Kirar [523] or Kirad.--A cultivating caste found in the Narsinghpur,
Hoshangabad, Betul, Seoni, Chhindwara and Nagpur Districts. They
numbered 48,000 persons in 1911. The Kirars claim to be Dhakar
or bastard Rajputs, and in 1891 more than half of them returned
themselves under this designation. About a thousand persons who were
returned as Dhakar Rajputs from Hoshangabad in 1901 are probably
Kirars. The caste say that they immigrated from Gwalior, and this
statement seems to be correct, as about 66,000 of them are found in
that State. They claim to have left Gwalior as early as Samvat 1525
or A.D. 1468, when Alru and Dalru, the leaders of the migration into
the Central Provinces, abandoned their native village, Doderi Kheda in
Gwalior, and settled in Chandon, a village in the Sohagpur tahsil of
Hoshangabad. But according to the story related to Mr. (Sir Charles)
Elliott, the migration took place in A.D. 1650 or at the beginning
of Aurangzeb's reign. [524] He quotes the names of the leaders as
Alrawat and Dalrawat, and says that the migration took place from the
Dholpur country, but this is probably a mistake, as none of the caste
are now found in Dholpur. Elliott stated that he could find no traces
of any cultivating caste having settled in Hoshangabad as far back as
Akbar's time, though Sir W. Sleeman was of opinion that the first great
migration into the Nerbudda valley took place in that reign. The truth
is probably that the valley began to be regularly colonised by Hindus
during the years that Aurangzeb spent at Burhanpur and in the Deccan,
and the immigration of the Kirars may most reasonably be attributed to
this period. The Kirars, Gujars, and Raghuvansis apparently entered
the Central Provinces together, and the fact that they still smoke
from the same huqqa and take water from each other's drinking vessels
may be a reminiscence of this bond of fellowship. All these castes
claim, and probably with truth, to be degraded Rajputs. The Kirars'
version is that they took to widow-marriage and were consequently
degraded. According to another story they were driven from their
native place by a Muhammadan invasion. Mr. J. D. Cunningham says that
the word Kirar in Central India literally means dalesmen or foresters,
but during the lapse of centuries has become the name of a caste. [525]
Another derivation is from Kirar, a corn-chandler, an occupation which
they may originally have followed in combination with agriculture. In
the Punjab the name Kirar appears to be given to all the western
or Punjabi traders as distinct from a Bania of Hindustan, and is so
used even in the Kangra hills, but the Arora, who is the trader par
excellence of the south-west of the Punjab, is the person to whom the
term is most commonly applied. [526] As a curiosity of folk-etymology
it may be stated that some derive the caste-name from the fact that a
holy sage's wife, who was about to be delivered of a child, was being
pursued by a Rakshas or demon, and fell over the steep bank (karar)
of a river and was thereupon delivered. The child was consequently
called Karar and became the ancestor of the Kirar caste. The name
may in fact be derived from the habit which the Kirars have in some
localities of cultivating on the banks of rivers, like the Kirs,
who are probably a branch of the same caste.