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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The Marathas are the military caste of the Maratha country, formed
into a caste from the cultivators, shepherds and herdsmen, who took
service under Sivaji and subsequent Maratha leaders. The higher clans
may have been constituted from the aristocracy of the Deccan states,
which was probably of Rajput descent. They have now become a single
caste, ranking somewhat higher than the Kunbis, from whom the bulk
of them originated, on account of their former military and dominant
position. Their status was much the same as that of the Jats in the
Punjab. But the ordinary Marathas are mainly engaged in the subordinate
Government and private service, and there is very little distinction
between them and the Kunbis. The Khandaits or swordsmen (from _khanda_,
a sword) are an Uriya caste, which originated in military service,
and the members of which belonged for the most part to the non-Aryan
Bhuiya tribe. They were a sort of rabble, half military and half
police, Sir H. Risley states, who formed the levies of the Uriya
zamindars. They have obtained grants of land, and their status has
improved. "In the social system of Orissa the Sreshta (good) Khandaits
rank next to the Rajputs, who are comparatively few in number, and
have not that intimate connection with the land which has helped to
raise the Khandaits to their present position." [49] The small Rautia
landholding caste of Chota Nagpur, mainly derived from the Kol tribe,
was formed from military service, and obtained a higher status with
the possession of the land exactly like the Khandaits.

Several Rajput clans, as the Panwars of the Wainganga Valley,
the Raghuvansis, the Jadums derived from the Yadava clan, and the
Daharias of Chhattisgarh, have formed distinct castes, marrying among
themselves. A proper Rajput should not marry in his own clan. These
groups have probably in the past taken wives from the surrounding
population, and they can no longer be held to belong to the Rajput
caste proper, but rank as ordinary agricultural castes. Other
agricultural castes have probably been formed through mixed descent
from Rajputs and the indigenous races. The Agharias of Sambalpur say
they are sprung from a clan of Rajputs near Agra, who refused to bend
their heads before the king of Delhi. He summoned all the Agharias to
appear before him, and fixed a sword across the door at the height
of a man's neck. As the Agharias would not bend their heads they
were as a natural consequence all decapitated as they passed through
the door. Only one escaped, who had bribed a Chamar to go instead
of him. He and his village fled from Agra and came to Chhattisgarh,
where they founded the Agharia caste. And, in memory of this, when an
Agharia makes a libation to his ancestors, he first pours a little
water on the ground in honour of the dead Chamar. Such stories may
be purely imaginary, or may contain some substratum of truth, as that
the ancestors of the caste were Rajputs, who took wives from Chamars
and other low castes. The Kirars are another caste with more or less
mixed descent from Rajputs. They are also called Dhakar, and this
means one of illegitimate birth. The Bhilalas are a caste formed of the
offspring of mixed alliances between Rajputs and Bhils. In many cases
in Nimar Rajput immigrants appear to have married the daughters of Bhil
chieftains and landholders, and succeeded to their estates. Thus the
Bhilalas include a number of landed proprietors, and the caste ranks as
a good agricultural caste, from whom Brahmans will take water. Among
the other indigenous tribes, several of which have in the Central
Provinces retained the possession of large areas of land and great
estates in the wilder forest tracts, a subcaste has been formed of
the landholding members of the tribe. Such are the Raj-Gonds among
the Gonds, the Binjhals among Baigas, and the Tawar subtribe of the
Kawar tribe of Bilaspur, to which all the zamindars [50] belong. These
last now claim to be Tomara Rajputs, on the basis of the similarity
of the name. These groups rank with the good agricultural castes,
and Brahmans sometimes consent to take water from them. The Dangis
of Saugor appear to be the descendants of a set of freebooters in the
Vindhyan hills, much like the Gujars in northern India. The legend of
their origin is given in Sir B. Robertson's _Census Report_ of 1891:
"The chief of Garhpahra or old Saugor detained the palanquins of
twenty-two married women and kept them as his wives. The issue of the
illicit intercourse were named Dangis, and there are thus twenty-two
subdivisions of these people. There are also three other subdivisions
who claim descent from pure Rajputs, and who will take daughters
in marriage from the remaining twenty-two, but will not give their
daughters to them." Thus the Dangis appear to have been a mixed group,
recruiting their band from all classes of the population, with some
Rajputs as leaders. The name probably means hillman, from _dang_, a
hill. _Khet men bami, gaon men Dangi_ or 'A Dangi in the village is
like the hole of a snake in one's field,' is a proverb showing the
estimation in which they were formerly held. They obtained estates
in Saugor and a Dangi dynasty formerly governed part of the District,
and they are now highly respectable cultivators. The Minas or Deswalis
belonged to the predatory Mina tribe of Rajputana, but a section of
them have obtained possession of the land in Hoshangabad and rank as a
good agricultural caste. The Lodhas of the United Provinces are placed
lowest among the agricultural castes by Mr. Nesfield, who describes
them as little better than a forest tribe. The name is perhaps derived
from the bark of the _lodh_ tree, which was collected by the Lodhas
of northern India and sold for use as a dyeing agent. In the Central
Provinces the name has been changed to Lodhi, and they are said to
have been brought into the District by a Raja of the Gond-Rajput
dynasty of Mandla in the seventeenth century, and given large grants
of waste land in the interior in order that they might clear it of
forest. They have thus become landholders, and rank with the higher
agricultural castes. They are addressed as Thakur, a title applied
to Rajputs, and Lodhi landowners usually wear the sacred thread.

21. Status of the cultivator.

The above details have been given to show how the different
agricultural castes originated. Though their origin is so diverse they
have, to a great extent, the same status, and it seems clear that this
status is dependent on their possession of the land. In the tracts
where they reside they are commonly village proprietors and superior
tenants. Those who rank a little higher than the others, as the Jats,
Marathas, Dangis and Lodhis, include in their body some ruling chiefs
or large landed proprietors, and as a rule were formerly dominant
in the territory in which they are found. In primitive agricultural
communities the land is the principal, if not almost the sole,
source of wealth. Trade in the modern sense scarcely exists, and what
interchange of commodities there is affects, as a rule, only a trifling
fraction of the population. India's foreign trade is mainly the
growth of the last century, and the great bulk of the exports are of
agricultural produce, yet in proportion to the population the trading
community is still extremely small. It thus seems quite impossible that
the Aryans could have been a community of priests, rulers and traders,
because such a community would not have had means of subsistence. And
if the whole production and control of the wealth and food of the
community had been in the hands of the Sudras, they could not have
been kept permanently in their subject, degraded position. The flocks
and herds and the land, which constituted the wealth of early India,
must thus have been in the possession of the Vaishyas; and grounds of
general probability, as well as the direct evidence already produced,
make it clear that they were the herdsmen and cultivators, and the
Sudras the labourers. The status of the modern cultivators seems to
correspond to that of the Vaishyas, that is, of the main body of the
Aryan people, who were pure and permitted to join in sacrifices. The
status, however, no longer attaches to origin, but to the possession of
the land; it is that of a constituent member of the village community,
corresponding to a citizen of the city states of Greece and Italy. The
original Vaishyas have long disappeared; the Brahmans themselves say
that there are no Kshatriyas and no Vaishyas left, and this seems to be
quite correct. But the modern good cultivating castes retain the status
of the Vaishyas as the Rajputs retain that of the Kshatriyas. The case
of the Jats and Gujars supports this view. These two castes are almost
certainly derived from Scythian nomad tribes, who entered India long
after the Vedic Aryans. And there is good reason to suppose that a
substantial proportion, if not the majority, of the existing Rajput
clans were the leaders or aristocracy of the Jats and Gujars. Thus it
is found that in the case of these later tribes the main body were
shepherds and cultivators, and their descendants have the status
of good cultivating castes at present, while the leaders became the
Rajputs, who have the status of the Kshatriyas; and it therefore seems
a reasonable inference that the same had previously been the case with
the Aryans themselves. It has been seen that the word Visha or Vaishya
signified one of the people or a householder. The name Kunbi appears
to have the same sense, its older form being _kutumbika_, which is
a householder or one who has a family, [51] a _pater familias_.

22. The clan and the village.

It has been seen also that Visha in the plural signified clans. The
clan was the small body which lived together, and in the patriarchal
stage was connected by a tie of kinship held to be derived from a
common ancestor. Thus it is likely that the clans settled down in
villages, the cultivators of one village being of the same exogamous
clan. The existing system of exogamy affords evidence in favour of this
view, as will be seen. All the families of the clan had cultivating
rights in the land, and were members of the village community; and
there were no other members, unless possibly a Kshatriya headman or
leader. The Sudras were their labourers and serfs, with no right to
hold land, and a third intermediate class of village menials gradually
grew up.

The law of Mirasi tenures in Madras is perhaps a survival of the
social system of the early village community. Under it only a few
of the higher castes were allowed to hold land, and the monopoly was
preserved by the rule that the right of taking up waste lands belonged
primarily to the cultivators of the adjacent holdings; no one else
could acquire land unless he first bought them out. The pariahs or
impure castes were not allowed to hold land at all. This rule was
pointed out by Mr. Slocock, and it is also noticed by Sir Henry Maine:
"There are in Central and Southern India certain villages to which a
class of persons is hereditarily attached, in such a manner that they
form no part of the natural and organic aggregate to which the bulk
of the villagers belong. These persons are looked upon as essentially
impure; they never enter the village, or only enter reserved portions
of it; and their touch is avoided as contaminating. Yet they bear
extremely plain marks of their origin. Though they are not included
in the village, they are an appendage solidly connected with it;
they have definite village duties, one of which is the settlement of
boundaries, on which their authority is allowed to be conclusive. They
evidently represent a population of alien blood whose lands have been
occupied by the colonists or invaders forming the community." [52]
Elsewhere, Sir Henry Maine points out that in many cases the outsiders
were probably admitted to the possession of land, but on an inferior
tenure to the primary holders or freemen who formed the cultivating
body of the village; and suggests that this may have been the ground
for the original distinction between occupancy and non-occupancy
tenants. The following extract from a description of the Maratha
villages by Grant Duff [53] may be subjoined to this passage:
"The inhabitants are principally cultivators, and are now either
Mirasidars or Ooprees. These names serve to distinguish the tenure
by which they hold their lands. The Oopree is a mere tenant-at-will,
but the Mirasidar is a hereditary occupant whom the Government cannot
displace so long as he pays the assessment on his field. With various
privileges and distinctions in his village of minor consequence,
the Mirasidar has the important power of selling or transferring his
right of occupancy at pleasure. It is a current opinion in the Maratha
country that all the lands were originally of this description."

As regards the internal relations of clans and village groups, Sir
H. Maine states: "The men who composed the primitive communities
believed themselves to be kinsmen in the most literal sense of
the word; and, surprising as it may seem, there are a multitude of
indications that in one stage of thought they must have regarded
themselves as equals. When these primitive bodies first make their
appearance as landowners, as claiming an exclusive enjoyment in a
definite area of land, not only do their shares of the soil appear to
have been originally equal, but a number of contrivances survive for
preserving the equality, of which the most frequent is the periodical
redistribution of the tribal domain." [54] Similarly Professor
Hearn states: "The settlement of Europe was made by clans. Each
clan occupied a certain territory--much, I suppose, as an Australian
squatter takes up new country. The land thus occupied was distributed
by metes and bounds to each branch of the clan; the remainder, if any,
continuing the property of the clan." [55] And again: "In those cases
where the land had been acquired by conquest there were generally
some remains of the conquered population who retained more or less
interest in the lands that had once been their own. But as between
the conquerors themselves it was the clansmen, and the clansmen only,
who were entitled to derive any advantage from the land that the clan
had acquired. The outsiders, the men who lived with the clan but were
not of the clan, were no part of the folk, and had no share in the
folkland. No services rendered, no participation in the common danger,
no endurance of the burden and heat of the day, could create in an
outsider any colour of right. Nothing short of admission to the clan,
and of initiation in its worship, could enable him to demand as of
right the grass of a single cow or the wood for a single fire." [56]

23. The ownership of land.

Thus it appears that the cultivating community of each village
constituted an exogamous clan, the members of which believed themselves
to be kinsmen. When some caste or tribe occupied a fresh area of land
they were distributed by clans in villages, over the area, all the
cultivators of a village being of one caste or tribe, as is still
the case with the Kunbis in Berar. Sometimes several alien castes or
groups became amalgamated into a single caste, such as the Kurmis and
Kunbis; in others they either remained as a separate caste or became
one. When the non-Aryan tribes retained possession of the land, there
is every reason to suppose that they also were admitted into Hinduism,
and either constituted a fresh caste with the cultivating status, or
were absorbed into an existing one with a change of name. Individual
ownership of land was probably unknown. The _patel_ or village headman,
on whom proprietary right was conferred by the British Government,
certainly did not possess it previously. He was simply the spokesman
and representative of the village community in its dealings with the
central or ruling authority. But it seems scarcely likely either that
the village community considered itself to own the land. Cases in
which the community as a corporate body has exercised any function
of ownership other than that of occupying and cultivating the soil,
if recorded at all, must be extremely rare, and I do not know that
any instance is given by Sir Henry Maine. A tutelary village god
is to be found as a rule in every Hindu village. In the Central
Provinces the most common is Khermata, that is the goddess of the
village itself or the village lands. She is a form of Devi, the
general earth-goddess. When a village is founded the first thing to
be done is to install the village god. Thus the soil of the village
is venerated as a goddess, and it seems doubtful whether the village
community considered itself the owner. In the Maratha Districts,
Hanuman or Mahabir, the monkey god, is the tutelary deity of the
village. His position seems to rest on the belief of the villagers
that the monkeys were the lords and owners of the soil before their own
arrival. For the worship of these and the other village gods there is
usually a village priest, known as Bhumka, Bhumia, Baiga or Jhankar,
who is taken from the non-Aryan tribes. The reason for his appointment
seems to be that the Hindus still look on themselves to some extent
as strangers and interlopers in relation to the gods of the earth and
the village, and consider it necessary to approach these through the
medium of one of their predecessors. The words Bhumka and Bhumia both
mean lord of the soil, or belonging to the soil. As already seen,
the authority of some menial official belonging to the indigenous
tribes is accepted as final in cases of disputed boundaries, the idea
being apparently that as his ancestors first occupied the village,
he has inherited from them the knowledge of its true extent and
limits. All these points appear to tell strongly against the view
that the Hindu village community considered itself to own the village
land as we understand the phrase. They seem to have looked on the
land as a god, and often their own tutelary deity and protector. What
they held themselves to possess was a right of occupancy, in virtue
of prescriptive settlement, not subject to removal or disturbance,
and transmitted by inheritance to persons born into the membership of
the village community. Under the Muhammadans the idea that the state
ultimately owned the land may have been held, but prior to them the
existence of such a belief is doubtful. The Hindu king did not take
rent for land, but a share of the produce for the support of his
establishments. The Rajput princes did not call themselves after
the name of their country, but of its capital town, as if their own
property consisted only in the town, as Jodhpur, Jaipur and Udaipur,
instead of Marwar, Dhundhar and Mewar. Just as the village has a
priest of the non-Aryan tribes for propitiating the local gods, so
the Rajput chief at his accession was often inducted to the royal
cushion by a Bhil or Mina, and received the badge of investiture as
if he had to obtain his title from these tribes. Indeed the right
of the village community to the land was held sometimes superior to
that of the state. Sir J. Malcolm relates that he was very anxious to
get the village of Bassi in Indore State repopulated when it had lain
waste for thirty-six years. He had arranged with the Bhil headman of
a neighbouring village to bring it under cultivation on a favourable
lease. The plan had other advantages, and Holkar's minister was most
anxious to put it into execution, but said that this could not be done
until every possible effort had been made to discover whether any
descendant of the former _patel_ or of any _watandar_ or hereditary
cultivator of Bassi was still in existence; for if such were found,
he said, "even we Marathas, bad as we are, cannot do anything which
interferes with their rights." None such being found at the time, the
village was settled as proposed by Malcolm; but some time afterwards,
a boy was discovered who was descended from the old _patel's_ family,
and he was invited to resume the office of headman of the village of
his forefathers, which even the Bhil, who had been nominated to it,
was forward to resign to the rightful inheritor. [57] Similarly the
Maratha princes, Sindhia, Holkar and others, are recorded to have
set more store by the headship of the insignificant Deccan villages,
which were the hereditary offices of their families, than by the
great principalities which they had carved out for themselves with
the sword. The former defined and justified their position in the
world as the living link and representative of the continuous family
comprising all their ancestors and all their descendants; the latter
was at first regarded merely as a transient, secular possession,
and a source of wealth and profit. This powerful hereditary right
probably rested on a religious basis. The village community was
considered to be bound up with its village god in one joint life,
and hence no one but they could in theory have the right to cultivate
the lands of that village. The very origin and nature of this right
precluded any question of transfer or alienation. The only lands in
which any ownership, corresponding to our conception of the term,
was held to exist, were perhaps those granted free of revenue for
the maintenance of temples, which were held to be the property of the
god. In Rome and other Greek and Latin cities the idea of private or
family ownership of land also developed from a religious sentiment. It
was customary to bury the dead in the fields which they had held,
and here the belief was that their spirits remained and protected
the interests of the family. Periodical sacrifices were made to them
and they participated in all the family ceremonies. Hence the land
in which the tombs of ancestors were situated was held to belong to
the family, and could not be separated from it. [58] Gradually, as
the veneration for the spirits of ancestors decayed, the land came
to be regarded as the private property of the family, and when this
idea had been realised it was made alienable, though not with the same
freedom as personal property. But the word _pecunia_ for money, from
_pecus_ a flock, like the Hindi _dhan_, which means wealth and also
flocks of goats and sheep, and feudal from the Gaelic _fiu_, cattle,
point to conditions of society in which land was not considered a
form of private property or wealth. M. Fustel de Coulanges notices
other primitive races who did not recognise property in land:
"The Tartars understand the term property as applying to cattle,
but not as applying to land. According to some authors, among the
ancient Germans there was no ownership of land; every year each member
of the tribe received a holding to cultivate, and the holding was
changed in the following year. The German owned the crop; he did not
own the soil. The same was the case among a part of the Semitic race
and certain of the Slav peoples." [59] In large areas of the Nigeria
Protectorate at present, land has no exchangeable value at all; but
by the native system of taxation a portion of the produce is taken
in consideration of the right of use. [60] In ancient Arabia 'Baal'
meant the lord of some place or district, that is, a local deity,
and hence came to mean a god. Land naturally moist was considered as
irrigated by a god and the special place or habitation of the god. To
the numerous Canaanite Baalims, or local deities, the Israelites
ascribed all the natural gifts of the land, the corn, the wine, and
the oil, the wool and the flax, the vines and fig trees. Pasture land
was common property, but a man acquired rights in the soil by building
a house, or, by 'quickening' a waste place, that is, bringing it under
cultivation. [61] The Israelites thought that they derived their title
to the land of Canaan from Jehovah, having received it as a gift
from Him. The association of rights over the land with cultivation
and building, pointed out by Professor Robertson Smith, may perhaps
explain the right over the village lands which was held to appertain
to the village community. They had quickened the land and built houses
on it, establishing the local village deity on their village sites,
and it was probably thought that their life was bound up with that of
the village god, and only they had a right to cultivate his land. This
would explain the great respect shown by the Marathas for hereditary
title to land, as seen above; a feeling which must certainly have been
based on some religious belief, and not on any moral idea of equity
or justice; no such deep moral principle was possible in the Hindu
community at the period in question. The Hindu religious conception of
rights to land was thus poles apart from the secular English law of
proprietary and transferable right, and if the native feeling could
have been, understood by the early British administrators the latter
would perhaps have been introduced only in a much modified form.