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

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СКАЧАТЬ naturally result. Such children, born and brought up in the households of their fathers, would not be full members of the family, but would not be regarded as impure. They would naturally be put to the performance of the menial household duties, for which the servile castes were rendered unsuitable through their impure status. This would correspond with the tradition of the large number of castes originating in mixed descent, which is given in the Hindu sacred books. It has been seen that where menial castes are employed in the household, classes of mixed descent do as a matter of fact arise. And there are traces of a relationship between the cultivators and the menial castes, which would be best explained by such an origin. At a betrothal in the great Kunbi cultivating caste of the Marāthas, the services of the barber and washerman must be requisitioned. The barber washes the feet of the boy and girl and places vermilion on the foreheads of the guests; the washerman spreads a sheet on the ground on which the boy and girl sit. At the end of the ceremony the barber and washerman take the bride and bridegroom on their shoulders and dance to music in the marriage-shed, for which they receive small presents. After a death has occurred at a Kunbi’s house, the impurity is not removed until the barber and washerman have eaten in it. At a Kunbi’s wedding the Gurao or village priest brings the leafy branches of five trees and deposits them at Māroti’s69 temple, whence they are removed by the parents of the bride. Before a wedding, again, a Kunbi bride must go to the potter’s house and be seated on his wheel, while it is turned round seven times for good luck. Similarly at a wedding among the Hindustāni cultivating castes the bride visits the potter’s house and is seated on his wheel; and the washerman’s wife applies vermilion to her forehead. The barber’s wife puts red paint on her feet, the gardener’s wife presents her with a garland of flowers and the carpenter’s wife gives her a new wooden doll. At the wedding feast the barber, the washerman and the Bāri or personal servant also eat with the guests, though sitting apart from them. Sometimes members of the menial and serving castes are invited to the funeral feast as if they belonged to the dead man’s caste. In Madras the barber and his wife, and the washerman and his wife, are known as the son and daughter of the village. And among the families of ruling Rājpūt chiefs, when a daughter of the house is married, it was customary to send with her a number of handmaidens taken from the menial and serving castes. These became the concubines of the bridegroom and it seems clear that their progeny would be employed in similar capacities about the household and would follow the castes of their mothers. The Tamera caste of coppersmiths trace their origin from the girls so sent with the bride of Dharam-Pāl, the Haihaya Rājpūt Rāja of Ratanpur, through the progeny of these girls by the Raja.

      33. Other castes who rank with the village menials

      Many other castes belong to the group of those from whom a Brāhman cannot take water, but who are not impure. Among these are several of the lower cultivating castes, some of them growers of special products, as the Kāchhis and Mowārs or market-gardeners, the Dāngris or melon-growers, and the Kohlis and Bhoyars who plant sugarcane. These subsidiary kinds of agriculture were looked down upon by the cultivators proper; they were probably carried out on the beds and banks of streams and other areas not included in the regular holdings of the village, and were taken up by labourers and other landless persons. The callings of these are allied to, or developed from, that of the Māli or gardener, and they rank on a level with him, or perhaps a little below, as no element of sanctity attaches to their products. Certain castes which were formerly labourers, but have now sometimes obtained possession of the land, are also in this group, such as the Rajbhars, Kīrs, Mānas, and various Madras castes of cultivators. Probably these were once not allowed to hold land, but were afterwards admitted to do so. The distinction between their position and that of the hereditary cultivators of the village community was perhaps the original basis of the different kinds of tenant-right recognised by our revenue law, though these now, of course, depend solely on length of tenure and other incidents, and make no distinction of castes. The shepherd castes who tend sheep and goats (the Gadarias, Dhangars and Kuramwārs) also fall into this group. Little sanctity attached to these animals as compared with the cow, and the business of rearing them would be left to the labouring castes and non-Aryan tribes. The names of all three castes denote their functional origin, Gadaria being from gādar, a sheep, Dhangar from dhan or small-stock, the word signifying a flock of sheep or goats and also wealth; and Kuramwār from kurri, the Telugu word for sheep. Others belonging to this group are the digging and earth-working castes, the Beldārs, Murhas, Nunias and so on, practically all derived from the indigenous tribes, who wander about seeking employment from the cultivators in the construction and repair of field embankments and excavation of wells and tanks; and various fishing and boating castes, as the Injhwārs, Naodas, Murhas and Kewats, who rank as equal to the Dhīmars, though they may not be employed in household or village service. Such castes, almost entirely derived from the non-Aryan tribes, may have come gradually into existence as the wants of society developed and new functions were specialised; they would naturally be given the social status already attaching to the village menial castes.

      34. The non-Aryan tribes

      The fourth group in the scheme of precedence comprises the non-Aryan or indigenous tribes, who are really outside the caste system when this is considered as the social organisation of the Hindus, so long at least as they continue to worship their own tribal deities, and show no respect for Brāhmans nor for the cow. These tribes have, however, entered the Hindu polity in various positions. The leaders of some of them who were dominant in the early period were admitted to the Kshatriya or Rājpūt caste, and the origin of a few of the Rājput clans can be traced to the old Bhar and other tribes. Again, the aristocratic or landholding sections of several existing tribes are at present, as has been seen, permitted to rank with the good Hindu cultivating castes. In a few cases, as the Andhs, Halbas and Mānas, the tribe as a whole has become a Hindu caste, when it retained possession of the land in the centre of a Hindu population. These have now the same or a slightly higher position than the village menial castes. On the other hand, those tribes which were subjugated and permitted to live with a servile status in the Hindu villages have developed into the existing impure castes of labourers, weavers, tanners and others, who form the lowest social group. The tribes which still retain their distinctive existence were not enslaved in this manner, but lived apart in their own villages in the forest tracts and kept possession of the land. This seems to be the reason why they rank somewhat higher than the impure castes, even though they may utterly defile themselves according to Hindu ideas by eating cow’s flesh. Some tribes, such as the Gonds, Binjhwārs and Kawars, counted amongst them the owners of large estates or even kingdoms, and consequently had many Hindu cultivators for their subjects. And, as the Hindus themselves say, they could not regard the Gonds as impure when they had a Gond king. Nevertheless, the Gond labourers in Hindu villages in the plains are more despised than the Gonds who live in their own villages in the hill country. And the conversion of the tribes as a whole to Hinduism goes steadily forward. At each census the question arises which of them should be classed as Hindus, and which as Animists or worshippers of their own tribal gods, and though the classification is necessarily very arbitrary, the process can be clearly observed. Thus the Andhs, Kolis, Rautias and Halbas are now all Hindus, and the same remark applies to the Kols, Bhīls and Korkus in several Districts. By strict abstention from beef, the adoption of Hindu rites, and to some extent of child-marriage, they get admission to the third group of castes from whom a Brāhman cannot take water. It will be desirable here to digress from the main argument by noticing briefly the origin and affinities of the principal forest tribes of the Central Provinces.

      35. The Kolarians and Dravidians

      These tribes are divided into two families, the Munda or Kolarian, named after the Kol tribe, and the Dravidian, of which the former are generally held to be the older and more primitive. The word Kol is probably the Santāli hār, a man. “This word is used under various forms, such as hār, hāra, ho and koro by most Munda tribes in order to denote themselves. The change of r to l is familiar and presents no difficulty.”70 The word is also found in the alternative name Ho for the Kol tribe, and in the names of the cognate Korwa and Korku tribes. СКАЧАТЬ