_Rajwar._ [583]--A low cultivating caste of Bihar and Chota Nagpur,
who are probably an offshoot of the Bhuiyas. In 1911 a total of 25,000
Rajwars were returned in the Central Provinces, of whom 22,000 belong
to the Sarguja State recently transferred from Bengal. Another 2000
persons are shown in Bilaspur, but these are Mowars, an offshoot
of the Rajwars, who have taken to the profession of gardening and
have changed their name. They probably rank a little higher than
the bulk of the Rajwars. "Traditionally," Colonel Dalton states,
"the Rajwars appear to connect themselves with the Bhuiyas; but this
is only in Bihar. The Rajwars in Sarguja and the adjoining States
are peaceably disposed cultivators, who declare themselves to be
fallen Kshatriyas; they do not, however, conform to Hindu customs,
and they are skilled in a dance called Chailo, which I believe to be
of Dravidian origin. The Rajwars of Bengal admit that they are the
descendants of mixed unions between Kurmis and Kols. They are looked
upon as very impure by the Hindus, who will not take water from their
hands." The Rajwars of Bihar told Buchanan that their ancestor was
a certain Rishi, who had two sons. From the elder were descended
the Rajwars, who became soldiers and obtained their noble title;
and from the younger the Musahars, who were so called from their
practice of eating rats, which the Rajwars rejected. The Musahars,
as shown by Sir H. Risley, are probably Bhuiyas degraded to servitude
in Hindu villages, and this story confirms the Bhuiya origin of the
Rajwars. In the Central Provinces the Bhuiyas have a subcaste called
Rajwar, which further supports this hypothesis, and in the absence of
evidence to the contrary it is reasonable to suppose that the Rajwars
are an offshoot of the Bhuiyas, as they themselves say, in Bihar. The
substitution of Kols for Bhuiyas in Bengal need not cause much concern
in view of the great admixture of blood and confused nomenclature
of all the Chota Nagpur tribes. In Bengal, where the Bhuiyas have
settled in Hindu villages, and according to the usual lot of the
forest tribes who entered the Hindu system have been degraded into
the servile and impure caste of Musahars, the Rajwars have shared
their fate, and are also looked upon as impure. But in Chota Nagpur
the Bhuiyas have their own villages and live apart from the Hindus,
and here the Rajwars, like the landholding branches of other forest
tribes, claim to be an inferior class of Rajputs.
In Sarguja the caste have largely adopted Hindu customs. They abstain
from liquor, employ low-class Brahmans as priests, and worship the
Hindu deities. When a man wishes to arrange a match for his son he
takes a basket of wheat-cakes and proceeding to the house of the girl's
father sets them down outside. If the match is acceptable the girl's
mother comes and takes the cakes into the house and the betrothal
is then considered to be ratified. At the wedding the bridegroom
smears vermilion seven times on the parting of the bride's hair,
and the bride's younger sister then wipes a little of it off with
the end of the cloth. For this service she is paid a rupee by the
bridegroom. Divorce and the remarriage of widows are permitted. After
the birth of a child the mother is given neither food nor water for
two whole days; on the third day she gets only boiled water to drink
and on the fourth day receives some food. The period of impurity
after a birth extends to twelve days. When the navel-string drops
it is carefully put away until the next Dasahra, together with the
child's hair, which is cut on the sixth day. On the Dasahra festival
all the women of the village take them to a tank, where a lotus plant
is worshipped and anointed with oil and vermilion, and the hair and
navel-string are then buried at its roots. The dead are burned, and the
more pious keep the bones with a view to carrying them to the Ganges
or some other sacred river. Pending this, the bones are deposited in
the cow-house, and a lamp is kept burning in it every night so long
as they are there. The Rajwars believe that every man has a soul or
Pran, and they think that the soul leaves the body, not only at death,
but whenever he is asleep or becomes unconscious owing to injury or
illness. Dreams are the adventures of the soul while wandering over
the world apart from the body. They think it very unlucky for a man
to see his own reflection in water and carefully avoid doing so.