Khangar, [487] called also Kotwal, Jemadar or Darbania (gatekeeper).--A
low caste of village watchmen and field-labourers belonging to
Bundelkhand, and found in the Saugor, Damoh, Narsinghpur and Jubbulpore
Districts. They numbered nearly 13,000 in 1911. The Khangars are
also numerous in the United Provinces. Hindu ingenuity has evolved
various explanations of the word Khangar, such as 'khand,' a pit,
and 'gar,' maker, digger, because the Khangar digs holes in other
people's houses for the purposes of theft. The caste is, however,
almost certainly of non-Aryan origin, and there is little doubt also
that Bundelkhand was its original home. It may be noted that the Munda
tribe have a division called Khangar with which the caste may have
some connection. The Khangars themselves relate the following story
of their origin. Their ancestors were formerly the rulers of the fort
and territory of Kurar in Bundelkhand, when a Bundela Rajput came
and settled there. The Bundela had a very pretty daughter whom the
Khangar Raja demanded in marriage. The Bundela did not wish to give
his daughter to the Khangar, but could not refuse the Raja outright,
so he said that he would consent if all the Khangars would agree
to adopt Bundela practices. This the Khangars readily agreed to do,
and the Bundela thereupon invited them all to a wedding feast, and
having summoned his companions and plied the Khangars with liquor
until they were dead drunk, cut them all to pieces. One pregnant
woman only escaped by hiding in a field of kusum or safflower,
[488] and on this account the Khangars still venerate the kusum and
will not wear cloths dyed with saffron. She fled to the house of
a Muhammadan eunuch or Fakir, who gave her shelter and afterwards
placed her with a Dangi landowner. The Bundelas followed her up and
came to the house of the Dangi, who denied that the Khangar woman was
with him. The Bundelas then asked him to make all the women in his
house eat together to prove that none of them was the Khangarin, on
which the Dangi five times distributed the maihar, a sacrificial cake
which is only given to relations, to all the women of the household
including the Khangarin, and thus convinced the Bundelas that she was
not in the house. The woman who was thus saved became the ancestor
of the whole Khangar caste, and in memory of this act the Khangars
and Nadia Dangis are still each bidden to eat the maihar cake at the
weddings of the other, or at least so it is said; while the Fakirs,
in honour of this great occasion when one of their number acted as
giver rather than receiver, do not beg for alms at the wedding of a
Khangar, but on the contrary bring presents. The basis of the story,
that the Khangars were the indigenous inhabitants of Bundelkhand and
were driven out and slaughtered by the immigrant Bundelas, may not
improbably be historically correct. It is also said that no Khangar is
even now allowed to enter the fort of Kurar, and that the spirit of
the murdered chief still haunts it; so that if a bed is placed there
in the evening with a tooth-stick, the tooth-stick will be split in
the morning as after use, and the bed will appear as if it had been
slept in. [489]