_Mana_. [174]--A Dravidian caste of cultivators and labourers
belonging to the Chanda District, from which they have spread to
Nagpur, Bhandara and Balaghat. In 1911 they numbered nearly 50,000
persons, of whom 34,000 belonged to Chanda. The origin of the caste is
obscure. In the _Chanda Settlement Report_ of 1869 Major Lucie Smith
wrote of them: "Tradition asserts that prior to the Gond conquest
the Manas reigned over the country, having their strongholds at
Surajgarh in Ahiri and at Manikgarh in the Manikgarh hills, now of
Hyderabad, and that after a troubled rule of two hundred years they
fell before the Gonds. In appearance they are of the Gond type, and
are strongly and stoutly made; while in character they are hardy,
industrious and truthful. Many warlike traditions still linger among
them, and doubtless in days gone by they did their duty as good
soldiers, but they have long since hung up sword and shield and now
rank among the best cultivators of rice in Chanda." Another local
tradition states that a line of Mana princes ruled at Wairagarh. The
names of three princes are remembered: Kurumpruhoda, the founder of
the line; Surjat Badwaik, who fortified Surjagarh; and Gahilu, who
built Manikgarh. As regards the name Manikgarh, it may be mentioned
that the tutelary deity of the Nagvansi kings of Bastar, who ruled
there before the accession of the present Raj-Gond dynasty in the
fourteenth century, was Manikya Devi, and it is possible that the
chiefs of Wairagarh were connected with the Bastar kings. Some of
the Manas say that they, as well as the Gowaris, are offshoots of
the Gond tribe; and a local saying to the effect that 'The Gond,
the Gowari and the Mana eat boiled juari or beans on leaf-plates'
shows that they are associated together in the popular mind. Hislop
states that the Ojhas, or soothsayers and minstrels of the Gonds,
have a subdivision of Mana Ojhas, who lay claim to special sanctity,
refusing to take food from any other caste. [175] The Gonds have a
subdivision called Mannewar, and as _war_ is only a Telugu suffix
for the plural, the proper name Manne closely resembles Mana. It is
shown in the article on the Parja tribe that the Parjas were a class
of Gonds or a tribe akin to them, who were dominant in Bastar prior
to the later immigration under the ancestors of the present Bastar
dynasty. And the most plausible hypothesis as to the past history of
the Manas is that they were also the rulers of some tracts of Chanda,
and were displaced like the Parjas by a Gond invasion from the south.
In Bhandara, where the Manas hold land, it is related that in former
times a gigantic kite lived on the hill of Ghurkundi, near Sakoli,
and devoured the crops of the surrounding country by whole fields at
a time. The king of Chanda proclaimed that whoever killed the kite
would be granted the adjoining lands. A Mana shot the kite with an
arrow and its remains were taken to Chanda in eight carts, and as his
reward he received the grant of a zamindari. In appearance the Manas,
or at least some of them, are rather fine men, nor do their complexion
and features show more noticeable traces of aboriginal descent than
those of the local Hindus. But their neighbours in Chanda and Bastar,
the Maria Gonds, are also taller and of a better physical type than
the average Dravidian, so that their physical appearance need not
militate against the above hypothesis. They retained their taste
for fighting until within quite recent times, and in Katol and other
towns below the Satpura hills, Manas were regularly enlisted as a town
guard for repelling the Pindari raids. Their descendants still retain
the ancestral matchlocks, and several of them make good use of these
as professional _shikaris_ or hunters. Many of them are employed as
servants by landowners and moneylenders for the collection of debts or
the protection of crops, and others are proprietors, cultivators and
labourers, while a few even lend money on their own account. Manas hold
three zamindari estates in Bhandara and a few villages in Chanda; here
they are considered to be good cultivators, but have the reputation
as a caste of being very miserly, and though possessed of plenty,
living only on the poorest and coarsest food. [176] The Mana women
are proverbial for the assistance which they render to their husbands
in the work of cultivation.
Owing to their general adoption of Maratha customs, the Manas are now
commonly regarded as a caste and not a forest tribe, and this view may
be accepted. They have two subcastes, the Badwaik Manas, or soldiers,
and the Khad Manas, who live in the plains and are considered to be of
impure descent. Badwaik or 'The Great Ones' is a titular term applied
to a person carrying arms, and assumed by certain Rajputs and also by
some of the lower castes. A third group of Manas are now amalgamated
with the Kunbis as a regular subdivision of that caste, though they
are regarded as somewhat lower than the others. They have also a
number of exogamous septs of the usual titular and totemistic types,
the few recognisable names being Marathi. It is worth noticing that
several pairs of these septs, as Jamare and Gazbe, Narnari and Chudri,
Wagh and Rawat, and others are prohibited from intermarriage. And this
may be a relic of some wider scheme of division of the type common
among the Australian aborigines. The social customs of the Manas are
the same as those of the other lower Maratha castes, as described in
the articles on Kunbi, Kohli and Mahar. A bride-price of Rs. 12-8 is
usually paid, and if the bridegroom's father has the money, he takes it
with him on going to arrange for the match. Only one married woman of
the bridegroom's family accompanies him to the wedding, and she throws
rice over him five times. Four days in the year are appointed for the
celebration of weddings, the festivals of Shivratri and of Akhatij, and
a day each in the months of Magh (January) and Phagun (February). This
rule, however, is not universal. Brahmans do not usually officiate at
their ceremonies, but they employ a Brahman to prepare the rice which
is thrown over the couples. Marriage within the sept is forbidden,
as well as the union of the children of two sisters. But the practice
of marrying a brother's daughter to a sister's son is a very favourite
one, being known as Mahunchar, and in this respect the Manas resemble
the Gonds. When a widow is to be remarried, she stops on the way by the
bank of a stream as she is proceeding to her new husband's house, and
here her clothes are taken off and buried by an exorcist with a view
to laying the first husband's spirit and preventing it from troubling
the new household. If a woman goes wrong with a man of another caste
she is not finally cast out, but if she has a child she must first
dispose of it to somebody else after it is weaned. She may then be
re-admitted into caste by having her hair shaved off and giving three
feasts; the first is prepared by the caste and eaten outside her house,
the second is prepared by her relatives and eaten within her house,
and at the third the caste reinstate her by partaking of food cooked
by herself. The dead are either buried or burnt; in the former case a
feast is given immediately after the burial and no further mourning
is observed; in the latter the period of mourning is three days. As
among the Gonds, the dead are laid with feet to the north. A woman
is impure for seven days after child-birth.
The Manas have Bhats or genealogists of their own caste, a separate
one being appointed for each sept. The Bhat of any sept can only accept
gifts from members of that sept, though he may take food from any one
of the caste. The Bhats are in the position of beggars, and the other
Manas will not take food from them. Every man must have a Bhat for
his family under penalty of being temporarily put out of caste. It
is said that the Bhats formerly had books showing the pedigrees of
the different families, but that once in a spirit of arrogance they
placed their shoes upon the books; and the other Manas, not brooking
this insolence, burnt the books. The gravity of such an act may be
realised when it is stated that if anybody even threatens to hit a
Mana with a shoe, the indignity put upon him is so great that he is
temporarily excluded from caste and penalised for readmission. Since
this incident the Bhats have to address the Manas as 'Brahma,' to show
their respect, the Mana replying 'Ram, Ram.' Their women wear short
loin-cloths, exposing part of the thigh, like the Gonds. They eat
pork and drink liquor, but will take cooked food only from Brahmans.