_Dhanuk._--A low caste of agriculturists found principally in the
Narsinghpur District, which contained three-fourths of the total
of nearly 7000 persons returned in 1911. The headquarters of the
caste are in the United Provinces, which contains more than a lakh
of Dhanuks. The name is derived from the Sanskrit _dhanuska_, an
archer, and the caste is an ancient one, its origin as given in
the Padma Purana, quoted by Sir Henry Elliot, being from a Chamar
father and a Chandal or sweeper mother. Another pedigree makes the
mother a Chamar and the father an outcaste Ahir. Such statements,
Sir H. Risley remarks in commenting on this genealogy, [525] serve
to indicate in a general way the social rank held by the Dhanuks at
the time when it was first thought necessary to enrol them among the
mixed castes. Dr. Buchanan [526] says that the Dhanuks were in former
times the militia of the country. He states that all the Dhanuks were
at one time probably slaves and many were recruited to fill up the
military ranks--a method of security which had long been prevalent
in Asia, the armies of the Parthians having been composed entirely
of slaves. A great many Dhanuks, at the time when Buchanan wrote,
were still slaves, but some annually procured their liberty by the
inability of their masters to maintain them and their unwillingness to
sell their fellow-creatures. It may be concluded, therefore, that the
Dhanuks were a body of servile soldiery, recruited as was often the
case from the subject Dravidian tribes; following the all-powerful
tendency of Hindu society they became a caste, and owing to the
comparatively respectable nature of their occupation obtained a rise
in social position from the outcaste status of the subject Dravidians
to the somewhat higher group of castes who were not unclean but from
whom a Brahman would not accept water. They did not advance so far
as the Khandaits, another caste formed from military service, who
were also, Sir H. Risley shows, originally recruited from a subject
tribe, probably because the position of the Dhanuks was always more
subordinate and no appreciable number of them came to be officers
or leaders. The very debased origin of the caste already mentioned
as given in the Padma Purana may be supposed as in other cases to be
an attempt on the part of the priestly chronicler to repress what he
considered to be unfounded claims to a rise in rank. But the Dhanuks,
not less than the other soldier castes, have advanced a pretension
to be Kshatriyas, those of Narsinghpur sometimes calling themselves
Dhankarai Rajputs, though this claim is of course in their case
a pure absurdity. It is not necessary to suppose that the Dhanuks
of the Central Provinces are the lineal descendants of the caste
whose genealogy is given in the Puranas; they may be a much more
recent offshoot from a main caste, formed in a precisely similar
manner from military service. [527] Mr. Crooke [528] surmises that
they belonged to the large impure caste of Basors or basket-makers,
who took to bow-making and thence to archery; and some connection
is traceable between the Dhanuks and Basors in Narsinghpur. Such a
separation must probably have occurred in comparatively recent times,
inasmuch as some recollection of it still remains. The fact that
Lodhis are the only caste besides Brahmans from whom the Dhanuks of
Narsinghpur will take food cooked without water may indicate that
they formed the militia of Lodhi chieftains in the Nerbudda valley,
a hypothesis which is highly probable on general grounds.