THE
TRIBES AND CASTES
OF THE
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES AND OUDH.
BY
W. CROOKE, B.A.,
BENGAL CIVIL SERVICE.
IN FOUR VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
CALCUTTA:
OFFICE OF THE SUPERINTENDENT OF GOVERNMENT PRINTING, INDIA.
1896.
PREFACE.
Much has been already written about the Tribes and Castes of the
North-Western Provinces and Oudh. The long series of such books begins
with the famous “Supplementary Glossary” of Sir H. M. Elliot. Then
comes Mr. Sherring’s valuable account of the people, principally based
on enquiries in Benares. For Oudh we have Sir C. A. Elliott’s
“Chronicles of Unâo,” Mr. Benett’s “Clans of Râê Bareli,” and Mr.
Carnegy’s “Notes.” Besides these there is a large body of literature on
the subject, such as Mr. Growse’s “Mathura,” Mr. Atkinson’s Chapters in
the “Himalayan Gazetteer,” General Cunningham’s “Archæological
Reports,” General Sleeman’s “Rambles and Recollections” and “Journey in
Oudh,” Mr. Greeven’s researches about sweepers, and a great mass of
miscellaneous memoirs included in the Settlement Reports, District
Gazetteers, “Indian Antiquary,” “Calcutta Review,” and other periodical
literature. The notes in the present book will show how much I am
indebted to the researches of my predecessors in the same line of
enquiry.
It is again fortunate that a long series of valuable books has been
devoted to the races on the boundaries of these Provinces; for it must
be remembered that these frontiers are purely geographical and not
ethnical. Thus we have a large mass of information collected by Mr.
Risley, Mr. O’Donnell and Dr. Buchanan Hamilton for Behâr, by Colonel
Dalton for Chota Nâgpur, by Mr. Hislop for the Central Indian tribes,
by Colonel Tod and Sir J. Malcolm for Râjputâna, and by Mr. Ibbetson
and Mr. Maclagan for the Panjab. Of all these authorities it will be
seen that I have made ample use.
This book so far differs from any previous account of the races of
these Provinces that it attempts to supply some more detailed
information regarding their manners, customs, marriage institutions and
religion. It is perhaps well that this task should be essayed now,
however imperfect and unsatisfactory the present venture may be. There
can be little doubt that caste is undergoing at present a process of
transition. The Dravidian races who skirt the great Ganges-Jumna
valleys are becoming rapidly Brâhmanized, and will probably in a few
years have lost much of what is peculiar to them and interesting to the
Ethnologist and student of the development of popular religion. Even
now our Kols, Kharwârs Cheros and Mânjhis are much less primitive
people than their brethren, whose manners and institutions have been
analysed by Colonel Dalton, Mr. Risley and Mr. Hislop. The improvement
of communications, the facility for visits to the sacred shrines of
Hinduism, the Brâhmanical propaganda preached by those most active of
all missionaries—the Panda and the Purohit, the Jogi and the
Sannyâsi—will before long obliterate much of the primitive ideas which
they still retain though in a modified form. A long service spent in
Mirzapur, the last refuge of the Dravidian races, has, I trust, enabled
me to supply some new facts regarding these interesting people.
For the races of the plains I have based my account of them on a series
of notes collected throughout the Provinces by a number of independent
enquirers, both official and non-official, whose services were made
available by the District Officers. The work could not have been even
attempted without much cordial co-operation on the part of District
Officers and a large body of native gentlemen to whose generosity in
devoting some of their scanty leisure to this investigation it is
impossible for me to do full justice. At the opening of each article I
have been careful to name the gentlemen to whose aid I am indebted.
There are some special causes which make an enquiry of this kind a work
of more than usual difficulty. There is, first, the reticence of the
lower castes which must be overcome before they can be induced to yield
the secrets of their tribal organisation and religious life. To the
average rustic the advent of a stranger, note-book in hand, who
interrogates them on such subjects, suggests a possibility that he may
have some ulterior objects in connection with a coming Revenue
Settlement or Income Tax assessment. It requires no ordinary amount of
tact and temper to overcome this barrier; and there is besides among
the lower castes an uneasy suspicion that rites and ritual, which in
the eyes of the average Brâhman are boorish and a survival of a
degraded savagery, are a matter to be ashamed of and concealed. Mr.
Greeven’s experiences in connection with the sweepers of the Eastern
Districts, whose sociology he has so carefully explored, are an ample
proof of this. In connection with this there is another source of
difficulty in the movement which has sprung up among many castes
towards claiming a higher status than is usually accorded to them. The
Shâstras and other religious literature of the Brâhmans have in recent
years been ransacked by a number of castes whose so-called Aryan origin
is more than doubtful to support a claim to kindred with races whose
descent is universally admitted. Lastly, as the local patois varies
from district to district, the manners and customs of the various
castes vary from one end of the Province to the other. Hence care has
been taken to guard as far as possible from general statements. A
custom or a mode of worship prevailing among a caste in Sahâranpur or
Ballia may or may not extend as far as Aligarh on one side or Allahâbâd
on the other. The exact habitat, so to speak, of these usages or
beliefs can be worked out only by the associated enquiries of a much
larger number of investigators. The Subject Index which has been
prepared may, it is hoped, be useful from this point of view.
I have specially to acknowledge the valuable work done by
Surgeon-Captain H. E. Drake-Brockman in connection with Anthropometry,
the results of which are given in the Introduction, where I have
endeavoured to sum up in a general way some of the more obvious facts
in connection with the origin of caste and some other sociological
problems.
No one can undertake with a light heart such an enquiry as this
connected with a population aggregating nearly forty-eight millions of
souls; and, at the outset had I been fully aware of the difficulty of
such a survey, I should have hesitated to undertake a work which has
been carried out all through side by side with the multifarious duties
of a District Officer. I shall be quite satisfied if the following
pages supply a useful basis for further investigation; and, as the most
satisfactory recognition of my work, I can only ask all interested in
the matter to favour me with any corrections and criticisms which may
tend to a greater degree of completeness and accuracy. I have avoided,
as far as possible, the discussion of topics which are likely only to
cause pain to sections of the people whose pretensions to a higher rank
or origin are, to say the least, disputed.
The illustrations are reproductions of photographs taken at Mirzapur by
Sergeant Wallace, R. E., of the Rurki College.
INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER I.
THE ORIGIN OF CASTE.
There are few questions within the whole sphere of Indian sociology
which present more difficulty than those connected with the origin of
caste. If the native of the country has any idea whatever on the
subject, it is sufficient for him to refer to a mass of texts which
are, it is hardly necessary to say, of little or no scientific value.
They merely record the views of various priestly schools from whom
there is strong reason to believe that the system, as we now observe
it, originated. It is on lines quite different from these that any real
enquiry into the subject must proceed. It may be well here to give at
starting the religious form which the tradition has assumed.
[Caste in the Veda.] 2. To begin with the Veda. In the hymns, the most
ancient portion of it, we find the famous verse,—“When they divided
man, how many did they make him? What was his mouth? What his arms?
What are called his thighs and feet? The Brâhmana was his mouth, the
Râjanya was made his arms, the Vaisya became his thighs, the Sûdra was
born from his feet.” [1] “European critics,” says Professor Max Müller,
[2] “are able to show that even this verse is of later origin than the
great mass of the hymns, and that it contains modern words, such as
Sûdra and Râjanya, which are not found again in the other hymns of the
Rig Veda. Yet it belongs to the ancient collection of the Vedic hymns,
and if it contained anything in support of caste, as it is now
understood, the Brâhmans would be right in saying that caste formed
part of their religion and was sanctioned by their sacred writings.”
But he goes on to say:—“If, then, with all the documents before us, we
ask the question,—Does caste, as we find it in Manu and at the present
day, form part of the most ancient religious teaching of the Vedas? We
can answer with a decided ‘No.’ There is no authority whatever in the
hymns of the Veda for the complicated system of castes; no authority
for the offensive privileges claimed by the Brâhmans; no authority for
the degraded position of the Sûdras. There is no law to prohibit the
different classes of the people from living together, from eating and
drinking together; no law to prohibit the marriage of people belonging
to different castes: no law to brand the offspring of such marriages
with an indelible stigma.” [3]
3. We do read that men are said to be distinguished into five sorts or
classes, or literally five men or beings (Pancha Ksitayah). “The
commentator explains this to mean the four castes—Brâhman, Kshatriya,
Vaisya and Sûdra and the barbarous or Nishâda. But Sâyana, of course,
expresses the received impressions of his own age. We do not meet with
the denomination Kshatriya or Sûdra in any text of the first book, nor
with that of Vaisya, for vis, which does occur, is a synonym of man in
general. Brâhman is met with, but in what sense is questionable.” [4]
4. We do, of course, in the Veda meet with various trades and
handicrafts which had even in this early age become differentiated.
Thus in the ninth book of the Rig Veda we have the famous passage which
has been thus translated:—
“How various are the views which different men inspire!
How various are the ends which men of different craft desire!
The leech a patient seeks; the smith looks out for something cracked.
The priest seeks devotees from whom he may his fee extract.
With feathers, metal and the like, and sticks decayed and old,
The workman manufactures wares to coin the rich man’s gold.
A poet I, my sire a leech, and corn my mother grinds:
On gain intent we each pursue our trades of different kinds.” [5]
5. The present system of castes cannot, in fact, be dated before the
time of Manu’s “Institutes” which “was originally a local code,
embodying rules and precepts, perhaps by different authors, some of
whom may have lived in the 5th Century B.C., others in the 2nd Century
B.C., and others even later. It was at first current among a particular
tribe of Brâhmans, called Mânavas, who probably occupied part of the
North-Western regions between the rivers Sâraswati and Drishadvati, but
afterwards became generally adopted.” [6]
6. As to the effect of these laws it may be well again to quote
Professor Max Müller. [7] “After the victorious return of the Brâhmans
the old laws of caste were re-enacted more vigorously than ever, and
the Brâhmans became again what they had been before the rise of
Buddhism, the terrestrial gods of India. A change, however, had come
over the system of caste. Though the laws of Manu still spoke of four
castes—of Brâhmans, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas and Sûdras—the social confusion
during the long reign of Buddhism had left but one broad distinction:
on the one hand the pure caste of the Brâhmans: on the other the mixed
and impure castes of the people. In many places the pure castes of the
Kshatriyas and Vaisyas had become extinct, and those who could not
prove their Brâhmanic descent were all classed together as Sûdras. At
present we should look in vain for pure Kshatriyas or Vaisyas in India,
and the families which still claim these titles would find it difficult
to produce their pedigree, nay, there are few who could lay claim to
the pure blood of the Sûdra. Low as the Sûdra stood in the system of
Manu, he stood higher than most of the mixed castes, the Varnasankaras.
The son of a Sûdra by a Sûdra woman is purer than the son of a Sûdra by
a woman of the highest caste (Manu, X., 30). Manu calls the Chandâla
one of the lowest outcastes, because he is the son of a Sûdra father
and a Brâhmanic mother. He evidently considered the mésalliance of a
woman more degrading than that of a man. For the son of a Brâhman
father and a Sûdra mother may in the seventh generation raise his
father to the highest caste (Manu, X., 64), while the son of a Sûdra
father and a Brâhman mother belongs for ever to the Chandâlas.”
7. And the same writer goes on to say:—
“Manu represents, indeed, all the castes of Hindu society, and their
number is considerable, as the result of mixed marriages between the
four original castes. According to him the four primitive castes by
intermarrying in every possible way gave rise to sixteen mixed castes,
which by continuing their inter-marriages produced the long list of the
mixed castes. It is extremely doubtful, however, whether Manu meant to
say that at all times the offspring of a mixed marriage had to enter a
lower caste. He could not possibly maintain that the sons of a Brâhman
father and a Vaisya mother would always be a physician or Vaidya, this
being the name given by Manu to the offspring of these two castes. At
present the offspring of a Sûdra father and a Brâhman mother would find
no admission in any respectable caste. Their marriage would not be
considered marriage at all. The only rational explanation of Manu’s
words seems to be that originally the Vaidyas or physicians sprang from
the union of a Brâhman father and a Vaisya mother, though this, too, is
of course nothing but a fanciful theory. If we look more carefully we
shall find that most of these mixed castes are in reality the
professions, trades and guilds of a half-civilised society. They did
not wait for mixed marriages before they came into existence.
Professions, trades and handicrafts had grown up without any reference
to caste in the ethnological or political sense of the word. Some of
their names were derived from towns and countries where certain
professions were held in particular estimation. Servants who waited on
ladies were called Vaidehas, because they came from Videha, the Athens
of India, just as the French call the “porteur d’eau” a “Savoyard.” To
maintain that every member of the caste of the Vaidehas, in fact, every
lady’s maid, had to be begotten through the marriage of a Vaisya and a
Brâhmani, is simply absurd. In other cases the names of Manu’s castes
were derived from their occupations. The caste of musicians, for
instance, were called Venas from vîna, the lyre. Now, it was evidently
Manu’s object to bring these professional corporations in connection
with the old system of castes, assigning to each, according to its
higher or lower position, a more or less pure descent from the original
castes. The Vaidyas, for instance, or the physicians, evidently a
respectable corporation, were represented as the offspring of a Brâhman
father and a Vaisya mother, while the guild of the fishermen, or
Nishâdas, were put down as the descendants of a Brâhman father and a
Sûdra mother. Manu could hardly mean to say that every son of a Vaisya
father and Kshatriya mother was obliged to become a commercial
traveller, or to enter the caste of the Magadhas. How could that caste
have been supplied after the extinction in many places of the Kshatriya
and Vaisya castes? But having to assign to the Magadhas a certain
social position, Manu recognised them as the descendants of the second
and third castes, in the same way as the Herald’s office would settle
the number of quarters of an earl or a baron.”
8. Before leaving the consideration of caste as found in Manu’s
“Institutes,” it may be noted that we find side by side two discrepant
views as to the connubium of the orders. According to the milder, and
apparently the older view, caste is determined by descent from the
father, and a Dvija or twice-born man may take a wife from among
Brâhmans, Kshatriyas or Vaisyas. With a Sûdra woman alone he could not
intermarry. By the other view a man was advised to marry a virgin of
his own caste as his first wife, and after that he may proceed
according to the rank of the castes. There is some reason to believe
that under this rule he might take even a Sûdra woman as a second wife.
[8] This, it is needless to say, represents a very different state of
things from that which prevails under the modern rigid law of caste
endogamy.
[Caste subsequent to Manu.] 9. It was caste in or about the stage of
its development exhibited in the “Institutes” of Manu which
Megasthenes, first of all the barbarians, observed in his embassy to
the court of Sandrocottus or Chandragupta (306–298 B.C.). He found
seven, not four, castes—the philosophers, husbandmen, shepherds,
artizans, soldiers, inspectors and counsellors of the king. The
philosophers were the Brâhmans, and the traveller indicates the
prescribed stages of the Brâhmanical life. He distinguishes the
Brachmanes from the Sarmanai, the latter of whom are supposed to
represent the Buddhist Sramanas or monks, while the inspectors were the
Buddhist supervisors of morals, afterwards referred to in the sixth
edict of Asoka.
10. This hasty survey of the historical development of caste
sufficiently disposes of the popular theory that caste is a permanent
institution, transmitted unchanged from the dawn of Hindu history and
myth.
[Caste not peculiar to Hinduism.] 11. Another and even graver
misconception is to suppose that caste is peculiar to Hinduism and
connected in some peculiarly intimate way with the Hindu faith. It is
needless to say that caste as an institution is not confined to Indian
soil. The Zendavesta shows that the early Persian community was divided
into three castes or tribes, of which one lived by hunting, a second by
grazing flocks, and the third by agriculture. “In this respect also,”
says Herodotus, [9] “the Lacedaemonians resemble the Egyptians: their
heralds, musicians and cooks succeed to their fathers’ professions: so
that a musician is son to a musician, a cook, of a cook, and a herald,
of a herald: nor do others, on account of the clearness of their voice,
apply themselves to this profession and exclude others; but they
continue to practise it after their fathers.” This occupational or
hereditary guild system of caste, which, as will be seen, was the most
important factor in the development of this institution, prevailed and
still prevails, as a matter of fact, all the world over. Nor is caste
confined to votaries of the Hindu faith. On the contrary it is in its
nature much more social than religious. It has been one of the most
perplexing problems which beset the Christian Missionary to reconcile
the restrictions of caste with the perfect liberty of Christianity.
Islâm has boldly solved the difficulty by recognising and adopting
caste in its entirety. Not only does the converted Râjput, Gûjar or Jât
remain a member of his original sept or section; but he preserves most
of those restrictions on social intercourse, intermarriage and the
like, which make up the peasant’s conception of caste. As Mr. Ibbetson
remarks,—“Almost the only difference which the convert makes is to
shave his scalplock and the upper edge of his moustache, to repeat the
Muhammadan creed in a mosque, and to add the Muhammadan to the Hindu
marriage ceremony. As far as religion goes he worships Khuda instead of
Parameswar, keeps up his service in honor of Bhawâni, and regularly
makes the due oblation for the repose of the sainted dead.” On the
other hand, as will be seen everywhere in the course of the present
survey, the members of orthodox Hindu castes worship the quintette of
the Pânch Pîr, or famous local saints like Miyân or Mîrân Sâhib, Shâh
Madâr or Sakhi Sarwar.
[Caste not immutable.] 12. By another popular theory caste is eternal
and immutable. The ordinary Hindu will say that it has always existed,
that it is based on what he calls the Shâstras, a vague body of
religious literature of which he knows little more than the name. We
have already shown that the vague reference to caste in the Vedas
discloses the institution at a very different stage from what we see it
in the “Institutes” of Manu or at the present day. Even in an age so
comparatively recent as that of Manu, the rules of connubium and social
life were very different from those which prevail at present. The
modern Vaishnava, for instance, would shudder at the comparatively
liberal permission given in these days for the use of meat. [10] But in
addition to this we meet all through the range of Hindu history and
myth with numerous illustrations of the mutability of caste. Thus in
the Mahâbhârata Bhîma is married by his brother Yudhishthira to the
Asura woman Hidimbi, and the marriage rites are regularly performed:
while Draupadi, a Kshatriya girl, accepts as her husband at the
Swayamvara Arjuna who pretends to be a Brâhman. Viswamitra, a Kshatriya
by birth, compelled Brahma by the force of his austerities to admit him
to the Brâhmanical order, so that he might be on a level with
Vasishtha, with whom he had quarrelled. [11] It is even more
significant to learn from the Mahâbhârata [12] that all castes become
Brâhmans when they have crossed the Gomati on a visit to the hermitage
of Vasishtha, and we are told that the country of the five rivers is
contemptible because there a Bahîka or Panjâbi “born a Brâhman becomes
afterwards a Kshatriya, a Vaisya or a Sûdra, and eventually a barber.”
It would be easy to repeat examples of this kind almost indefinitely.
[13]
[Modern development of caste.] 13. As regards the castes of the present
day the case is similar. Instead of castes being a clearly-defined
entity, an association complete in themselves, a trade guild the doors
of which are rigidly barred against the admission of strangers, they
are in a constant state of flux and flow. New endogamous groups are
constantly being created, the process of fission is ever in operation,
and what is more important still the novus homo, like his brethren all
the world over, is constantly endeavouring to force his way into a
higher grade and acquire the privileges of the “twice-born.” This
process is specially observable among the Gonds and other Dravidian
races of the great hill country of Central India. Thus the Râj Gonds
who “in appearance obstinately retain the Turanian type, in aspiration
are Hindus of the Hindus, wearing the sacred cord and carrying
ceremonial refinements to the highest pitch of parvenu purism. Mr.
Hislop says that not content with purifying themselves, their houses,
and their food, they must even sprinkle their faggots with water before
using them for cooking. With all this exterior coating of the
fashionable faith they seem, however, to retain an ineradicable taint
of the old mountain superstitions. Some of these outwardly Brâhmanised
chiefs still try to pacify the gods of their fathers for their apparent
desertion of them by worshipping them in secret once every four or five
years and by placing cow’s flesh to their lips, wrapped in a cloth, so
as not to break too openly with the reigning Hindu divinities.” [14]
And Captain Forsyth writes:—“In Gondwâna numerous chiefs claim either a
pure descent from Râjput houses, or more frequently admit their remote
origin to have sprung from a union between some Râjput adventurer of
noble blood and one of the daughters of the aborigines. Few of them are
admitted to be pure Râjputs by the blue blooded chiefs of Rajasthân:
but all have their bards and genealogies.” [15]
14. The same process of elevation of the aboriginal races has been
going on for centuries throughout Northern India. To quote Mr. Nesfield
[16]:—“Local traditions in Oudh and the North-Western Provinces abound
in tales of Brâhmans being manufactured out of low caste men by Râjas
when they could not find a sufficient number of hereditary Brâhmans to
attend some sacrifice or feast. For example, the Kunda Brâhmans of
Partâbgarh are said to have been manufactured by Râja Mânik Chand,
because he was not able to collect the quorum of one hundred and
twenty-five thousand Brâhmans to whom he had vowed to make a feast: in
this way an Ahîr, a Kurmi or a Bhât found himself dubbed a Brâhman and
invested with the sacred thread, and their descendants are Brâhmans to
this day. [17] A similar tale is told of Tirgunait Brâhmans and Pâthaks
of Amtara: [18] of the Pândê Parwârs in the Hardoi District: of the
large clan called Sawalakhiyas in the Gorakhpur and Basti Districts,
who have nevertheless assumed the high-sounding titles of Dûbê,
Upâdhya, Tiwâri, Misra, Dikshit, Pândê, Awasthi and Pâthak. [19] Only
about a century-and-a-half ago a Luniya, or man of the salt-making
class, which ranks decidedly low, was made a Brâhman by Râja Bhagwant
Râê of Asothar, and this man is the ancestor of the Misra Brâhmans of
Aijhi.” [20]
[Brâhmans an occupational group.] 15. In fact there can be little doubt
that the Brâhmans, so far from forming a homogeneous group, have been
made up of very diverse elements, and this strongly confirms the
occupational theory of their origin, to which reference will be made
later on. There are grades of so-called Brâhmans which in appearance
and function present little analogy to the pure bred Pandit of Benares
or Mathura. Thus the Ojha Brâhman is the direct successor of the
Dravidian Baiga, and of similar menial origin are probably many of
those Brâhmans who live by begging, fortune-telling and the like, such
as the Dakaut, Joshi, Barua or Husaini, and the Mahâbrâhman or funeral
priest whose functions render him an abomination to all orthodox
Hindus. The Bhuînhârs and Tagas, if they are really of genuine
Brâhmanical descent, have in the same way differentiated themselves by
function, and having abandoned priestly duties are agriculturists and
landowners pure and simple. This separation of function must have
prevailed from very early times, because it was specially laid down
that each caste may adopt the occupation of another in case of
distress, and thus a Brâhman may do the work of a Kshatriya or Vaisya,
but not of a Sûdra. [21]
[Occupational origin of the Râjputs.] 16. Still less homogeneous is the
mass of septs grouped under the name of Kshatriyas or Râjputs. We have
already seen how the Dravidian Gond races have been in quite recent
times enrolled as Râjputs. The Râja of Singrauli, in Mirzapur, nearly a
pure Kharwâr, has within the last generation or two come to rank as a
Benbansi Chhatri. Colonel Sleeman gives the case of an Oudh Pâsi, who
within the memory of man became a Râjput by giving his daughter to a
man of the Puâr sept. [22] The names of many septs again, such as the
Baghel, Ahban, Kalhans, and Nâgbansi suggest a totemistic origin which
would bring them in line with the Chandrabansi, who are promoted
Dravidian Cheros and other similar septs of undoubtedly aboriginal
race. Mr. Carnegy went perhaps too far in assuming a similar
development of many of the Oudh septs; but the traditions of many of
these, which will be found in the special articles dealing with them,
such as the Bhâlê Sultân, Bisen, Chandel, Gaur, Kânhpuriya and
Bandhalgoti, afford significant evidence that their claims to blue
blood must be accepted with caution. The same inference arises from the
fact, of which evidence is given elsewhere, of the impossibility of
drawing the line between the Jât and Râjput of the Western Districts,
and the Bhuînhâr and Chhatri of the East: in fact many of the septs of
the latter claim indifferently to belong to both races, and some, like
the Bisen, have an admitted Kurmi branch.
17. Among the Râjputs, again, this process of assimilation of lower
races has been undoubtedly encouraged by the prevalence of female
infanticide which renders it impossible for the poorer members of the
race to obtain legitimately born brides. This has naturally led to
cohabitation with women of inferior castes and the creation of definite
classes of illegitimate Râjputs, such as the Gaurua of the Central and
the degraded Chauhâns of the Upper Ganges-Jumna Duâb. A recent report
on the outbreak of dacoity in the Agra and Rohilkhand Divisions shows
that many of the perpetrators of these outrages were half-bred Râjputs,
whose mothers were drawn from criminal or nomadic tribes like the Nat,
Beriya, Sânsiya and the like, and the association of Râjput youths with
women of this class has brought them into the companionship of their
gypsy male relatives and driven them into a life of crime.
18. It is needless to say that the records of our courts swarm with
examples of the association of men of the Râjput class with women of
the lower races, and in this stratum of village society there is not
even a pretence of moral continence. The effect of this state of things
is obvious and requires no further illustration.
[The occupational origin of the Vaisyas.] 19. The same remarks largely
apply to the so-called modern representatives of the Vaisya class, the
aggregate of tribes now grouped under the general name of Banya. Some
of these, such as the Agarwâlas and Oswâls, are in appearance perhaps
among the best bred races of Northern India. Others are obviously
occupational groups recruited from the lower races which have grouped
themselves under the generic title of Banya or Mahâjan. The Bohra
asserts Brâhmanical origin. Others again in name and function are in
all probability connected with various classes of artizans—the
Kasarwâni and Kasaundhan with the Kasera, the Lohiya with the Lohâr,
and the same inference may perhaps be drawn from the grades of Dasa and
Bîsa, “the tens” and “the twenties,” which appear among the Agarwâlas,
and can hardly indicate anything but a gradation in purity of descent.
[The Sûdra group.] 20. As to the congeries of castes known to the early
Hindus as Sûdras we find all the varying grades of social
respectability from industrious artisans and cultivators down to
vagrants like the Sânsya or Gandhîla and scavengers like the Dom or
Bhangi. The word Sûdra has now no determinate meaning; it is merely
used as a convenient term of abuse to designate persons who are, or are
assumed to be, of degraded caste. It is probably a term derived from
the languages of one of the inferior races. [23] As has been already
remarked, it is a comparatively modern word and appears only once in
the Rig Veda. It may have been a synonym for Dasyu, “those of the black
skin,” who represented the contrast between the aborigines and the
conquering Aryans. The stress that is laid in the old hymns on the
breadth of their noses would perhaps go to identify them with the
broad-nosed Dravidians. But the accounts of their forts and cities show
that when they came into contact with the writers of the Vedic hymns
they had already attained a considerable degree of culture.
[Anthropometry the only safe basis of enquiry.] 21. The only safe
criterion of the relation of these races to the so-called “twice-born”
tribes can be gained from the evidence of anthropometry, which must be
left for another chapter.
[Summary of theories of origin of caste.] 22. Meanwhile to sum up the
results of these remarks—
(a) The Vedas, as we possess them, give no clear indication of any
form of caste, except that of the occupational or trade guild
type.
(b) The first trace of modern caste is found in the “Institutes” of
Manu: but here the rules of food, connubium and intercourse
between the various castes are very different from what we find
at present.
(c) Caste so far from being eternal and changeless is constantly
subject to modification, and this has been the case through the
whole range of Hindu myth and history.
(d) Caste is not an institution peculiar to Indian soil; but in its
occupational form at least is widely prevalent elsewhere.
(e) Caste is in its nature rather a matter of sociology than of
religion.
(f) The primitive so-called division of the people into Brâhmans,
Kshatriyas, Vaisyas and Sûdras does not agree with existing
facts, and these terms do not now denote definite ethnological
groups.
(g) The only trustworthy basis for the ethnological survey of Upper
India must be based on anthropometry.