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

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СКАЧАТЬ by contributions from the villagers, and ranked with the village menials.

      30. Household servants

      Some of the castes already mentioned, and one or two others having the same status, work as household servants as well as village menials. The Dhīmar is most commonly employed as an indoor servant in Hindu households, and is permitted to knead flour in water and make it into a cake, which the Brāhman then takes and puts on the girdle with his own hands. He can boil water and pour pulse into the cooking-pot from above, so long as he does not touch the vessel after the food has been placed in it. He will take any remains of food left in the cooking-pot, as this is not considered to be polluted, food only becoming polluted when the hand touches it on the dish after having touched the mouth. When this happens, all the food on the dish becomes jūtha or leavings of food, and as a general rule no caste except the sweepers will eat these leavings of food of another caste or of another person of their own. Only a wife, whose meal follows her husband’s, will eat his leavings. As a servant, the Dhīmar is very familiar with his master; he may enter any part of the house, including the cooking-place and the women’s rooms, and he addresses his mistress as ‘Mother.’ When he lights his master’s pipe he takes the first pull himself, to show that it has not been tampered with, and then presents it to him with his left hand placed under his right elbow in token of respect. Maid-servants frequently belong also to the Dhīmar caste, and it often happens that the master of the household has illicit intercourse with them. Hence there is a proverb: ‘The king’s son draws water and the water-bearer’s son sits on the throne,’—similar intrigues on the part of high-born women with their servants being not unknown. The Kahār or palanquin-bearer was probably the same caste as the Dhīmar. Landowners would maintain a gang of Kahārs to carry them on journeys, allotting to such men plots of land rent-free. Our use of the word ‘bearer’ in the sense of a body-servant has developed from the palanquin-bearer who became a personal attendant on his master. Well-to-do families often have a Nai or barber as a hereditary family servant, the office descending in the barber’s family. Such a man arranges the marriages of the children and takes a considerable part in conducting them, and acts as escort to the women of the family when they go on a journey. Among his daily duties are to rub his master’s body with oil, massage his limbs, prepare his bed, tell him stories to send him to sleep, and so on. The barber’s wife attends on women in childbirth after the days of pollution are over, and rubs oil on the bodies of her clients, pares their nails and paints their feet with red dye at marriages and on other festival occasions. The Bāri or maker of leaf-plates is another household servant. Plates made of large leaves fastened together with little wooden pins and strips of fibre are commonly used by the Hindus for eating food, as are little leaf-cups for drinking; glazed earthenware has hitherto not been commonly manufactured, and that with a rougher surface becomes ceremonially impure by contact with any strange person or thing. Metal vessels and plates are the only alternative to those made of leaves, and there are frequently not enough of them to go round for a party. The Bāris also work as personal servants, hand round water, and light and carry torches at entertainments and on journeys. Their women are maids to high-caste Hindu ladies, and as they are always about the zenana are liable to lose their virtue.

      31. Status of the village menials

      The castes of village and household menials form a large group between the cultivators on the one hand and the impure and servile labourers on the other. Their status is not exactly the same. On the one hand, the Nai or barber, the Kahār and Dhīmar or watermen, the household servants, the Bāri, Ahīr, and others, some of the village priests and the gardening castes, are considered ceremonially pure and Brāhmans will take water from them. But this is a matter of convenience, as, if they were not so held pure, they would be quite useless in the household. Several of these castes, as the Dhīmars, Bāris and others, are derived from the primitive tribes. Sir H. Risley considered the Bāris of Bengal as probably an offshoot from the Bhuiya or Mūsahar tribe: “He still associates with the Bhuiyas at times, and if the demand for leaf-plates and cups is greater than he can cope with himself, he gets them secretly made up by his ruder kinsfolk and passes them off as his own production. Instances of this sort, in which a non-Aryan or mixed group is promoted on grounds of necessity or convenience to a higher status than their antecedents would entitle them to claim, are not unknown in other castes, and must have occurred frequently in outlying parts of the country, where the Aryan settlements were scanty and imperfectly supplied with the social apparatus demanded by the theory of ceremonial purity. Thus the undoubtedly non-Aryan Bhuiyas have in parts of Chota Nāgpur been recognised as Jal-Acharani (able to give water to the higher castes) and it may be conjectured that the Kahārs themselves only attained this privilege in virtue of their employment as palanquin-bearers.”67 The fact that Brāhmans will take water from these castes does not in any way place them on a level with the cultivators; they remain menial servants, ranking, if anything, below such castes as Lohār, Teli and Kalār, from whom Brāhmans will not take water; but these latter are, as corporate bodies, more important and prosperous than the household menial castes, because their occupation confers a greater dignity and independence.

      On the other hand, one or two of the village menials, such as the Dhobi or washerman, are considered to some extent impure. This is due to specially degrading incidents attaching to their occupation, as in the case of the Dhobi, the washing of the clothes of women in childbirth.68 And the Sungaria subcaste of Kumhārs, who keep pigs, are not touched, because the impurity of the animal is necessarily communicated to its owner’s house and person. Still, in the village society there is little real difference between the position of these castes and those of the other village menials.

      32. Origin of their status

      The status of the village menial castes appears to be fixed by their dependent position on the cultivators. The latter are their patrons and superiors, to whom they look for a livelihood. Before the introduction of a currency in the rural tracts (an event of the last fifty to a hundred years) the village artisans and menials were supported by contributions of grain from the cultivators. They still all receive presents, consisting of a sowing-basketful of grain at seed-time and one or two sheaves at harvest. The former is known as Bīj phūtni, or ‘The breaking of the seed,’ and the latter as Khanvār, or ‘That which is left’ Sometimes, after threshing, the menials are each given as much grain as will fill a winnowing-fan. When the peasant has harvested his grain, all come and beg from him. The Dhīmar brings some water-nut, the Kāchhi or market-gardener some chillies, the Barai betel-leaf, the Teli oil and tobacco, the Kalār liquor (if he drinks it), the Bania some sugar, and all receive grain in excess of the value of their gifts. The Joshi or village priest, the Nat or acrobat, the Gosain or religious mendicant and the Fakīr or Muhammadan beggar solicit alms. On that day the cultivator is said to be like a little king in his fields, and the village menials constitute his court. In purely agricultural communities grain is the principal source of wealth, and though the average Hindu villager may appear to us to be typical of poverty rather than wealth, such standards are purely relative. The cultivator was thus the patron and supporter of the village artisans and menials, and his social position was naturally superior to theirs. Among the Hindus it is considered derogatory to accept a gift from another person, the recipient being thereby placed in a position of inferiority to the donor. Some exception to this rule is made in the case of Brāhmans, though even with them it partly applies. Generally the acceptance of a gift of any value among Hindus is looked upon in the same manner as the taking of money in England, being held to indicate that the recipient is in an inferior social position to the giver. And the existence of this feeling seems to afford strong support to the reason suggested here for the relative status of the cultivating and village menial castes.

      The group of village menial and artisan castes comes between the good cultivating castes who hold the status of the Vaishyas or body of the Aryans, and the impure castes, the subjected aborigines. The most reasonable theory of their status seems to be that it originated in mixed descent. As has already been seen, it was the common practice of members of the higher classes to take lower-caste СКАЧАТЬ