==============+========
District. | Number.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~
Dehra Dûn | 41
Sahâranpur | 577
Muzaffarnagar | 1,072
Meerut | 2,016
Bulandshahr | 1,945
Aligarh | 512
Mathura | 987
Agra | 231
Farrukhâbâd | 50
Mainpuri | 73
Etâwah | 67
Etah | 98
Bareilly | 11
Bijnor | 815
Budâun | 434
Morâdâbâd | 490
Shâhjahânpur | 425
Pilibhît | 231
Cawnpur | 87
Bânda | 12
Hamîrpur | 7
Allahâbâd | 113
Jhânsi | 4
Jâlaun | 59
Benares | 153
Mirzapur | 22
Jaunpur | 314
Ghâzipur | 31
Ballia | 216
Gorakhpur | 809
Basti | 116
Azamgarh | 325
Tarâi | 223
Lucknow | 222
Unâo | 26
Sîtapur | 173
Hardoi | 170
Kheri | 308
Gonda | 95
Bahrâich | 79
Sultânpur | 12
Partâbgarh | 11
Bârabanki | 10
+~~~~~~~~
Total | 13,672
==============+========
Bind.—A non-Aryan tribe in the Eastern Districts of the Division, and
with scattered colonies elsewhere. The name is said to be derived from
the Vindhya [118] hills of Central India. One legend quoted by Mr.
Risley [119] tells “how a traveller passing by the foot of the hills
heard a strange flute-like sound coming out of a clump of bamboos. He
cut a shoot and took from it a fleshy substance, which afterwards grew
into a man, the supposed ancestor of the Binds. The myth seems to be of
a totemistic character, but other traces of totemism are not
forthcoming.” One account in Mirzapur makes Bind, Kewat, Mallâh,
Luniya, Paskewata, Kuchbandhiya, and Musahar the descendants of Nikhâd,
who was produced by the Rishis from the thigh of Râja Vena. Another
Mirzapur legend tells how, in the beginning of all things, Mahâdeva
made a lump of earth and endued it with life. The creature thus
produced asked Mahâdeva what he should eat. The god pointed to a tank
and told him to eat the fish and the wild rice (tinni) which grew near
the banks. Since then this is the food of the Binds. They have no
traditions of emigration from any other part of the country. The exact
position of the Binds is not easily determined. About Mirzapur there
are two sub-castes, Kharê and Dhusiya, the latter of whom probably take
their name from Jhusi, an old town on the Ganges, in the Allahâbâd
District. [120] The Kharê Binds call themselves Kewat, and there seems
little doubt that they intermarry with other Kewats. Another story says
Binds and Luniyas were formerly all Binds, and that the present Luniyas
are descendants of a Bind who consented to dig a grave for a Muhammadan
king, and was outcasted for doing so. Others, again, make out the Bind
to be a sub-division of both the Bhar and Luniya. [121] There is,
again, in Mirzapur, another division of them which is partly religious
and partly local. The sub-caste of Kharê Binds has three septs, the
Nârâyaniha, Pânchopiriha, and Maiwarha. The Nârâyaniha are worshippers
of the orthodox Hindu gods, Mahâdeva, Pârvati, Mahâbîr, or Hanumân,
and, in particular, Satya Nârâyan or Vishnu. The Pânchopiriha are
worshippers of the five saints of Islâm, who should, according to
orthodox belief, be Muhammad, ‘Ali, Bîbî Fatima, Hasan, and Husain. But
most Binds name them (if they can name them at all), as Ghâzi Miyân,
Rajab Sâlâr, Subhân, Parihâr, and Barahma or Barahna, who apparently
represents Ibrahîm or Abraham. The Maiwarha themselves derive their
name from the town of Mau in the Azamgarh District.
[Internal structure.] 2. The last Census Returns show sixty-seven
sub-castes. The progress attained in the Hinduising of the tribe is
shown by the use of Brâhmanical terms, like Garga, Kasipgotra, and
Joshi. Chain, Kewat, Mallâh and Kharwâr are side by side with Chauhân,
Gûjara, Jât, Maunas, and Râwat. The most numerous sub-castes are the
Jethwant or “Senior,” and the Kasipgotra. The Kharê Binds are very
strong in Benares, Mirzapur, and Ghâzipur; while the Kharwâr,
Kanaujiya, and Maunas are found in some strength in Ghâzipur, Ballia,
and Gorakhpur, respectively.
[Tribal organisation.] 3. They have a tribal council (panchâyat) which
may be summoned by any man with whom his castemen refuse to eat on the
ground of adultery, prostitution, or eating with a prohibited
tribesman. It is presided over by a permanent president (mukhiya) who
consults the members as assessors, but has the sole right of giving the
final order, which consists, in case of conviction, of a sentence to
give a certain number of feasts to the brethren. When a man seduces an
unmarried girl, he and the father of his mistress give a joint feast,
and the parties are then married. If a man commit adultery with a woman
of a caste so respectable that high caste Hindus will drink water from
their hands, he is not excommunicated, but has to give a feast. If his
mistress be of a caste from whose hands high caste Hindus will not
drink, he is permanently expelled.
[Marriage rules.] 4. In Mirzapur the Nârâyaniha and Pânchopiriha septs
are exogamous, and intermarry on equal terms: they so far practise
hypergamy that they give daughters to the Maiwarha, but do not take
their daughters in return. This rule of exogamy is reinforced by the
prohibition against marrying a daughter into a family into which a son
has been already married; and it seems to be a general condition that
marriage does not take place between families connected within the
period of recollection of relationship, which is five or six
generations. The two great sub-castes, Kharê and Dhusiya, are
endogamous, and do not intermarry or eat together. The Mirzapur branch
have now adopted adult marriages, which take place at the age of ten or
twelve. [122] Polygamy is permitted, but the tendency seems to be to
restrict it to the case when the first wife becomes barren. Marriages
are arranged by some of the seniors of the tribe, and the parties have
no power of selection. No bride-price is paid, and the giving of a
dowry, though permitted and approved, is not compulsory. Polyandry and
concubinage with a woman not of the tribe are prohibited. Widows are
remarried by the sagâi form only to widowers, the match being arranged
by the father or brother of the widow. The man goes to the house of the
widow on an auspicious day, taking with him a yellow sheet and one or
two articles of jewelry. These the bride puts on, and this is the
binding part of the ceremony. Her new husband then eats with the
relations of his wife, takes her home next day, and feeds his clansmen.
Children by such a marriage are considered legitimate, and succeed on
an equality with children of a regular marriage. The levirate is
permitted on the usual condition, that the younger brother of the
deceased husband can claim the widow: if he declines the match she can
marry a stranger, and in the latter case the property of the deceased
husband with his children remains in the charge of their father’s
brother, who rears them and makes the property over to the sons when
they attain puberty. They pretend to have a regular system of adoption
like that of the higher castes: as a matter of practice, however, a
sonless man can adopt only the son of his brother, and in preference of
his elder brother. There is nothing peculiar about the rules of
succession. Beena marriage (gharjanwai) is recognised in the case of
poor people when the son-in-law lives some time on probation in the
house of his father-in-law. Intertribal infidelity on the part of
husband and wife is thought little of, and divorce is practically
unknown, except when ill-usage of an aggravated form accompanies
adultery on the part of the husband. A married woman detected in an
intrigue with a man of another tribe is permanently expelled. She
usually turns Muhammadan or becomes a prostitute.
[Birth ceremonies.] 5 There is no ceremony during pregnancy. The woman
is delivered sitting on the ground facing any direction except the
south, the region of death. She is attended by a Chamâin midwife, who
cuts the cord, buries it in the room, and lights a fire over the place,
which is kept burning till the twelfth day. They have the usual extreme
fear of pollution from the secretions after delivery or menstruation.
The midwife attends till the sixth day, when the usual chhathi ceremony
is done, and the woman is kept secluded till the twelfth day (barahi)
in charge of the barber’s wife, when mother and child are bathed, all
the family clothes washed, the house plastered, and the earthen vessels
replaced. The mother then cooks for the family, and is pure. Her
husband does not cohabit with her again for two months after her
confinement.
[Puberty ceremony.] 6. The ceremony which marks the reception of the
child into caste after which he or she must conform to tribal rules of
eating and drinking is the ear-boring, which is done in the fifth or
sixth year. The occasion is marked by the use of choice food.
7. Marriage is conducted with some pretence of observing the orthodox
Hindu ritual. The girl’s father commences the negotiations, and when
the question of prohibited degrees is settled, then comes what
corresponds to the Hindu tilak, which is called “the day for drinking
water” (pânî pînê kâ din). The bride’s father visits the house of the
bridegroom, and sitting on a square (chauk) in the court-yard, eats
curds and treacle, which settles the match. All present are then
feasted. Five days before the wedding day the ceremony of “the lucky
earth” (matmangara) is done in both families in the usual way. The drum
of the Chamâr, who leads the procession, is worshipped, marked with red
lead and oil, and on it are placed some betel nuts and a quarter ser of
poppy-seed, which are the Chamâr’s perquisite. The earth is dug by some
old female relative, who brings it home and places it in the marriage
shed (mânro), in the centre of which is a ploughshare (haris), and a
water jar (kalsa). After this commences the anointing of the bride and
bridegroom with oil and turmeric, which is started by the Pandit
sprinkling it over them five times with a bunch of dûb grass. The
anointing should, if possible, be done by five unmarried girls. A day
previous to the wedding is the bhatwân, when the clansmen are feasted.
As the procession starts the boy’s mother waves (parachhan karna) over
his head a rice pounder (mûsar), or a water jar (kalsa), for good luck.
When the procession arrives at the bride’s house the women of the
neighbourhood receive them with a shower of rice. The bridegroom then
worships Gauri and Ganesa; and the bride meanwhile bathes and puts on
the clothes which the father of her future husband sends her. She then
retires into an inner room, into which the bridegroom forces his way
after a mimic struggle, a survival of marriage by capture, and brings
her under the shed, where her father washes the feet of the bridegroom.
He then marks the ploughshare with red lead, while the Pandit recites
texts (mantra), and the father taking some kusa grass in his hand
solemnly makes over his daughter to her husband. Then follow the usual
five perambulations round the ploughshare, while at each revolution the
bride’s brother pours parched rice into a winnowing fan (sûp) held by
the bridegroom, who scatters it on the ground. Bride and bridegroom
then go into the retiring room (kohabar), where the women play jokes on
the bridegroom, and he seizes the garment of his mother-in-law and
refuses to release her till she gives him a present. The wedding feast
follows, and the bridegroom takes his bride home next day, after his
father has first shaken one of the poles of the marriage shed, for
which he receives a present (mânro hilâi) from the bride’s father. This
done, the friends embrace all round and the procession starts for home.
Four days after the wedding festoons (bandanwâr), and the water jug
(kalsa), are taken to a neighbouring stream. The festoons are thrown
into the water by the married pair, and the jar is filled with water,
which is used by the bridegroom in plastering a place in front of the
shrine of the local gods (dih), where he offers a fire offering (hom)
with treacle and butter.
[Death ceremonies.] 8. The dead are cremated in the usual way. After
the burning the relatives chew leaves of the bitter nîm tree, and then
eat some treacle; next day the widow goes to a stream and washes the
red lead out of the parting of her hair. Poorer people merely throw the
body into a stream (prabâh), and young children are buried. For persons
who die at a distance they do the nârâyani bal. They make an image of
wheat flour, with a cocoanut representing his head; seeds of safflower
(kusum) represent the nails and teeth; the hair of a blanket represents
the hairs on the body; cowries for the eyes; some ground drug the
blood, birch bark (bhojpâtra) for the skin. These are covered with
three hundred and sixty palâsa leaves, and all is burnt. On the third
day they shave and are pure. The Mahâpâtra is dismissed on the eleventh
day, and on the twelfth the soul is admitted to the company of the
sainted dead. In the case of a person dying at home, on the tenth day
the chief mourner offers the balls (pinda), ten in number, in honour of
the dead, and daily, during the period of death pollution, lays out a
platter (dauna) filled with food along the road by which the corpse was
taken to the burning ground. On the tenth day the ceremony of pouring
water (tarpan) on the ground in honour of the sun is done, and the
clothes of the deceased, with his other personal effects, are given to
the Mahâbrâhman, who passes them on for his use in the world of the
dead. The funeral feast is known as dûdh ka bhât, because on this
occasion milk is mixed with the pulse, and the rice is eaten unwashed.
It is only on this occasion that milk is ever cooked with pulse. The
Mirzapur Binds perform a ceremony of propitiation for the dead at the
village of Râmgaya, near Bindhâchal, in the month of Kuâr.
[Religion.] 9. Binds more or less follow the Brâhmanical ritual, while
the esoteric doctrine, on which the whole body of symbolism depends, is
entirely unknown to the votaries of the popular religion. [123] In
Mirzapur their favourite deity is Mahâdeva, and they make annual
pilgrimages to Baijnâth (Baidyanâth), in Shahâbâd, where they pour
Ganges water over the lingam. Members of the Maiwarha sept act as
special priests of the Pânchonpîr. These five saints and the local
deities (dih) are generally worshipped. On the eighth day of the dark
half of Kuâr, the Jiutiya, women fast. Those who belong to Nârâyaniha
sub-division worship at Mau at the Sivarâtri in the month of Phâlgun,
Mahâdeva, Pârvati, Mahâbîr and Satya Nârâyan or Vishnu, with offerings
of cakes. Their priests are a class of low Brâhmans of Sikari, in
Mirzapur. “The patron deity (kuladevata) of all Binds is Kâshi Bâba,
about whom the following story is told:—A mysterious epidemic was
carrying off the herds on the banks of the Ganges, and the ordinary
expiatory sacrifices were ineffectual. One evening a clownish Ahîr, on
going to the river, saw a figure rinsing its mouth from time to time,
and making an unearthly sound with a conch shell. The lout, concluding
that this must be the demon causing the epidemic, crept up and clubbed
the unsuspecting bather. Kâshi Nâth was the name of the murdered
Brâhman, and as the cessation of the murrain coincided with his death,
the low Hindustâni castes have ever since regarded Kâshi Bâba as the
maleficent spirit that sends disease among their cattle. Now-a-days he
is propitiated by the following curious ceremony. As soon as an
infectious disease breaks out, the village cattle are massed together,
and cotton seed scattered over them. The fattest and sleekest animal
being singled out, is severely beaten with rods. The herd, scared by
the noise, scamper off to the nearest shelter, followed by the scape
bull, and by this means it is thought the murrain is stayed. In
ordinary times the Binds worship Kâshi Bâba in a simpler fashion, each
man in his own house, by presenting flowers, perfumes and sweetmeats.
The latter, after having done duty before the god, are eaten by the
votary. Kâshi Bâba, no doubt, was an actual person, who came by his
end, if not exactly as told in the legend, at least in some tragic
fashion, which led to his being elevated to the rank of a god. In some
of the other objects of the rural worship we may, perhaps, see
survivals of the primitive animism which formed the religion of the
aborigines of India before their insensible conversion to Brâhmanism.
Some of the tribal deities were, as we know, promoted to seats in the
Hindu pantheon: others, whose position was less prominent and whose
hold on the mind of the people was weaker, got thrust into the
background as patrons of various rural events.” [124]
[Festivals.] 10. In Mirzapur the Bind festivals are the Pachainiyân,
Tîj, and Kajari. The last is the women’s saturnalia in the rainy
season, when women get drunk, dance, sing obscene songs, and indulge in
rude debauchery, which on this occasion only is condoned by their
husbands.
[Social rules.] 11. They believe in the usual omens and demonology, and
practice sorcery through the Ojha. The women wear palm leaf ornaments
(tarki) in the ears, nose-rings, wristlets (dharkauwa), anklets
(pairi). They tattoo themselves on the breast and arms, and it is
believed that if they do not come into the next world with these marks,
Bhagwân will pitch them out of heaven. They give children two names,
one fixed by the Pandit, and the other selected by the parents. They
will not touch a Chamâr, Dom, or Dharkâr, nor the wife of the younger
brother, nor the mother-in-law of their children. They will not mention
by name the dead, nor their wives, nor their religious preceptors
(guru). After the close of the agricultural year they worship Hariyâri
Devi, “the goddess of greenness,” with an offering of sweetmeats. In
Bihâr the Binds eat crocodiles and field rats like the Musahars, and
are very fond of pork when they can get it. [125] In Mirzapur they
certainly eat field rats, but not the crocodile, at least publicly; and
they pretend to have given up pork and fowls. They now do not eat beef,
and rank higher in the social scale than Chamârs for this reason. They
use fish largely except in the fortnight (pitri paksha) sacred to the
dead in the month of Kuâr. They are certainly higher in the social
grade than the Binds of Bihâr, as described by Mr. Risley, and it
appears that even Brâhmans and Chhatris will drink water from their
hands. They will not eat food cooked in water (kachchi) except from
Brâhmans. According to another account they will not eat kachchi or
pakki cooked by any other caste but their own. They salute in the
pâêlagi form, and receive in return the blessing (asîs) from strangers.
They salute the father-in-law of their sons or daughters in the form
Râm! Râm! Women are fairly well treated, but hard worked. When a
stranger comes into the house the wife falls on his feet and gives him
tobacco. This is known as bhentna.
[Occupation.] 12. Some are non-occupancy tenants; many are hired
ploughmen (halwâha). The usual wages are two-and-a-half sers of grain
in the local weight per diem, and a special ration (sîdha) on holidays.
They work, as in Bihâr, at fishing, well sinking, building mud walls,
mat and basket-making, preparing saltpetre, doing earthwork on tanks
and roads, watching fields and villages. But in some places they have
an indifferent reputation, particularly in Gorakhpur. [126]