The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 1. Robert Vane Russell

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СКАЧАТЬ the daughters of Bhīl chieftains and landholders, and succeeded to their estates. Thus the Bhilālas include a number of landed proprietors, and the caste ranks as a good agricultural caste, from whom Brāhmans 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 Rāj-Gonds among the Gonds, the Binjhāls among Baigas, and the Tawar subtribe of the Kawar tribe of Bilāspur, to which all the zamīndārs50 belong. These last now claim to be Tomara Rājpūts, on the basis of the similarity of the name. These groups rank with the good agricultural castes, and Brāhmans sometimes consent to take water from them. The Dāngis of Saugor appear to be the descendants of a set of freebooters in the Vindhyan hills, much like the Gūjars 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 Dāngis, and there are thus twenty-two subdivisions of these people. There are also three other subdivisions who claim descent from pure Rājpūts, and who will take daughters in marriage from the remaining twenty-two, but will not give their daughters to them.” Thus the Dāngis appear to have been a mixed group, recruiting their band from all classes of the population, with some Rajpūts as leaders. The name probably means hillman, from dāng, a hill. Khet men bāmi, gaon men Dāngi or ‘A Dāngi 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 Dāngi dynasty formerly governed part of the District, and they are now highly respectable cultivators. The Mīnas or Deswālis belonged to the predatory Mīna tribe of Rājputāna, but a section of them have obtained possession of the land in Hoshangābād 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 Rāja of the Gond-Rājpūt 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 Thākur, a title applied to Rājpūts, 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 Jāts, Marāthas, Dāngis 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 Sūdras, 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 Sūdras 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 Brāhmans 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 Rājpūts retain that of the Kshatriyas. The case of the Jāts and Gūjars 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 Rājpūt clans were the leaders or aristocracy of the Jāts and Gūjars. 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 Rājpūts, 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 Sūdras 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 Mirāsi 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 Marātha villages by Grant Duff53 may be subjoined to this passage: “The inhabitants are principally cultivators, and are now either Mirāsidars or Ooprees. These names serve to distinguish the tenure by which they hold their lands. The Oopree is a mere tenant-at-will, СКАЧАТЬ