The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India Volume I (of IV)

R >> R.V. Russell >> The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India Volume I (of IV)

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Volume III

65. Gond women grinding corn 42
66. Palace of the Gond kings of Garha-Mandla at Ramnagar 46
67. Gonds on a journey 62
68. Killing of Rawan, the demon king of Ceylon, from whom the
Gonds are supposed to be descended 114
69. Woman about to be swung round the post called Meghnath 116
70. Climbing the pole for a bag of sugar 118
71. Gonds with their bamboo carts at market 122
72. Gond women, showing tattooing on backs of legs 126
73. Maria Gonds in dancing costume 136
74. Gondhali musicians and dancers 144
75. Gosain mendicant 150
76. Alakhwale Gosains with faces covered with ashes 152
77. Gosain mendicants with long hair 154
78. Famous Gosain Mahant. Photograph taken after death 156
79. Gujar village proprietress and her land agent 168
80. Guraos with figures made at the Holi festival called Gangour
176
81. Group of Gurao musicians with their instruments 180
82. Ploughing with cows and buffaloes in Chhattisgarh 182
83. Halwai or confectioner's shop 202
84. Jogi mendicants of the Kanphata sect 244
85. Jogi musicians with _sarangi_ or fiddle 250
86. Kaikaris making baskets 298
87. Kanjars making ropes 332
88. A group of Kasars or brass-workers 370
89. Dancing girls and musicians 374
90. Girl in full dress and ornaments 378
91. Old type of sugarcane mill 494
92. Group of Kol women 512
93. Group of Kolams 520
94. Korkus of the Melghat hills 550
95. Korku women in full dress 556
96. Koshti men dancing a figure, holding strings and beating
sticks 582

Volume IV

97. Potter at his wheel 4
98. Group of Kunbis 16
99. Figures of animals made for Pola festival 40
100. Hindu boys on stilts 42
101. Throwing stilts into the water at the Pola festival 46
102. Carrying out the dead 48
103. Pounding rice 60
104. Sowing 84
105. Threshing 86
106. Winnowing 88
107. Women grinding wheat and husking rice 90
108. Group of women in Hindustani dress 92
109. _Coloured Plate_: Examples of spangles worn by women on the
forehead 106
110. Weaving: sizing the warp 142
111. Winding thread 144
112. Bride and bridegroom with marriage crowns 166
113. Bullocks drawing water with _mot_ 170
114. Mang musicians with drums 186
115. Statue of Maratha leader, Bimbaji Bhonsla, in armour 200
116. Image of the god Vishnu as Vithoba 248
117. Coolie women with babies slung at the side 256
118. Hindu men showing the _choti_ or scalp-lock 272
119. Snake-charmer with cobras 292
120. Transplanting rice 340
121. Group of Pardhans 350
122. Little girls playing 400
123. Gujarati girls doing figures with strings and sticks 402
124. Ornaments 524
125. Teli's oil-press 544
126. The Goddess Kali 574
127. Waghya mendicants 604

PRONUNCIATION

_a_ has the sound of _u_ in _but_ or _murmur_.
_a_ has the sound of _a_ in _bath_ or _tar_.
_e_ has the sound of _e_ in _ecarte_ or _ai_ in _maid_.
_i_ has the sound of _i_ in _bit_, or (as a final letter)
of _y_ in _sulky_
_i_ has the sound of _ee_ in _beet_.
_o_ has the sound of _o_ in _bore_ or _bowl_.
_u_ has the sound of _u_ in _put_ or _bull_.
_u_ has the sound of _oo_ in _poor_ or _boot_.

The plural of caste names and a few common Hindustani words is formed
by adding _s_ in the English manner according to ordinary usage,
though this is not, of course, the Hindustani plural.

Note.--The rupee contains 16 annas, and an anna is of the same value
as a penny. A pice is a quarter of an anna, or a farthing. Rs. 1-8
signifies one rupee and eight annas. A lakh is a hundred thousand,
and a krore ten million.

PART I.

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY ON CASTE

List of Paragraphs

1. _The Central Provinces._
2. _Constitution of the population._
3. _The word 'Caste.'_
4. _The meaning of the term 'Caste.'_
5. _The subcaste._
6. _Confusion of nomenclature._
7. _Tests of what a caste is._
8. _The four traditional castes._
9. _Occupational theory of caste._
10. _Racial theory._
11. _Entry of the Aryans into India. The Aryas and Dasyus._
12. _The Sudra._
13. _The Vaishya._
14. _Mistaken modern idea of the Vaishyas._
15. _Mixed unions of the four classes._
16. _Hypergamy._
17. _The mixed castes. The village menials._
18. _Social gradation of castes._
19. _Castes ranking above the cultivators._
20. _Castes from whom a Brahman can take water. Higher
agriculturists._
21. _Status of the cultivator._
22. _The clan and the village._
23. _The ownership of land._
24. _The cultivating status that of the Vaishya._
25. _Higher professional and artisan castes._
26. _Castes from whom a Brahman cannot take water; the
village menials._
27. _The village watchmen._
28. _The village priests. The gardening castes._
29. _Other village traders and menials._
30. _Household servants._
31. _Status of the village menials._
32. _Origin of their status._
33. _Other castes who rank with the village menials._
34. _The non-Aryan tribes._
35. _The Kolarians and Dravidians._
36. _Kolarian tribes._
37. _Dravidian tribes._
38. _Origin of the Kolarian tribes._
39. _Of the Dravidian tribes._
40. _Origin of the impure castes._
41. _Derivation of the impure castes from the indigenous
tribes._
42. _Occupation the basis of the caste-system._
43. _Other agents in the formation of castes._
44. _Caste occupations divinely ordained._
45. _Subcastes, local type._
46. _Occupational subcastes._
47. _Subcastes formed from social or religious differences,
or from mixed descent._
48. _Exogamous groups._
49. _Totemistic clans._
50. _Terms of relationship._
51. _Clan kinship and totemism._
52. _Animate Creation._
53. _The distribution of life over the body._
54. _Qualities associated with animals._
55. _Primitive language._
56. _Concrete nature of primitive ideas._
57. _Words and names concrete._
58. _The soul or spirit._
59. _The transmission of qualities._
60. _The faculty of counting. Confusion of the individual
and the species._
61. _Similarity and identity._
62. _The recurrence of events._
63. _Controlling the future._
64. _The common life._
65. _The common life of the clan._
66. _Living and eating together._
67. _The origin of exogamy._
68. _Promiscuity and female descent._
69. _Exogamy with female descent._
70. _Marriage._
71. _Marriage by capture._
72. _Transfer of the bride to her husband's clan._
73. _The exogamous clan with male descent and the village._
74. _The large exogamous clans of the Brahmans and Rajputs. The
Sapindas, the_ gens _and the_ g'enoc.
75. _Comparison of Hindu society with that of Greece and
Rome. The_ gens.
76. _The clients._
77. _The plebeians._
78. _The binding social tie in the city-states._
79. _The Suovetaurilia._
80. _The sacrifice of the domestic animal._
81. _Sacrifices of the_ gens _and phratry._
82. _The Hindu caste-feasts._
83. _Taking food at initiation._
84. _Penalty feasts._
85. _Sanctity of grain-food._
86. _The corn-spirit._
87. _The king._
88. _Other instances of the common meal as a sacrificial rite._
89. _Funeral feasts._
90. _The Hindu deities and the sacrificial meal._
91. _Development of the occupational caste from the tribe._
92. _Veneration of the caste implements._
93. _The caste_ panchayat _and its code of offences._
94. _The status of impurity._
95. _Caste and Hinduism._
96. _The Hindu reformers._
97. _Decline of the caste system._

1. The Central Provinces.

The territory controlled by the Chief Commissioner of the Central
Provinces and Berar has an area of 131,000 square miles and a
population of 16,000,000 persons. Situated in the centre of the Indian
Peninsula, between latitudes 17 deg.47' and 24 deg.27' north, and longitudes
76 deg. and 84 deg. east, it occupies about 7.3 per cent of the total area
of British India. It adjoins the Central India States and the United
Provinces to the north, Bombay to the west, Hyderabad State and the
Madras Presidency to the south, and the Province of Bihar and Orissa
to the east. The Province was constituted as a separate administrative
unit in 1861 from territories taken from the Peshwa in 1818 and the
Maratha State of Nagpur, which had lapsed from failure of heirs in
1853. Berar, which for a considerable previous period had been held on
a lease or assignment from the Nizam of Hyderabad, was incorporated
for administrative purposes with the Central Provinces in 1903. In
1905 the bulk of the District of Sambalpur, with five Feudatory States
inhabited by an Uriya-speaking population, were transferred to Bengal
and afterwards to the new Province of Bihar and Orissa, while five
Feudatory States of Chota Nagpur were received from Bengal. The
former territory had been for some years included in the scope of
the Ethnographic Survey, and is shown coloured in the annexed map of
linguistic and racial divisions.

The main portion of the Province may be divided, from north-west
to south-east, into three tracts of upland, alternating with two of
plain country. In the north-west the Districts of Sangor and Damoh lie
on the Vindhyan or Malwa plateau, the southern face of which rises
almost sheer from the valley of the Nerbudda. The general elevation
of this plateau varies from 1500 to 2000 feet. The highest part is
that immediately overhanging the Nerbudda, and the general slope is to
the north, the rivers of this area being tributaries of the Jumna and
Ganges. The surface of the country is undulating and broken by frequent
low hills covered with a growth of poor and stunted forest. The second
division consists of the long and narrow valley of the Nerbudda,
walled in by the Vindhyan and Satpura hills to the north and south,
and extending for a length of about 200 miles from Jubbulpore to
Handia, with an average width of twenty miles. The valley is situated
to the south of the river, and is formed of deep alluvial deposits of
extreme richness, excellently suited to the growth of wheat. South
of the valley the Satpura range or third division stretches across
the Province, from Amarkantak in the east (the sacred source of the
Nerbudda) to Asirgarh in the Nimar District in the west, where its
two parallel ridges bound the narrow valley of the Tapti river. The
greater part consists of an elevated plateau, in some parts merely a
rugged mass of hills hurled together by volcanic action, in others
a succession of bare stony ridges and narrow fertile valleys, in
which the soil has been deposited by drainage. The general elevation
of the plateau is 2000 feet, but several of the peaks rise to 3500,
and a few to more than 4000 feet. The Satpuras form the most important
watershed of the Province, and in addition to the Nerbudda and Tapti,
the Wardha and Wainganga rivers rise in these hills. To the east a
belt of hill country continues from the Satpuras to the wild and rugged
highlands of the Chota Nagpur plateau, on which are situated the five
States recently annexed to the Province. Extending along the southern
and eastern faces of the Satpura range lies the fourth geographical
division, to the west the plain of Berar and Nagpur, watered by the
Purna, Wardha and Wainganga rivers, and further east the Chhattisgarh
plain, which forms the upper basin of the Mahanadi. The Berar and
Nagpur plain contains towards the west the shallow black soil in which
autumn crops, like cotton and the large millet juari, which do not
require excessive moisture, can be successfully cultivated. This area
is the great cotton-growing tract of the Province, and at present the
most wealthy. The valleys of the Wainganga and Mahanadi further east
receive a heavier rainfall and are mainly cropped with rice. Many small
irrigation tanks for rice have been built by the people themselves,
and large tank and canal works are now being undertaken by Government
to protect the tract from the uncertainty of the rainfall. South of
the plain lies another expanse of hill and plateau comprised in the
zarmindari estates of Chanda and the Chhattisgarh Division and the
Bastar and Kanker Feudatory States. This vast area, covering about
24,000 square miles, the greater part of which consists of dense
forests traversed by precipitous mountains and ravines, which formerly
rendered it impervious to Hindu invasion or immigration, producing
only on isolated stretches of culturable land the poorer raincrops,
and sparsely peopled by primitive Gonds and other forest tribes,
was probably, until a comparatively short time ago, the wildest
and least-known part of the whole Indian peninsula. It is now being
rapidly opened up by railways and good roads.

2. Constitution of the population.

Up to a few centuries ago the Central Provinces remained outside the
sphere of Hindu and Muhammadan conquest. To the people of northern
India it was known as Gondwana, an unexplored country of inaccessible
mountains and impenetrable forests, inhabited by the savage tribes
of Gonds from whom it took its name. Hindu kingdoms were, it is true,
established over a large part of its territory in the first centuries
of our era, but these were not accompanied by the settlement and
opening out of the country, and were subsequently subverted by the
Dravidian Gonds, who perhaps invaded the country in large numbers from
the south between the ninth and twelfth centuries. Hindu immigration
and colonisation from the surrounding provinces occurred at a later
period, largely under the encouragement and auspices of Gond kings. The
consequence is that the existing population is very diverse, and is
made up of elements belonging to many parts of India. The people of
the northern Districts came from Bundelkhand and the Gangetic plain,
and here are found the principal castes of the United Provinces and the
Punjab. The western end of the Nerbudda valley and Betul were colonised
from Malwa and Central India. Berar and the Nagpur plain fell to the
Marathas, and one of the most important Maratha States, the Bhonsla
kingdom, had its capital at Nagpur. Cultivators from western India
came and settled on the land, and the existing population are of
the same castes as the Maratha country or Bombay. But prior to the
Maratha conquest Berar and the Nimar District of the Central Provinces
had been included in the Mughal empire, and traces of Mughal rule
remain in a substantial Muhammadan element in the population. To
the south the Chanda District runs down to the Godavari river, and
the southern tracts of Chanda and Bastar State are largely occupied
by Telugu immigrants from Madras. To the east of the Nagpur plain
the large landlocked area of Chhattisgarh in the upper basin of the
Mahanadi was colonised at an early period by Hindus from the east of
the United Provinces and Oudh, probably coming through Jubbulpore. A
dynasty of the Haihaivansi Rajput clan established itself at Ratanpur,
and owing to the inaccessible nature of the country, protected as
it is on all sides by a natural rampart of hill and forest, was able
to pursue a tranquil existence untroubled by the wars and political
vicissitudes of northern India. The population of Chhattisgarh thus
constitutes to some extent a distinct social organism, which retained
until quite recently many remnants of primitive custom. The middle
basin of the Mahanadi to the east of Chhattisgarh, comprising the
Sambalpur District and adjoining States, was peopled by Uriyas from
Orissa, and though this area has now been restored to its parent
province, notices of its principal castes have been included in
these volumes. Finally, the population contains a large element of
the primitive or non-Aryan tribes, rich in variety, who have retired
before the pressure of Hindu cultivators to its extensive hills and
forests. The people of the Central Provinces may therefore not unjustly
be considered as a microcosm of a great part of India, and conclusions
drawn from a consideration of their caste rules and status may claim
with considerable probability of success to be applicable to those of
the Hindus generally. For the same reason the standard ethnological
works of other Provinces necessarily rank as the best authorities on
the castes of the Central Provinces, and this fact may explain and
excuse the copious resort which has been made to them in these volumes.

3. The word 'Caste.'

The word 'Caste,' Dr. Wilson states, [1] is not of Indian origin,
but is derived from the Portuguese _casta_, signifying race, mould
or quality. The Indian word for caste is _jat_ or _jati_, which has
the original meaning of birth or production of a child, and hence
denotes good birth or lineage, respectability and rank. _Jatha_
means well-born. Thus _jat_ now signifies a caste, as every Hindu
is born into a caste, and his caste determines his social position
through life.

4. The meaning of the term 'Caste.'

The two main ideas denoted by a caste are a community or persons
following a common occupation, and a community whose members marry
only among themselves. A third distinctive feature is that the
members of a caste do not as a rule eat with outsiders with the
exception of other Hindu castes of a much higher social position
than their own. None of these will, however, serve as a definition
of a caste. In a number of castes the majority of members have
abandoned their traditional occupation and taken to others. Less
than a fifth of the Brahmans of the Central Provinces are performing
any priestly or religious functions, and the remaining four-fifths
are landholders or engaged in Government service as magistrates,
clerks of public offices, constables and orderlies, or in railway
service in different grades, or in the professions as barristers and
pleaders, doctors, engineers and so on. The Rajputs and Marathas
were originally soldiers, but only an infinitely small proportion
belong to the Indian Army, and the remainder are ruling chiefs,
landholders, cultivators, labourers or in the various grades of
Government service and the police. Of the Telis or oil-pressers
only 9 per cent are engaged in their traditional occupation, and
the remainder are landholders, cultivators and shopkeepers. Of
the Ahirs or graziers only 20 per cent tend and breed cattle. Only
12 per cent of the Chamars are supported by the tanning industry,
and so on. The Bahnas or cotton-cleaners have entirely lost their
occupation, as cotton is now cleaned in factories; they are cartmen
or cultivators, but retain their caste name and organisation. Since
the introduction of machine-made cloth has reduced the profits of
hand-loom weaving, large numbers of the weaving castes have been
reduced to manual labour as a means of subsistence. The abandonment
of the traditional occupation has become a most marked feature of
Hindu society as a result of the equal opportunity and freedom in the
choice of occupations afforded by the British Government, coupled with
the rapid progress of industry and the spread of education. So far it
has had no very markedly disintegrating effect on the caste system,
and the status of a caste is still mainly fixed by its traditional
occupation; but signs are not wanting of a coming change. Again,
several castes have the same traditional occupation; about forty of
the castes of the Central Provinces are classified as agriculturists,
eleven as weavers, seven as fishermen, and so on. Distinctions of
occupation therefore are not a sufficient basis for a classification
of castes. Nor can a caste be simply defined as a body of persons who
marry only among themselves, or, as it is termed, an endogamous group;
for almost every important caste is divided into a number of subcastes
which do not marry and frequently do not eat with each other. But it
is a distinctive and peculiar feature of caste as a social institution
that it splits up the people into a multitude of these divisions and
bars their intermarriage; and the real unit of the system and the basis
of the fabric of Indian society is this endogamous group or subcaste.

5. The subcaste.

The subcastes, however, connote no real difference of status or
occupation. They are little known except within the caste itself, and
they consist of groups within the caste which marry among themselves,
and attend the communal feasts held on the occasions of marriages,
funerals and meetings of the caste _panchayat_ or committee for the
judgment of offences against the caste rules and their expiation by
a penalty feast; to these feasts all male adults of the community,
within a certain area, are invited. In the Central Provinces the 250
groups which have been classified as castes contain perhaps 2000
subcastes. Except in some cases other Hindus do not know a man's
subcaste, though they always know his caste; among the ignorant lower
castes men may often be found who do not know whether their caste
contains any subcastes or whether they themselves belong to one. That
is, they will eat and marry with all the members of their caste within
a circle of villages, but know nothing about the caste outside those
villages, or even whether it exists elsewhere. One subdivision of
a caste may look down upon another on the ground of some difference
of occupation, of origin, or of abstaining from or partaking of some
article of food, but these distinctions are usually confined to their
internal relations and seldom recognised by outsiders. For social
purposes the caste consisting of a number of these endogamous groups
generally occupies the same position, determined roughly according
to the respectability of its traditional occupation or extraction.

6. Confusion of nomenclature.

No adequate definition of caste can thus be obtained from community
of occupation or intermarriage; nor would it be accurate to say
that every one must know his own caste and that all the different
names returned at the census may be taken as distinct. In the Central
Provinces about 900 caste-names were returned at the census of 1901,
and these were reduced in classification to about 250 proper castes.

In some cases synonyms are commonly used. The caste of _pan_ or
betel-vine growers and sellers is known indifferently as Barai,
Pansari or Tamboli. The great caste of Ahirs or herdsmen has several
synonyms--as Gaoli in the Northern Districts, Rawat or Gahra in
Chhattisgarh, Gaur among the Uriyas, and Golkar among Telugus. Lohars
are also called Khati and Kammari; Masons are called Larhia, Raj
and Beldar. The more distinctly occupational castes usually have
different names in different parts of the country, as Dhobi, Warthi,
Baretha, Chakla and Parit for washermen; Basor, Burud, Kandra and
Dhulia for bamboo-workers, and so on. Such names may show that the
subdivisions to which they are applied have immigrated from different
parts of India, but the distinction is generally not now maintained,
and many persons will return one or other of them indifferently. No
object is gained, therefore, by distinguishing them in classification,
as they correspond to no differences of status or occupation, and at
most denote groups which do not intermarry, and which may therefore
more properly be considered as subcastes.

Titles or names of offices are also not infrequently given as caste
names. Members of the lowest or impure castes employed in the office
of Kotwar or village watchmen prefer to call themselves by this name,
as they thus obtain a certain rise in status, or at least they think
so. In some localities the Kotwars or village watchmen have begun
to marry among themselves and try to form a separate caste. Chamars
(tanners) or Mahars (weavers) employed as grooms will call themselves
Sais and consider themselves superior to the rest of their caste. The
Thethwar Rawats or Ahirs will not clean household cooking-vessels,
and therefore look down on the rest of the caste and prefer to call
themselves by this designation, as 'Theth' means 'exact' or 'pure,'
and Thethwar is one who has not degenerated from the ancestral
calling. Salewars are a subcaste of Koshtis (weavers), who work
only in silk and hence consider themselves as superior to the other
Koshtis and a separate caste. The Rathor subcaste of Telis in Mandla
have abandoned the hereditary occupation of oil-pressing and become
landed proprietors. They now wish to drop their own caste and to be
known only as Rathor, the name of one of the leading Rajput clans, in
the hope that in time it will be forgotten that they ever were Telis,
and they will be admitted into the community of Rajputs. It occurred
to them that the census would be a good opportunity of advancing a
step towards the desired end, and accordingly they telegraphed to the
Commissioner of Jubbulpore before the enumeration, and petitioned the
Chief Commissioner after it had been taken, to the effect that they
might be recorded and classified only as Rathor and not as Teli; this
method of obtaining recognition of their claims being, as remarked
by Sir Bampfylde Fuller, a great deal cheaper than being weighed
against gold. On the other hand, a common occupation may sometimes
amalgamate castes originally distinct into one. The sweeper's calling
is well-defined and under the generific term of Mehtar are included
members of two or three distinct castes, as Dom, Bhangi and Chuhra;
the word Mehtar means a prince or headman, and it is believed that
its application to the sweeper by the other servants is ironical. It
has now, however, been generally adopted as a caste name. Similarly,
Darzi, a tailor, was held by Sir D. Ibbetson to be simply the name
of a profession and not that of a caste; but it is certainly a true
caste in the Central Provinces, though probably of comparatively late
origin. A change of occupation may transfer a whole body of persons
from one caste to another. A large section of the Banjara caste of
carriers, who have taken to cultivation, have become included in the
Kunbi caste in Berar and are known as Wanjari Kunbi. Another subcaste
of the Kunbis called Manwa is derived from the Mana tribe. Telis or
oilmen, who have taken to vending liquor, now form a subcaste of the
Kalar caste called Teli-Kalar; those who have become shopkeepers
are called Teli-Bania and may in time become an inferior section
of the Bania caste. Other similar subcastes are the Ahir-Sunars or
herdsmen-goldsmiths, the Kayasth-Darzis or tailors, the Kori-Chamars
or weaver-tanners, the Gondi Lohars and Barhais, being Gonds who have
become carpenters and blacksmiths and been admitted to these castes;
the Mahar Mhalis or barbers, and so on.