The Brahman caste has ten main territorial divisions, forming two
groups, the Panch-Gaur or five northern, and the Panch-Dravida or five
southern. The boundary line between the two groups is supposed to
be the Nerbudda River, which is also the boundary between Hindustan
and the Deccan. But the Gujarati Brahmans belong to the southern
group, though Gujarat is north of the Nerbudda. The five northern
divisions are:
(_a_) _Saraswat._--These belong to the Punjab and are named after
the Saraswati river of the classical period, on whose banks they are
supposed to have lived.
(_b_) _Gaur._--The home of these is the country round Delhi, but
they say that the name is from the old Gaur or Lakhnauti kingdom
of Bengal. If this is correct, it is difficult to understand how
they came from Bengal to Delhi contrary to the usual tendency of
migration. General Cunningham has suggested that Gaura was also the
name of the modern Gonda District, and it is possible that the term was
once used for a considerable tract in northern India as well as Bengal,
since it has come to be applied to all the northern Brahmans. [405]
(_c_) _Kankubja or Kanaujia._--These are named after the old town of
Kanauj on the Ganges near Cawnpore, once the capital of India. The
Kanaujia are the most important of the northern groups and extend from
the west of Oudh to beyond Benares and into the northern Districts of
the Central Provinces. Here they are subdivided into four principal
groups--the Kanaujia, Jijhotia, Sarwaria and Sanadhya, which are
treated in annexed subordinate articles.
(_d_) _Maithil._--They take their name from Mithila, the old term
for Bihar or Tirhut, and belong to this tract.
(_e_) _Utkal._--These are the Brahmans of Orissa.
The five groups of the Panch-Dravida are as follows:
(_a_) _Maharashtra._--These belong to the Maratha country or
Bombay. They are subdivided into three main territorial groups--the
Deshasth, or those of the home country, that is the Poona tract above
the Western Ghats; the Konkonasth, who belong to the Bombay Konkan
or littoral; and the Karhara, named after a place in the Satara
District. [406]
(_b_) _Tailanga or Andhra._--The Brahmans of the Telugu country,
Hyderabad and the northern part of Madras. This territory was known
as Andhra and governed by an important dynasty of the same name in
early times.
(_c_) _Dravida._--The Brahmans of the Tamil country or the south
of Madras.
(_d_) _Karnata._--The Brahmans of the Carnatic, or the Canarese
country. The Canarese area comprises the Mysore State, and the British
Districts of Canara, Dharwar and Belgaum.
(_e_) _Gurjara._--The Brahmans of Gujarat, of whom two subcastes are
found in the Central Provinces. The first consists of the Khedawals,
named after Kheda, a village in Gujarat, who are a strictly orthodox
class holding a good position in the caste. And the second are the
Nagar Brahmans, who have been long settled in Nimar and the adjacent
tracts, and act as village priests and astrologers. Their social
status is somewhat lower.
There are, however, a large number of other subcastes, and the
tendency to fissure in a large caste, and to the formation of small
local groups which marry among themselves, is nowhere more strikingly
apparent than among the Brahmans. This is only natural, as they,
more than any other caste, attach importance to strict ceremonial
observance in matters of food and the daily ritual of prayer, and
any group which was suspected of backsliding in respect of these on
emigration to a new locality would be debarred from intermarriage
with the parent caste at home. An instance of this is found among the
Chhattisgarhi Brahmans, who have been long settled in this backward
tract and cut off from communication with northern India. They
are mainly of the Kanaujia division, but the Kanaujias of Oudh will
neither take food nor intermarry with them, and they now constitute a
separate subcaste of Kanaujias. Similarly the Malwi Brahmans, whose
home is in Malwa, whence they have spread to Hoshangabad and Betul,
are believed to have been originally a branch of the Gaur or Kanaujia,
but have now become a distinct subcaste, and have adopted many of the
customs of Maratha Brahmans. Mandla contains a colony of Sarwaria [407]
Brahmans who received grants of villages from the Gond kings and have
settled down there. They are now cultivators, and some have taken to
the plough, while they also permit widow-remarriage in all but the
name. They are naturally cut off from intercourse with the orthodox
Sarwarias and marry among themselves. The Harenia Brahmans of Saugor
are believed to have immigrated from Hariana some generations ago and
form a separate local group; and also the Laheria Brahmans of the same
District, who, like the Mandla Sarwarias, permit widows to marry. In
Hoshangabad there is a small subcaste of Bawisa or 'Twenty-two'
Brahmans, descended from twenty-two families from northern India,
who settled here and have since married among themselves. A similar
diversity of subcastes is found in other Provinces. The Brahmans of
Bengal are also mainly of the Kanaujia division, but they are divided
into several local subcastes, of which the principal are Rarhi and
Barendra, named after tracts in Bengal, and quite distinct from the
subdivisions of the Kanaujia group in the Central Provinces.