The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India Volume III Part 25

as a warning to backers to place their money on the board before beginning to turn the fish.

13. Swindling practices.

These people also deal in ornaments of base metal and practise other swindles. One of their tricks is to drop a ring or ornament of counterfeit gold on the road. Then they watch until a stranger picks it up and one of them goes up to him and says, "I saw you pick up that gold ring, it belongs to so-and-so, but if you will make it worth my while I will say nothing about it." The finder is thus often deluded into giving him some hush-money and the Jogis decamp with this, having incurred no risk in connection with the spurious metal. They also pretend to be able to convert silver and other metals into gold. They ingratiate themselves with the women, sometimes of a number of households in one village or town, giving at first small quant.i.ties of gold in exchange for silver, and binding them to secrecy. Then each is told to give them all the ornaments which she desires to be converted on the same night, and having collected as much as possible from their dupes the Jogis make off before morning. A very favourite device some years back was to personate some missing member of a family who had gone on a pilgrimage. Up to within a comparatively recent period a large proportion of the pilgrims who set out annually from all over India to visit the famous shrines at Benares, Jagannath and other places perished by the way from privation or disease, or were robbed and murdered, and never heard of again by their families. Many households in every town and village were thus in the position of having an absent member of whose fate they were uncertain. Taking advantage of this, and having obtained all the information he could pick up among the neighbours, the Jogi would suddenly appear in the character of the returned wanderer, and was often successful in keeping up the imposture for years. [208]

14. Proverbs about Jogis.

The Jogi is a familiar figure in the life of the people and there are various sayings about him: [209] Jogi Jogi laren, khop.r.o.n ka dam, or 'When Jogis fight skulls are smashed,' that is, the skulls which some of them use as begging-cups, not their own skulls, and with the implication that they have nothing else to break; Jogi jugat jani nahin, kapre range, to kya hua, 'If the Jogi does not know his magic, what is the use of his dyeing his clothes?' Jogi ka larka khelega, to sanp se, or, 'If a snake-charmer's son plays, he plays with a snake.'

JOSHI

List of Paragraphs

1. The village priest and astrologer.

2. The apparent path of the sun. The ecliptic or zodiac.

3. Inclination of the ecliptic to the equator.

4. The orbits of the moon and planets.

5. The signs of the zodiac.

6. The Sankrants.

7. The nakshatras or constellations of the moon's path.

8. The revolution of the moon.

9. The days of the week.

10. The lunar year.

11. Intercalary months.

12. Superst.i.tions about numbers.

13. The Hindu months.

14. The solar nakshatras.

15. Lunar fortnights and days.

16. Divisions of the day.

17. The Joshi's calculations.

18. Personal names.

19. Terminations of names.

20. Women's names.

21. Special names and bad names.

1. The village priest and astrologer.

Joshi, Jyotishi, Bhadri, Parsai.--The caste of village priests and astrologers. They numbered about 6000 persons in 1911, being distributed over all Districts. The Joshis are nearly all Brahmans, but have now developed into a separate caste and marry among themselves. Their social customs resemble those of Brahmans, and need not be described in detail. The Joshi officiates at weddings in the village, selects auspicious names for children according to the nakshatra or constellation of the moon under which they were born, and points out the auspicious time or mahurat for all such ceremonies and for the commencement of agricultural operations. He is also sometimes in charge of the village temples. He is supported by the contributions from the villagers, and often has a plot of land rent-free from the proprietor. The social position of the Joshis is not very good, and, though Brahmans, they are considered to rank somewhat below the cultivating castes, the Kurmis and Kunbis, by whose patronage they are supported. [210]

The Bhadris are a cla.s.s of Joshis who wander about and live by begging, telling fortunes and giving omens. They avert the evil influences of the planet Saturn and accept the gifts offered to this end, which are always black, as black blankets, charcoal, tilli or sesamum oil, the urad pulse, [211] and iron. People born on Sat.u.r.day or being otherwise connected with the planet are especially subject to his malign influence. The Joshi ascertains who these unfortunate persons are from their horoscopes, and neutralises the evil influence of the planet by the acceptance of the gifts already mentioned, while he sometimes also receives a buffalo or a cow. He computes by astrological calculations the depth at which water will be found when a cultivator wishes to dig a well. He also practises palmistry, cla.s.sifying the whorls of the fingers into two patterns, called the Shank or conch-sh.e.l.l and Chakra or discus of Vishnu. The Shank is considered to be unfortunate and the Chakra fortunate. The lines on the b.a.l.l.s of the toes and on the forehead are similarly cla.s.sified. When anything has been lost or stolen the Joshi can tell from the daily nakshatra or mansion of the moon in which the loss or theft occurred whether the property has gone to the north, south, east or west, and within what interval it is likely to be found. The people have not nowadays much faith in his prophetic powers, and they say, "If clouds come on Friday, and the sky is black on Sat.u.r.day, then the Joshi foretells that it will rain on Sunday." The Joshi's calculations are all based on the rashis or signs of the zodiac through which the sun pa.s.ses during the year, and the nakshatras or those which mark the monthly revolutions of the moon. These are given in all Hindu almanacs, and most Joshis simply work from the almanac, being quite ignorant of astronomy. Since the measurement of the sun's apparent path on the ecliptic, and the moon's...o...b..t mapped out by the constellations are of some interest, and govern the arrangement of the Hindu calendar, it has been thought desirable to give some account of them. And in order to make this intelligible it is desirable first to recapitulate some elementary facts of astronomy.

2. The apparent path of the sun. The ecliptic or zodiac.

The universe may be conceived for the purpose of understanding the sun's path among the stars as if it were a huge ball, of which looking from the earth's surface we see part of the inside with the stars marked on it, as on the inside of a dome. This imaginary inside of a ball is called the celestial sphere, and the ancients believed that it actually existed, and also, in order to account for the varying distances of the stars, supposed that there were several of them, one inside the other, and each with a number of stars fixed to it. The sun and earth may be conceived as smaller solid b.a.l.l.s suspended inside this large one. Then looking from the surface of the earth we see the sun outlined against the inner surface of the imaginary celestial sphere. And as the earth travels round the sun in its...o...b..t, the appearance to us is that the sun moves over the surface of the celestial sphere. The following figure will make this clear. [212]

Thus when the earth is at A in its...o...b..t the sun will appear to be at M, and as the earth travels from A to B the sun will appear to move from M to N on the line of the ecliptic. It will be seen that as the earth in a year makes a complete circuit round the sun, the sun will appear to have made a complete circuit among the stars, and have come back to its original position. This apparent movement is annual, and has nothing to do with the sun's apparent diurnal course over the sky, which is caused by the earth's daily rotation on its axis. The sun's annual path among the stars naturally cannot be observed during the day. Professor Newcomb says: "But the fact of the motion will be made very clear if, day after day, we watch some particular fixed star in the west. We shall find that it sets earlier and earlier every day; in other words, it is getting continually nearer and nearer the sun. More exactly, since the real direction of the star is unchanged, the sun seems to be approaching the star.

"If we could see the stars in the daytime all round the sun, the case would be yet clearer. We should see that if the sun and a star were together in the morning, the sun would, during the day, gradually work past the star in an easterly direction. Between the rising and setting it would move nearly its own diameter, relative to the star. Next morning we should see that it had got quite away from the star, being nearly two diameters distant from it. This motion would continue month after month. At the end of the year the sun would have made a complete circuit relative to the star, and we should see the two once more together. This apparent motion of the sun in one year round the celestial sphere was noticed by the ancients, who took much trouble to map it out. They imagined a line pa.s.sing round the celestial sphere, which the sun always followed in its annual course, and which was called the ecliptic. They noticed that the planets followed nearly the same course as the sun among the stars. A belt extending on each side of the ecliptic, and broad enough to contain all the known planets, as well as the sun, was called the zodiac. It was divided into twelve signs, each marked by a constellation. The sun went through each sign in a month, and through all twelve signs in a year. Thus arose the familiar signs of the zodiac, which bore the same names as the constellations among which they are situated. This is not the case at present, owing to the precession of the equinoxes." It was by observing the paths of the sun and moon round the celestial sphere along the zodiac that the ancients came to be able to measure the solar and lunar months and years.

3. Inclination of the ecliptic to the equator.

As is well known, the celestial sphere is imagined to be spanned by an imaginary line called the celestial equator, which is in the same plane as the earth's equator, and as it were, a vast concentric circle. The points in the celestial sphere opposite the north and south terrestrial poles are called the north and south celestial poles, and the celestial equator is midway between these. Owing to the special form of the earth the north celestial pole is visible to us in the northern hemisphere, and marked very nearly by the pole-star, its height above the horizon being equal to the lat.i.tude of the place where the observer stands. Owing to the daily rotation of the earth the whole celestial sphere seems to revolve daily on the axis of the north and south celestial poles, carrying the sun, moon and stars with it. To this the apparent daily course of the sun and moon is due. Their course seems to us oblique, as we are north of the equator.

If the earth's axis were set vertically to the plane of its...o...b..t round the sun, then it would follow that the plane of the equator would pa.s.s through the centre of the sun, and that the line drawn by the sun in its apparent revolution against the background of the celestial sphere would be in the same plane. That is, the sun would seem to move round a circle in the heavens in the same plane as the earth's equator, or round the celestial equator. But the earth's axis is inclined at 23 1/2 to the plane of its...o...b..t, and therefore the apparent path traced by the sun in the celestial sphere, which is the same path as the earth would really follow to an observer on the surface of the sun, is inclined at 23 1/2 to the celestial equator. This is the ecliptic, and is really the line of the plane of the earth's...o...b..t extended to cut the celestial sphere.

4. The orbits of the moon and planets.

All the planets move round the sun in orbits whose planes are slightly inclined to that of the earth, the plane of Mercury having the greatest inclination of 6. The plane of the moon's...o...b..t round the earth is also inclined at 5 9' to the ecliptic. The orbits of the moon and all the planets must necessarily intersect the plane of the earth's...o...b..t on the ecliptic at two points, and these are called the nodes of the moon and each planet respectively. In consequence of the inclination being so slight, though the course of the moon and planets is not actually on the ecliptic, they are all so close to it that they are included in the belt of the zodiac. Thus the moon and all the planets follow almost the same apparent course on the zodiac or belt round the ecliptic in the changes of position resulting from their own and the earth's...o...b..tal movements with reference to what are called the fixed stars.

5. The signs of the zodiac.

As the sun completes his circuit of the ecliptic or zodiac in the course of a year, it followed that if his course could be measured and divided into periods, these periods would form divisions of time for the year. This was what the ancients did, and it is probable that the measurement and division of time was the primary object of the science of astronomy, as apart from the natural curiosity to ascertain the movements of the sun, moon and planets, when they were looked upon as divine beings controlling the world. They divided the zodiac or the path of the sun into twelve parts, and gave to each part the name of the princ.i.p.al constellation situated on, or adjacent to, that section of the line of the ecliptic. When they had done this and observed the dates of the sun's entry into each sign or rashi, as it is called in Hindi, they had divided the year into twelve solar months. The following are the Hindu names and meanings of the signs of the zodiac:

1. Aries. The ram. Mesha.

2. Taurus. The bull. Vrisha.

3. Gemini. The twins. Mithuna.

4. Cancer. The crab. Karkati.

5. Leo. The lion. Sinha.

6. Virgo. The virgin. Kanya.

7. Libra. The balance. Tula.

8. Scorpio. The scorpion. Vrischika.