widow-marriage is allowed, but the widow must obtain the consent of the caste people before taking a second husband, and a feast must be given to them. If the widow has no children and there are no relatives to succeed to her late husband’s property, it is expended on feeding the caste people. Divorce is permitted and is effected by breaking the woman’s bangles in front of the caste panchāyat. In memory perhaps of their former military profession the Kalangas worship the sword on the 15th day of Shrāwan and the 9th day of Kunwār. Offerings are made to the dead in the latter month, but not to persons who have died a violent death. The spirits of these must be laid lest they should trouble the living, and this is done in the following manner: a handful of rice is placed at the threshold of the house, and a ring is suspended by a thread so as to touch the rice. A goat is then brought up, and when it eats the rice, the spirit of the dead person is considered to have entered into the goat, which is thereupon killed and eaten by the family so as to dispose of him once for all. If the goat will not eat the rice it is made to do so. The spirit of a man who has been killed by a tiger must, however, be laid by the Sulia or sorcerer of the caste, who goes through the formula of pretending to be a tiger and of mauling another sorcerer.

The Kalangas are at present cultivators and many of them are farmservants. They do not now admit outsiders into the caste, but they will receive the children begotten on any woman by a Kalanga man. They take food cooked [305]without water from a Guria, but katchi food from nobody. Only the lowest castes will take food from them. They drink liquor and eat fowls and rats, but not beef or pork. A man who gets his ear torn is temporarily excluded from caste, and this penalty is also imposed for the other usual offences. A woman committing adultery with a man of another caste is permanently expelled. The Kalangas are somewhat tall in stature. Their features are Dravidian, and in their dress and ornaments they follow the Chhattīsgarhi style. [306]

Kalār, Kalwār.1—The occupational caste of distillers and sellers of fermented liquor. In 1911 the Kalārs numbered nearly 200,000 persons in the Central Provinces and Berār, or rather more than one per cent of the population; so they are a somewhat important caste numerically. The name is derived from the Sanskrit Kalyapāla, a distiller of liquor.

The caste has a number of subdivisions, of which the bulk are of the territorial type, as Mālvi or the immigrants from Mālwa, Lād those coming from south Gujarāt, Daharia belonging to Dāhar or the Jubbulpore country, Jaiswār and Kanaujia coming from Oudh. The Rai Kalārs are an aristocratic subcaste, the word Rai signifying the highest or ruling group like Rāj. But the Byāhut or ‘Married’ are perhaps really the most select, and are so called because they forbid the remarriage of widows, their women being thus married once for all. In Bengal they also decline to [307]distil or sell liquor.2 The Chauske Kalārs are said to be so called because they prohibit the marriage of persons having a common ancestor up to the fourth generation. The name of the Seohāre or Sivahāre subcaste is perhaps a corruption of Somhāre or dealers in Soma, the sacred fermented liquor of the Vedas; or it may mean the worshippers of the god Siva. The Seohāre Kalārs say that they are connected with the Agarwāla Banias, their common ancestors having been the brothers Seoru and Agru. These brothers on one occasion purchased a quantity of mahua3 flowers; the price afterwards falling heavily. Agru sold his stock at a discount and cut the loss; but Seoru, unwilling to suffer it, distilled liquor from his flowers and sold the liquor, thus recouping himself for his expenditure. But in consequence of his action he was degraded from the Bania caste and his descendants became Kalārs. The Jaiswār, Kanaujia and Seohāre divisions are also found in northern India, and the Byāhut both there and in Bengal. Mr. Crooke states that the caste may be an offshoot from the Bania or other Vaishya tribes; and a slight physical resemblance may perhaps be traced between Kalārs and Banias. It may be noticed also that some of the Kalārs are Jains, a religion to which scarcely any others except Banias adhere. Another hypothesis, however, is that since the Kalārs have become prosperous and wealthy they devised a story connecting them with the Bania caste in order to improve their social position.

In Chhattīsgarh the principal division of the Kalārs is that of the Dandsenas or ‘Stick-carriers,’ and in explanation of the name they relate the following story: “A Kalār boy was formerly the Mahāprasād or bosom friend of the son of the Rājpūt king of Balod.4 But the Rāja’s son fell in love with the Kalār boy’s sister and entertained evil intentions towards her. Then the Kalār boy went and complained to the Rāja, who was his Phūlbāba,5 the father of his friend, saying, ‘A dog is always coming into my house and defiling it, what am I to do?’ The Rāja replied that he must kill the dog. Then the boy asked whether he would be punished [308]for killing him, and the Rāja said, No. So the next day as the Rājpūt boy was entering his house to get at his sister, the Kalār boy killed him, though he was his dearest friend. Then the Rājpūts attacked the Kalārs, but they were led only by the queen, as the king had said that the Kalār boy might kill the dog. But the Rājpūts were being defeated and so the Rāja intervened, and the Kalārs then ceased fighting as the Rāja had broken his word. But they left Balod, saying that they would drink no more of its waters, which they have not done to this day.”6 And the Kalārs are called Dandsena, because in this fight sticks were their only weapons.

The marriage customs of the caste follow the ordinary Hindu ritual prevalent in the locality and are not of special interest. Before a Kalār wedding procession starts a ceremony known as marrying the well is performed. The mother or aunt of the bridegroom goes to the well and sits in the mouth with her legs hanging down inside it and asks what the bridegroom will give her. He then goes round the well seven times, and a stick of kāns7 grass is thrown into it at each turn. Afterwards he promises the woman some handsome present and she returns to the house. Another explanation of the story is that the woman pretends to be overcome with grief at the bridegroom’s departure and threatens to throw herself into the well unless he will give her something. The well-to-do marry their daughters at an early age, but no stigma attaches to those who have to postpone the ceremony. A bride-price is not customary, but if the girl’s parents are poor they sometimes receive help from those of the boy in order to carry out the wedding. Matches are usually arranged at the caste feasts, and a Brāhman officiates at the ceremony. Divorce is recognised and widows are allowed to marry again except by the Byāhut subcaste. The Kalārs worship the ordinary Hindu deities, and those who sell liquor revere an earthen jar filled with wine at the Holi festival. The educated are usually Vaishnavas by sect, and as already stated a few of them belong to the Jain religion. The social status of the Kalārs is equivalent [309]to that of the village menials, ranking below the good cultivating castes. Brāhmans do not take water from their hands. But in Mandla, where the Kalārs are important and prosperous, certain Sarwaria Brāhmans who were their household priests took water from them, thus recognising them as socially pure. This has led to a split among the local Sarwaria Brāhmans, the families who did not take water from the Kalārs refusing to intermarry with those who did so.

While the highest castes of Hindus eschew spirituous liquor the cultivating and middle classes are divided, some drinking it and others not; and to the menial and labouring classes, and especially to the forest tribes, it is the principal luxury of their lives. Unfortunately they have not learnt to indulge in moderation and nearly always drink to excess if they have the means, while the intoxicating effect of even a moderate quantity is quickly perceptible in their behaviour.

In the Central Provinces the liquor drunk is nearly all distilled from the flowers of the mahua tree (Bassia latifolia), though elsewhere it is often made from cane sugar. The smell of the fermented mahua and the refuse water lying about make the village liquor-shop an unattractive place. But the trade has greatly profited the Kalārs by the influence which it has given them over the lower classes. “With the control of the liquor-supply in their hands,” Mr. Montgomerie writes, “they also controlled the Gonds, and have played a more important part in the past history of the Chhindwāra District than their numbers would indicate.”8 The Kalār and Teli (oil-presser) are usually about on the same standing; they are the creditors of the poorer tenants and labourers, as the Bania is of the landowners and substantial cultivators. These two of the village trades are not suited to the method of payment by annual contributions of grain, and must from an early period have been conducted by single transactions of barter. Hence the Kalār and Teli learnt to keep accounts and to appreciate the importance of the margin of profit. This knowledge and the system of dealing on credit with the exaction of interest have stood [310]them in good stead and they have prospered at the expense of their fellow-villagers. The Kalārs have acquired substantial property in several Districts, especially in those mainly populated by Gonds, as Mandla, Betūl and Chhindwāra. In British Districts of the Central Provinces they own 750 villages, or about 4 per cent of the total. In former times when salt was highly taxed and expensive the Gonds had no salt. The Kalārs imported rock-salt and sold it to the Gonds in large pieces. These were hung up in the Gond houses just as they are in stables, and after a meal every one would go up to the lump of salt and lick it as ponies do. When the Gonds began to wear cloth instead of leaves and beads the Kalārs retailed them thin strips of cloth just sufficient for decency, and for the cloth and salt a large proportion of the Gond’s harvest went to the Kalār. When a Gond has threshed his grain the Kalār takes round liquor to the threshing-floor and receives a present of grain much in excess of its value. Thus the Gond has sold his birthright for a mess of pottage and the Kalār has taken his heritage. Only a small proportion of the caste are still supported by the liquor traffic, and a third of the whole are agriculturists. Others have engaged in the timber trade, purchasing teak timber from the Gonds in exchange for liquor, a form of commerce which has naturally redounded to their great advantage. A few are educated and have risen to good positions in Government service. Sir D. Ibbetson describes them as ‘Notorious for enterprise, energy and obstinacy. Death may budge, but a Kalār won’t.’ The Sikh Kalārs, who usually call themselves Ahluwālia, contain many men who have attained to high positions under Government, especially as soldiers, and the general testimony is that they make brave soldiers.9 One of the ruling chiefs of the Punjab belongs to this caste. Until quite recently the manufacture of liquor, except in the large towns, was conducted in small pot-stills, of which there was one for a circle of perhaps two dozen villages with subordinate shops. The right of manufacture and vend in each separate one of these stills was sold annually by auction at the District headquarters, and the Kalārs assembled to bid for it. And here instances of their [311]dogged perseverance could often be noticed; when a man would bid up for a licence to a sum far in excess of the profits which he could hope to acquire from it, rather than allow himself to be deprived of a still which he desired to retain.

Though alcoholic liquor is now eschewed by the higher castes of Hindus and forbidden by their religion, this has by no means always been the case. In Vedic times the liquor known as Soma was held in so much esteem by the Aryans that it was deified and worshipped as one of their principal gods. Dr. Hopkins summarises10 the attributes of the divine wine, Soma, as follows, from passages in the Rig-Veda: “This offering of the juice of the Soma-plant in India was performed thrice daily. It is said in the Rig-Veda that Soma grows upon the mountain Mūjawat, that its or his father is Parjanya, the rain-god, and that the waters are his sisters. From this mountain, or from the sky, accounts differ, Soma was brought by a hawk. He is himself represented in other places as a bird; and as a divinity he shares in the praise given to Indra. It was he who helped Indra to slay Vritra, the demon that keeps back the rain. Indra, intoxicated by Soma, does his great deeds, and indeed all the gods depend on Soma for immortality. Divine, a weapon-bearing god, he often simply takes the place of Indra and other gods in Vedic eulogy. It is the god Soma himself who slays Vritra, Soma who overthrows cities, Soma who begets the gods, creates the sun, upholds the sky, prolongs life, sees all things, and is the one best friend of god and man, the divine drop (īndu), the friend of Indra. As a god he is associated not only with Indra but also with Agni, Rudra and Pushān. A few passages in the later portion of the Rig-Veda show that Soma already was identified with the moon before the end of this period. After this the lunar yellow god was regularly regarded as the visible and divine Soma of heaven represented on earth by the plant.” Mr. Hopkins discards the view advanced by some commentators that it is the moon and not the beverage to which the Vedic hymns and worship are addressed, and there is no reason to doubt that he is right. [312]

The soma plant has been thought to be the Asclepias acida,11 a plant growing in Persia and called hom in Persian. The early Persians believed that the hom plant gave great energy to body and mind.12 An angel is believed to preside over the plant, and the Hom Yast is devoted to its praises. Twigs of it are beaten in water in the smaller Agiari or fire-temple, and this water is considered sacred, and is given to newborn children to drink.13 Dr. Hopkins states, however, that the hom or Asclepias acida was not the original soma, as it does not grow in the Punjab region, but must have been a later substitute. Afterwards again another kind of liquor, sura, became the popular drink, and soma, which was now not so agreeable, was reserved as the priests’ (gods’) drink, a sacrosanct beverage not for the vulgar, and not esteemed by the priests except as it kept up the rite.14

Soma is said to have been prepared from the juice of the creeper already mentioned, which was diluted with water, mixed with barley meal, clarified butter and the flour of wild rice, and fermented in a jar for nine days.15 Sura was simply arrack prepared from rice-flour, or rice-beer.

Though in the cold regions of Central Asia the cheering and warming liquor had been held divine, in the hot plains of India the evil effects of alcohol were apparently soon realised. “Even more bold is the scorn of the gods in Hymn x. 119 of the Rig-Veda, which introduces Indra in his merriest humour, ready to give away everything, ready to destroy the earth and all that it contains, boasting of his greatness in ridiculous fashion—all this because, as the refrain tells us, he is in an advanced state of intoxication caused by excessive appreciation of the soma offered to him. Another Hymn (vii. 103) sings of the frogs, comparing their voices to the noise of a Brāhmanical school and their hopping round the tank to the behaviour of drunken priests celebrating a nocturnal offering of soma.”16 It seems clear, therefore, that the evil effects of drunkenness were early realised, [313]and led to a religious prohibition of alcohol. Dr. Rājendra Lāl Mitra writes:17 “But the fact remains unquestioned that from an early period the Hindus have denounced in their sacred writings the use of wine as sinful, and two of their greatest law-givers, Manu and Yajnavalkya, held that the only expiation meet for a Brāhman who had polluted himself by drinking spirit was suicide by a draught of spirit or water or cow’s urine or milk, in a boiling state taken in a burning hot metal pot. Angira, Vasishtha and Paithūrasi restricted the drink to boiling spirits alone. Dewala went a step farther and prescribed a draught of molten silver, copper or lead as the most appropriate.... Manu likewise provides for the judicial cognisance of such offences by Brāhmans, and ordains excommunication, and branding on the forehead the figure of a bottle as the most appropriate punishment.”

Nevertheless the consumption of alcohol was common in classical times. Bhāradwāja, a great sage, offered wine to Bhārata and his soldiers when they spent a night under his roof.18 When Sīta crossed the Ganges on her way to the southern wilderness she begged the river for a safe passage, saying, “Be merciful to me, O Goddess, and I shall on my return home worship thee with a thousand jars of arrack and dishes of well-dressed flesh meat.” When crossing the Jumna she said, “Be auspicious, O Goddess; I am crossing thee. When my husband has accomplished his vow I shall worship thee with a thousand head of cattle and a hundred jars of arrack.” Similarly the companions of Krishna, the Yādavas, destroyed each other when they were overcome by drink; and many other instances are given by Dr. Rājendra Lāl Mitra. The Purānas abound in descriptions of wine and drinking, and though the object of many of them is to condemn the use of wine the inference is clear that there was a widespread malady which they proposed to overcome.19 Pulastya, an ancient sage and author of one of the original Smritis, enumerates twelve different kinds of liquor, besides the soma beer which is not usually reckoned under the head of madya or wine, and his successors have added [314]largely to the list. The twelve principal liquors of this sage are those of the jack fruit, the grape, honey or mead, date-liquor, palm-liquor or toddy, sugarcane-liquor, mahua-liquor, rum and those made from long-pepper, soap-berries and cocoanuts.20 All these drinks were not merely fermented, but distilled and flavoured with different kinds of spices, fruits and herbs; they were thus varieties of spirits or liqueurs. It is probable that without the use of glass bottles and corks it would be very difficult to keep fermented wine for any length of time in the Indian climate. But spirits drunk neat as they were would produce more markedly evil results in a hot country, and would strengthen and accelerate the reaction against alcoholic liquor, which has gone so far that probably a substantial majority at least of the inhabitants of India are total abstainers. To this good result the adoption of Buddhism as stated by Dr. Mitra no doubt largely contributed. This was for some centuries the state religion, and was a strong force in aid of temperance as well as of abstention from flesh. The Sivite revival reacted in favour of liquor drinking as well as of the consumption of drugs. But the prohibition of alcohol has again been a leading tenet of practically all the Vaishnava reforming sects.

The intoxication of alcohol is considered by primitive people as a form of divine inspiration or possession like epileptic fits and insanity. This is apparently the explanation of the Vedic liquor, Soma, being deified as one of the greatest gods. In later Hindu mythology, Varuni, the goddess of wine, was produced when the gods churned the ocean with the mountain Mandara as a churning-stick on the back of the tortoise, Vishnu, and the serpent as a rope, for the purpose of restoring to man the comforts lost during the great flood.21 Varuni was considered to be the consort of Varūna, the Vedic Neptune.

Similarly the Bacchantes in their drunken frenzy were considered to be possessed by the wine-god Dionysus. “The Aztecs regarded pulque or the wine of the country as bad, on account of the wild deeds which men did under its [315]influence. But these wild deeds were believed to be the acts, not of the drunken man, but of the wine-god by whom he was possessed and inspired; and so seriously was this theory of inspiration held that if any one spoke ill of or insulted a tipsy man, he was liable to be punished for disrespect to the wine-god incarnate in his votary.”22 Sir James Frazer thinks that the grape-juice was also considered to be the blood of the vine. At one time the arrack or rice-beer liquor was also considered by the Hindus as holy and purifying. Siva says to his consort: “Oh, sweet-speaking goddess, the salvation of Brāhmans depends on drinking wine.... No one becomes a Brāhman by repeating the Gāyatri, the mother of the Vedas; he is called a Brāhman only when he has knowledge of Brahma. The ambrosia of the gods is their Brahma, and on earth it is arrack, and because one attains the character of a god (suratva) therefore is arrack called sura.”23 The Sākta Tantras insist upon the use of wine as an element of devotion. The Kaulas, who are the most ardent followers of the Sākta Tantras, celebrate their rites at midnight in a closed room, when they sit in a circle round a jar of country arrack, one or more young women of a lewd character being in the company; they drink, drink and drink until they fall down on the ground in utter helplessness, then rising again they drink in the hope of never having a second birth.24 “I knew a highly respectable widow lady, connected with one of the most distinguished families in Calcutta, who belonged to the Kaula sect, and had survived the 75th anniversary of her birthday, who never said her prayers (and she did so regularly every morning and evening) without touching the point of her tongue with a tooth-pick dipped in a phial of arrack, and sprinkling a few drops of the liquor on the flowers which she offered to her god. I doubt very much if she had ever drunk a wine-glassful of arrack at once in all her life, and certain it is that she never had any idea of the pleasures of drinking; but as a faithful Kaula she felt herself in duty bound to observe the mandates of her religion with the [316]greatest scrupulousness.”25 In this case it seems clear that the liquor was considered to have a purifying effect, which was perhaps especially requisite for the offerings of a widow.

Similarly the Gonds and Baigas revere the mahua tree and consider the liquor distilled from its flowers as sacred and purificatory. At a Gond wedding the sacred post round which the couple go is made of the wood of the mahua tree. The Bhatras of Bastar also use the mahua for the wedding post, and the Sonkars of Chhattīsgarh a forked branch of the tree. Minor caste offences are expiated among the Gonds by a fine of liquor, and by drinking it the culprit is purified. At a Gond funeral one man may be seen walking with a bottle or two of liquor slung to his side; this is drunk by all the party on the spot after the burial or burning of the corpse as a means of purification. Among the Korwas and other tribes the Baiga or priest protects the village from ghosts by sprinkling a line of liquor all round the boundary, over which the ghosts cannot pass. Similarly during epidemics of cholera liquor is largely used in the rites of the Baigas for averting the disease and is offered to the goddess. At their weddings the Mahārs drink together ceremoniously, a pot of liquor being placed on a folded cloth and all the guests sitting round it in a circle. An elder man then lays a new piece of cloth on the pot and worships it. He takes a cup of the liquor himself and hands round a cupful to every person present. At the Hareli or festival of the new green vegetation in July the Gonds take the branches of four kinds of trees and place them at the corners of their fields and also inside the house over the door. They pour ghī (butter) on the fire as incense and an offering to the deities. Then they go to the meeting-place of the village and there they all take a bottle or two of liquor each and drink together, having first thrown a little on the ground as an offering. Then they invite each other to their houses to take food. The Baigas do not observe Hareli, but on any moonlight night in Shrāwan (July) they will go to the field where they have sown grain and root up a few plants and bring them to the house, and, laying them on a clean place, pour ghī and a little liquor over them. Then they take the corn plants back [317]to the field and replace them. For these rites and for offerings to the deities of disease the Gonds say that the liquor should be distilled at home by the person who offers the sacrifice and not purchased from the Government contractor. This is a reason or at any rate an excuse for the continuance of the practice of illicit distillation. Hindus generally make a libation to Devi before drinking liquor. They pour a little into their hand and sprinkle it in a circle on the ground, invoking the goddess. The palm-tree is also held sacred on account of the tāri or toddy obtained from it. “The shreds of the holy palm-tree, holy because liquor-yielding, are worn by some of the early Konkan tribes and by some of the Konkan village gods. The strip of palm-leaf is the origin of the shape of one of the favourite Hindu gold bracelet patterns.”26

The abstinence from liquor enjoined by modern Hinduism to the higher castes of Hindus has unfortunately not extended to the harmful drugs, opium, and gānja27 or Indian hemp with its preparations. On the contrary gānja is regularly consumed by Hindu ascetics, whether devotees of Siva or Vishnu, though it is more favoured by the Sivite Jogis. The blue throat of Siva or Mahādeo is said to be due to the enormous draughts of bhāng28 which he was accustomed to swallow. The veneration attached to these drugs may probably be explained by the delusion that the pleasant dreams and visions obtained under their influence are excursions of the spirit into paradise. It is a common belief among primitive people that during sleep the soul leaves the body and that dreams are the actual experiences of the soul when travelling over the world apart from the body.29 The principal aim of Hindu asceticism is also the complete conquest of all sensation and movement in the body, so that while it is immobile the spirit freed from the trammels of the body and from all worldly cares and concerns may, as it is imagined, enter into communion with and be absorbed in the deity. Hence the physical inertia and abnormal mental exaltation produced by these drugs would be an ideal condition [318]to the Hindu ascetic; the body is lulled to immobility and it is natural that he should imagine that the delightful fantasies of his drugged brain are beatific visions of heaven. Gānja and bhāng are now considered sacred as being consumed by Mahādeo, and are offered to him. Before smoking gānja a Hindu will say, ‘May it reach you, Shankar,’30 that is, the smoke of the gānja, like the sweet savour of a sacrifice; and before drinking bhāng he will pour a little on the ground and say ‘Jai Shankar.’31 Similarly when cholera visits a village and various articles of dress with food and liquor are offered to the cholera goddess, Marhai Māta, smokers of gānja and madak32 will offer a little of their drugs. Hindu ascetics who smoke gānja are accustomed to mix with it some seeds of the dhatura (Datura alba), which have a powerful stupefying effect. In large quantities these seeds are a common narcotic poison, being administered to travellers and others by criminals. This tree is sacred to Siva, and the purple and white flowers are offered on his altars, and probably for this reason it is often found growing in villages so that the poisonous seeds are readily available. Its sanctity apparently arises from the narcotic effects produced by the seeds.

The conclusion of hostilities and ratification of peace after a Bhīl fight was marked by the solemn administration of opium to all present by the Jogi or Gammaiti priests.33 This incident recalls the pipe of peace of the North American Indians, among whom a similar divine virtue was no doubt ascribed to tobacco. In ancient Greece the priestesses of Apollo consumed the leaves of the laurel to produce the prophetic ecstasy; the tree was therefore held sacred and associated with Apollo and afterwards developed into a goddess in the shape of Daphne pursued by Apollo and transformed into a laurel.34 The laurel was also considered to have a purifying or expiatory effect like alcoholic liquor in India. Wreaths of laurel were worn by such heroes as Apollo and Cadmus before engaging in battle to cleanse themselves from the pollution of bloodshed, and [319]hence the laurel-wreath afterwards became the crown of victory.35

In India bhāng was regularly drunk by the Rājpūts before going into battle, to excite their courage and render them insensible to pain. The effects produced were probably held to be caused by divine agency. Herodotus says that the Scythians had a custom of burning the seeds of the hemp plant in religious ceremonies and that they became intoxicated with the fumes.36 Gānja is the hashīsh of the Old Man of the Mountain and of Monte Cristo. The term hashshāsh, meaning ‘a smoker or eater of hemp,’ was first applied to Arab warriors in Syria at the time of the Crusades; from its plural hashshāsheen our word assassin is derived.37

The sacred or divine character attributed to the Indian drugs in spite of their pernicious effects has thus probably prevented any organised effort for their prohibition. Buchanan notes that “No more blame follows the use of opium and gānja than in Europe that of wine; yet smoking tobacco is considered impure by the highest castes.”38 It is said, however, that a Brāhman should abstain from drugs until he is in the last or ascetic stage of life. In India opium is both eaten and smoked. It is administered to children almost from the time of their birth, partly perhaps because its effects are supposed to be beneficial and also to prevent them from crying and keep them quiet while their parents are at work. One of the favourite methods of killing female children was to place a fatal dose of opium on the nipple of the mother’s breast. Many children continue to receive small quantities of opium till they are several years old, sometimes eight or nine, when it is gradually abandoned. It can scarcely be doubted that the effect of the drug must be to impair their health and enfeeble their vitality. The effect of eating opium on adults is much less pernicious than when the habit of smoking it is acquired. Madak or opium prepared for smoking may not now be sold, but people make it for themselves, heating the opium in a little brass cup over a fire with an infusion of tamarind leaves. It is then made [320]into little balls and put into the pipe. Opium-smokers are gregarious and partake of the drug together. As the fumes mount to their brains, their intellects become enlivened, their tongues unloosed and the conversation ranges over all subjects in heaven and earth. This factitious excitement must no doubt be a powerful attraction to people whose lives are as dull as that of the average Hindu. And thus they become madakis or confirmed opium-smokers and are of no more use in life. Dhīmars or fishermen consume opium and gānja largely under the impression that these drugs prevent them from taking cold. Gānja is smoked and is usually mixed with tobacco. It is much less injurious than opium in the same form, except when taken in large quantities, and is also slower in acquiring a complete hold over its votaries. Many cultivators buy a little gānja at the weekly bazār and have one pipeful each as a treat. Sweepers are greatly addicted to gānja, and their patron saint Lālbeg was frequently in a comatose condition from over-indulgence in the drug. Ahīrs or herdsmen also smoke it to while away the long days in the forests. But the habitual consumers of either kind of drug are now only a small fraction of the population, while English education and the more strenuous conditions of modern life have effected a substantial decline in their numbers, at least among the higher classes. At the same time a progressive increase is being effected by Government in the retail price of the drugs, and the number of vend licences has been very greatly reduced.

The prohibition of wine to Muhammadans is held to include drugs, but it is not known how far the rule is strictly observed. But addiction to drugs is at any rate uncommon among Muhammadans.

No kind of sanctity attaches to tobacco and, as has been seen, certain classes of Brāhmans are forbidden to smoke though they may chew the leaves. Tobacco is prohibited by the Sikhs, the Satnāmis and some other Vaishnava sects. The explanation of this attitude is simple if, as is supposed, tobacco was first introduced into India by the Portuguese in the fifteenth century.39 In this case as a new and foreign product it could have no sacred character, only those things [321]being held sacred and the gifts of the gods whose origin is lost in antiquity. In a note on the subject40 Mr. Ganpat Rai shows that several references to smoking and also to the huqqa are found in ancient Sanskrit literature; but it does not seem clear that the plant smoked was tobacco and, on the other hand, the similarity of the vernacular to the English name41 is strong evidence in favour of its foreign origin.

The country liquor, consisting of spirits distilled from the flowers of the mahua tree, is an indispensable adjunct to marriage and other ceremonial feasts among the lower castes of Hindus and the non-Aryan tribes. It is usually drunk before the meal out of brass vessels, cocoanut-shells or leaf-cups, water being afterwards taken with the food itself. If an offender has to give a penalty feast for readmission to caste but the whole burden of the expense is beyond his means, other persons who may have committed minor offences and owe something to the caste on that account are called upon to provide the liquor. Similarly at the funeral feast the heir and chief mourner may provide the food and more distant relatives the liquor. The Gonds never take food while drinking, and as a rule one man does not drink alone. Three or four of them go to the liquor-shop together and each in turn buys a whole bottle of liquor which they share with each other, each bottle being paid for by one of the company and not jointly. And if a friend from another village turns up and is invited to drink he is not allowed to pay anything. In towns there will be in the vicinity of the liquor-shop retailers of little roasted balls of meat on sticks and cakes of gram-flour fried in salt and chillies. These the customers eat, presumably to stimulate their thirst or as a palliative to the effects of the spirit. Illicit distillation is still habitual among the Gonds of Mandla, who have been accustomed to make their own liquor from time immemorial. In the rains, when travelling is difficult and the excise officers cannot descend on them without notice, they make the liquor in their houses. In the open season they go to [322]the forest and find some spot secluded behind rocks and also near water. When the fermented mahua is ready they put up the distilling vat in the middle of the day so that the smoke may be less perceptible, and one of them will climb a tree and keep watch for the approach of the Excise Sub-Inspector and his myrmidons while the other distils. [323]

Kamār.—A small Dravidian tribe exclusively found in the Raipur District and adjoining States. They numbered about 7000 persons in 1911, and live principally in the Khariār and Bindrānawāgarh zamīndāris of Raipur. In Bengal and Chota Nāgpur the term Kamār is merely occupational, implying a worker in iron, and similarly Kammala in the Telugu country is a designation given to the five artisan castes. Though the name is probably the same the Kamārs of the Central Provinces are a purely aboriginal tribe and there is little doubt that they are an offshoot of the Gonds, nor have they any traditions of ever having been metal-workers. They claim to be autochthonous like most of the primitive tribes. They tell a long story of their former ascendancy, saying that a Kamār was the original ruler of Bindrānawāgarh. But a number of Kamārs one day killed the bhimrāj bird which had been tamed and taught hawking by a foreigner from Delhi. He demanded satisfaction, and when it was refused went to [324]Delhi and brought man-eating soldiers from there, who ate up all the Kamārs except one pregnant woman. She took refuge in a Brāhman’s hut in Patna and there had a son, whom she exposed on a dung-heap for fear of scandal, as she was a widow at the time. Hence the boy was called Kachra-Dhurwa or rubbish and dust. This name may be a token of the belief of the Kamārs that they were born from the earth as insects generate in dung and decaying organisms. Similarly one great subtribe of the Gonds are called Dhur or dust Gonds. Kachra-Dhurwa was endowed with divine strength and severed the head of a goat made of iron with a stick of bamboo. On growing up he collected his fellow-tribesmen and slaughtered all the cannibal soldiers, regaining his ancestral seat in Bindrānawāgarh. It is noticeable that the Kamārs call the cannibal soldiers Aghori, the name of a sect of ascetics who eat human flesh. They still point to various heaps of lime-encrusted fossils in Bindrānawāgarh as the bones of the cannibal soldiers. The state of the Kamārs is so primitive that it does not seem possible that they could ever have been workers in iron, but they may perhaps, like the Agarias, be a group of the Gonds who formerly quarried iron and thus obtained their distinctive name.

They have two subdivisions, the Bundhrajia and Mākadia. The latter are so called because they eat monkeys and are looked down on by the others. They have only a few gots or septs, all of which have the same names as those of Gond septs. The meaning of the names has now been forgotten. Their ceremonies also resemble those of the Gonds, and there can be little doubt that they are an offshoot of that tribe. Marriage within the sept is prohibited, but is permitted between the children of brothers and sisters or of two sisters. Those who are well-to-do marry their children at about ten years old, but among the bulk of the caste adult-marriage is in fashion, and the youths and maidens are sometimes allowed to make their own choice. At the betrothal the boy and girl are made to stand together so that the caste panchāyat or elders may see the suitability of the match, and a little wine is sprinkled in the name of the gods. The marriage ceremony is a simple one, the [325]marriage-post being erected at the boy’s house. The party go to the girl’s house to fetch her, and there is a feast, followed by a night of singing and dancing. They then return to the boy’s house and the couple go round the sacred pole and throw rice over each other seven times. All the guests also throw rice over the couple with the object, it is said, of scaring off the spirits who are always present on this occasion, and protecting the bride and bridegroom from harm. But perhaps the rice is really meant to give fertility to the match. The wife remains with her husband for four days and then they return to the house of her parents, where the wedding clothes stained yellow with turmeric must be washed. After this they again proceed to the bridegroom’s house and live together. Polygamy and widow-marriage are allowed, the ceremony in the marriage of a widow consisting simply in putting bangles on her wrists and giving her a piece of new cloth. The Kamārs never divorce their wives, however loose their conduct may be, as they say that a lawful wife is above all suspicion. They also consider it sinful to divorce a wife. The liaison of an unmarried girl is passed over even with a man outside the caste, unless he is of a very low caste, such as a Gānda.

As among some of the other primitive tribes, a man stands in a special relation to his sister’s children. The marriage of his children with his sister’s children is considered as the most suitable union. If a man’s sister is poor he will arrange for the wedding of her children. He will never beat his sister’s children, however much they may deserve it, and he will not permit his sister’s son or daughter to eat from the dish from which he eats. This special connection between a maternal uncle and his nephew is held to be a survival of the matriarchate, when a man stood in the place a father now occupies to his sister’s children, the real father having nothing to do with them.

During the period of her monthly impurity a woman is secluded for eight days. She may not prepare food nor draw water nor worship the gods, but she may sweep the house and do outdoor work. She sleeps on the ground and every morning spreads fresh cowdung over the place where she has slept. The Kamārs think that a man who touched [326]a woman in this condition would be destroyed by the household god. When a woman in his household is impure in this manner a man will bathe before going into the forest lest he should pollute the forest gods.

A woman is impure for six days after a birth until the performance of the Chathi or sixth-day ceremony, when the child’s head is shaved and the mother and child are bathed and their bodies rubbed with oil and turmeric. After this a woman can go about her work in the house, but she may not cook food nor draw water for two and a half months after the birth of a male child, nor for three months after that of a female one. Till the performance of the Chathi ceremony the husband is also impure, and he may not worship the gods or go hunting or shooting or even go for any distance into the forest. If a child is born within six months of the death of any person in the family, they think that the dead relative has been reborn in the child and give the child the same name, apparently without distinction of sex. If a mother’s milk runs dry and she cannot suckle her child they give her fresh fish and salt to eat, and think that this will cause the milk to flow. The idea of eating the fish is probably that being a denizen of the liquid element it will produce liquid in the mother’s body, but it is not clear whether the salt has any special meaning.

The dead are buried with the head to the north, and mourning is nominally observed for three days. But they have no rules of abstinence, and do not even bathe to purify themselves as almost all castes do. Sons inherit equally, and daughters do not share with sons. But if there are no sons, then an unmarried daughter or one married to a Lamsena, or man who has served for her, and living in the house, takes the whole property for her lifetime, after which it reverts to her father’s family. Widows, Mr. Ganpati Giri states, only inherit in the absence of male heirs.

They worship Dūlha Deo and Devi, and have a firm belief in magic. They tell a curious story about the origin of the world, which recalls that of the Flood. They say that in the beginning God created a man and a woman to whom two children of opposite sex were born in their old age. Mahādeo, however, sent a deluge over the world in [327]order to drown a jackal who had angered him. The old couple heard that there was going to be a deluge, so they shut up their children in a hollow piece of wood with provision of food to last them until it should subside. They then closed up the trunk, and the deluge came and lasted for twelve years, the old couple and all other living things on the earth being drowned, but the trunk floated on the face of the waters. After twelve years Mahādeo created two birds and sent them to see whether his enemy the jackal had been drowned. The birds flew over all the corners of the world, but saw nothing except a log of wood floating on the surface of the water, on which they perched. After a short time they heard low and feeble voices coming from inside the log. They heard the children saying to each other that they only had provision for three days left. So the birds flew away and told Mahādeo, who then caused the flood to subside, and taking out the children from the log of wood, heard their story. He thereupon brought them up, and they were married, and Mahādeo gave the name of a different caste to every child who was born to them, and from them all the inhabitants of the world are descended. The fact that the Kamārs should think their deity capable of destroying the whole world by a deluge, in order to drown a jackal which had offended him, indicates how completely they are wanting in any exalted conception of morality. They are said to have no definite ideas of a future life nor any belief in a resurrection of the body. But they believe in future punishment in the case of a thief, who, they say, will be reborn as a bullock in the house of the man whose property he has stolen, or will in some other fashion expiate his crime. They think that the sun and moon are beings in human shape, and that darkness is caused by the sun going to sleep. They also think that a railway train is a live and sentient being, and that the whistle of the engine is its cry, and they propitiate the train with offerings lest it should do them some injury. When a man purposes to go out hunting, Mr. Ganpati Giri states, he consults the village priest, who tells him whether he will fail or succeed. If the prediction is unfavourable he promises a fowl or a goat to his family god in order to obtain his assistance, and then confidently [328]expects success. When an animal has been killed and brought home, the hunter cuts off the head, and after washing it with turmeric powder and water makes an offering of it to the forest god. Ceremonial fishing expeditions are sometimes held, in which all the men and women of the village participate, and on such occasions the favour of the water-goddess is first invoked with an offering of five chickens and various feminine adornments, such as vermilion, lamp-black for the eyes, small glass bangles and a knot of ribbons made of cotton or silk, after which a large catch of fish is anticipated. The men refrain from visiting their wives on the day before they start for a hunting or fishing expedition.

The tribe have a special veneration for iron, which they now say is the emblem of Durga Māta or the goddess of smallpox. On their chief festivals of Hareli and Dasahra all iron implements are washed and placed together in the house, where they are worshipped with offerings of rice, flowers and incense; nor may any iron tool be brought into use on this day. On the day appointed for the worship of Dūlha Deo, the bridegroom god, or other important deities, and on the Dasahra festival, they will not permit fire or anything else to be taken out of the house. Before drinking liquor they will pour a few drops on the ground, making a libation first to mother-earth, then to their family and other important gods, and lastly to their ancestors.

The Kamārs will eat with all except the very lowest castes, and do not refuse any kind of food. The Bundhrajias, however, abstain from the flesh of snakes, crocodiles and monkeys, and on this account claim to be superior to the Mākadias who eat these animals. Temporary exclusion from caste is imposed for the usual offences, and in serious cases, such as adultery with a woman of impure caste or taking food from her, the penalty is severe. The offender puts a straw and a piece of iron between his teeth, and stands before the elders with one leg lifted in his clasped hands. He promises never to repeat the offence nor permit his children to do so, and falls prostrate at the feet of each elder, imploring his forgiveness. He supplies the elders with rice, pulse, salt and vegetables for two days, and on the [329]third day he and his family prepare a feast with one or more goats and two rupees’ worth of liquor. The elders eat of this in his house, and readmit him to social intercourse.

The women are tattooed either before or after marriage, the usual figures being a peacock on the shoulders, a scorpion on the back of the hand, and dots representing flies on the fingers. On their arms and legs they have circular lines of dots representing the ornaments usually worn, and they say that if they are destitute in the other world they will be able to sell these. This indicates that the more civilised of them, at any rate, now believe in a future life. They also have circular dotted lines round the knees which they say will help them to climb to heaven. Like the Gonds the men scarify their bodies by burning the outer skin of the forearm in three or four places with a small piece of burning cloth.

The men shave the whole head on the death of a father or other venerable relative, but otherwise they never cut their hair, and let it grow long, twisting it into a bunch at the back of the head. They shave off or eradicate the hair of the face and pubes, but that on other parts of the body is allowed to remain. The hair of the head is considered to be sacred.

The tribe wear only the narrowest possible strip of cloth round the loins, and another strip on the head, one end of which is often allowed to hang down over the ear. Formerly they lived by dahya cultivation, burning down patches of forest and scattering seed on the ground fertilised by the ashes, and they greatly resent the prohibition of this destructive method. They have now taken to making baskets and other articles from the wood of the bamboo. They are of dirty habits, and seldom wash themselves. Forty years ago their manner of life was even ruder than at present, as shown in the following notice2 of them by Mr. Ball in 1876:

“Proceeding along the bed of the valley I came upon two colonies of a wild race of people called Kamārs by their neighbours. They were regular Troglodytes in their habits, dwelling in caves and existing chiefly on roots and fish. It is singular to observe how little the people of these wild races do to protect themselves from the inclemency of the weather. [330]In one of these caves the sole protection from the air was a lean-to of loosely placed branches. The people seemed to be very timid, hiding themselves on our approach. I did not therefore like to attempt an examination of their dwellings. After some calling on our part one man was induced to make his appearance. He was a most wretched-looking, leprous object, having lost several fingers and toes. He could give no very definite explanation as to his means of subsistence. All he could say was that he lived ‘by picking up odds and ends here and there.’ However, he seemed to be able to afford himself the solace of tobacco. A few cocks and hens at one of the caves, and a goat at the other, were the only domestic animals which I saw.”

The tribe are of small stature. They are very fond of hunting, and are expert at using their bows and arrows, with which they have killed even bison. Mr. W. E. Ley, C.S., relates the following particulars of a recent murder by a Kamār in Raipur: Two Hindus went to a Kamār’s house in the jungle to dun him for a debt. He could not pay the debt, but invited them to take food in his house. At the meal the creditor’s companion said the food was bad, and a quarrel thereupon ensuing, slapped the Kamār in the face. The latter started up, snatched up his bow and arrow and axe, and ran away into the jungle. The Hindus then set out for home, and as they were afraid of being attacked by the Kamār, they took his brother with them as a protection. Nevertheless the Kamār shot one of them through the side, the arrow passing through the arm and penetrating the lung. He then shot the other through the chest, and running in, mutilated his body in a shocking manner. When charged with the murders he confessed them freely, saying that he was a wild man of the woods and knew no better. [331]