The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India Volume III Part 47

"Even under Mahomedan rulers in the west they have risen to high administrative posts. There is a record of a Khatri Diwan of Badakshan or Kurdaz; and, I believe, of a Khatri Governor of Peshawar under the Afghans. The Emperor Akbar's famous minister, Todarmal, was a Khatri; and a relative of that man of undoubted energy, the great commissariat contractor of Agra, Joti Pershad, lately informed me that he also is a Khatri. Altogether, there can be no doubt that these Khatris are one of the most acute, energetic and remarkable races in India, though in fact, except locally in the Punjab, they are not much known to Europeans. The Khatris are staunch Hindus, and it is somewhat singular that, while giving a religion and priests to the Sikhs, they themselves are comparatively seldom Sikhs. The Khatris are a very fine, fair, handsome race, and, as may be gathered from what I have already said, they are very generally educated.

"There is a large subordinate cla.s.s of Khatris, somewhat lower, but of equal mercantile energy, called Rors or Roras. The proper Khatris of higher grade will often deny all connection with them, or at least only admit that they have some sort of b.a.s.t.a.r.d kindred with Khatris, but I think there can be no doubt that they are ethnologically the same, and they are certainly mixed up with Khatris in their avocations. I shall treat the whole kindred as generically Khatris.

"Speaking of the Khatris then thus broadly, they have, as I have said, the whole trade of the Punjab and of most of Afghanistan. No village can get on without the Khatri who keeps the accounts, does the banking business, and buys and sells the grain. They seem, too, to get on with the people better than most traders and usurers of this kind. In Afghanistan, among a rough and alien people, the Khatris are as a rule confined to the position of humble dealers, shopkeepers and moneylenders; but in that capacity the Pathans seem to look on them as a kind of valuable animal, and a Pathan will steal another man's Khatri, not only for the sake of ransom, as is frequently done on the frontier of Peshawar and Hazara, but also as he might steal a milch-cow, or as Jews might, I dare say, be carried off in the Middle Ages with a view to render them profitable.

"I do not know the exact limits of Khatri occupation to the West, but certainly in all Eastern Afghanistan they seem to be just as much a part of the established community as they are in the Punjab. They find their way far into Central Asia, but the further they get the more depressed and humiliating is their position. In Turkistan, Vambery speaks of them with great contempt, as yellow-faced Hindus of a cowardly and sneaking character. Under Turcoman rule they could hardly be otherwise. They are the only Hindus known in Central Asia. In the Punjab they are so numerous that they cannot all be rich and mercantile; and many of them hold land, cultivate, take service, and follow various avocations."

3. Higher and lower groups.

The Khatris have a very complicated system of subdivisions, which it is not necessary to detail here in view of their small strength in the Province. As a rule they marry only one wife, though a second may be taken for the purpose of getting offspring. But parents are very reluctant to give their daughters to a man who is already married. The remarriage of widows is forbidden and divorce also is not recognised, but an unfaithful wife may be turned out of the house and expelled from the caste. Though they practise monogamy, however, the Khatris place no restrictions on the keeping of concubines, and from the offspring of such women inferior branches of the caste have grown up. In Gujarat these are known as the Dasa and Pancha groups, and they may not eat or intermarry with proper Khatris. [504] The name Khatri seems there to be restricted to these inferior groups, while the caste proper is called Brahma-Kshatri. There is also a marked distinction in their occupation, for, while the Brahma-Kshatris are hereditary District officials, pleaders, bankers and Government servants, the Khatris are engaged in weaving, and formerly prepared the fine cotton cloth of Surat and Broach, while they also make gold and silver thread, and the lace used for embroidery. [505] As a cla.s.s they are said to be thriftless and idle, and at least the Khatris of Surat to be excessively fond of strong drink. The Khatris of Nimar in the Central Provinces are also weavers, and it seems not unlikely that they may be a branch of these Gujarat Khatris of the inferior cla.s.s, and that the well-known gold and silver lace and embroidery industry of Burhanpur may have been introduced by them from Surat. The Khatris of Narsinghpur are dyers, and may not improbably be connected with the Nimar weavers. The other Khatris scattered here and there over the Provinces may belong to the higher branch of the caste.

4. Marriage and funeral customs.

In conclusion some extracts may be given from the interesting account of the marriage and funeral customs of the Brahma-Kshatris in Gujarat: [506] "On the wedding-day shortly before the marriage hour the bridegroom, his face covered with flower-garlands and wearing a long tunic and a yellow silk waistcloth, escorted by the women of his family, goes to the bride's house on horseback in procession.... Before the bridegroom's party arrive the bride, dressed in a head-cloth, bodice, a red robe, and loose yellow Muhammadan trousers, is seated in a closed palanquin or balai set in front of the house. The bridegroom on dismounting walks seven times round the palanquin, the bride's brother at each turn giving him a cut with an oleander twig, and the women of the family throwing showers of cake from the windows. He retires, and while mounting his horse, and before he is in the saddle, the bride's father comes out, and, giving him a present, leads him into the marriage-hall.... The girl keeps her eyes closed throughout the whole day, not opening them until the bridegroom is ushered into the marriage-booth, so that the first object she sees is her intended husband. On the first Monday, Thursday or Friday after the marriage the bride is hid either in her own or in a neighbour's house. The bridegroom comes in state, and with the point of his sword touches the outer doors of seven houses, and then begins to search for his wife. The time is one of much fun and merriment, the women of the house bantering and taunting the bridegroom, especially when he is long in finding his wife's hiding-place. When she is found the bridegroom leads the bride to the marriage-hall, and they sit there combing each other's hair."

In connection with their funeral ceremonies Mr. Bhimbhai Kirparam gives the following particulars of the custom of beating the b.r.e.a.s.t.s: [507] "Contrary to the Gujarat practice of beating only the breast, the Brahma-Kshatri women beat the forehead, breast and knees. For thirteen days after a death women weep and beat their b.r.e.a.s.t.s thrice a day, at morning, noon and evening. Afterwards they weep and beat their b.r.e.a.s.t.s every evening till a year has pa.s.sed, not even excepting Sundays, Tuesdays or Hindu holidays. During this year of mourning the female relations of the deceased used to eat nothing but millet-bread and pulse; but this custom is gradually being given up."

Khojah

Khojah. [508]--A small Muhammadan sect of traders belonging to Gujarat, who retain some Hindu practices. They reside in Wardha, Nagpur and the Berar Districts, and numbered about 500 persons in 1911 as against 300 in 1901. The Khojahs are Muhammadans of the Shia sect, and their ancestors were converted Hindus of the Lohana trading caste of Sind, who are probably akin to the Khatris. As shown in the article on Cutchi, the Cutchi or Meman traders are also converted Lohanas. The name Khojah is a corruption of the Turkish Khwajah, Lord, and this is supposed to be a Muhammadan equivalent for the t.i.tle Thakur or Thakkar applied to the Lohanas. The Khojahs belong to the Nazarian branch of the Egyptian Ismailia sect, and the founder of this sect in Persia was Hasan Sabah, who lived at the beginning of the eleventh century and founded the order of the Fidawis or devotees, who were the a.s.sa.s.sins of the Crusades. Hasan subsequently threw off his allegiance to the Egyptian Caliph and made himself the head of his own sect with the t.i.tle of Shaikh-ul-Jabal or Lord. He was known to the Crusaders as the 'Old Man of the Mountain.' His third successor Hasan (A.D. 1163) declared himself to be the unrevealed Imam and preached that no action of a believer in him could be a sin. It is through this Hasan that His Highness the Aga Khan traces his descent from Ali. Subsequently emissaries of the sect came to India, and one Pir Sadr-ud-din converted the Lohanas. According to one account this man was a Hindu slave of Imam Hasan. Sadr-ud-din preached that his master Hasan was the Nishkalanki or tenth incarnation of Vishnu. The Adam of the Semitic story of the creation was identified with the Hindu deity Vishnu, the Prophet Muhammad with Siva, and the first five Imams of Ismailia with the five Pandava brothers. By this means the new faith was made more acceptable to the Lohanas. In 1845 Aga Shah Hasan Ali, the Ismailia unrevealed Imam, came and settled in India, and his successor is His Highness the Aga Khan.

The Khojahs retain some Hindu customs. Boys have their ears bored and a lock of hair is left on a child's head to be shaved and offered at some shrine. Circ.u.mcision and the wearing of a beard are optional. They do not have mosques, but meet to pray at a lodge called the Jama'at Khana. They repeat the names of their Pirs or saints on a rosary made of 101 beads of clay from Karbala, the scene of the death of Hasan and Husain. At their marriages, deaths and on every new-moon day, contributions are levied which are sent to His Highness the Aga Khan. "A remarkable feature at a Khojah's death," Mr. Faridi states, "is the samarchhanta or Holy Drop. The Jama'at officer asks the dying Khojah whether he wishes for the Holy Drop, and if the latter agrees he must bequeath Rs. 5 to Rs. 500 to the Jama'at. The officer dilutes a cake of Karbala clay in water and moistens the lips of the dying man with it, sprinkling the remainder over his face, neck and chest. The touch of the Holy Drop is believed to save the departing soul from the temptation of the Arch-Fiend, and to remove the death-agony as completely as among the Sunnis does the recital at a death-bed of the chapter of the Koran known as the Surah-i-Ya-sin. If the dead man is old and grey-haired the hair after death is dyed with henna. A garland of cakes of Karbala clay is tied round the neck of the corpse. If the body is to be buried locally two small circular patches of silk cloth cut from the covering of Husain's tomb, called chashmah or spectacles, are laid over the eyes. Those Khojahs who can afford it have their bodies placed in air-tight coffins and transported to the field of Karbala in Persia to be buried there. The bodies are taken by steamer to Baghdad, and thence by camel to Karbala.

"The Khojahs are keen and enterprising traders, and are great travellers by land and sea, visiting and settling in distant countries for purposes of trade. They have business connections with Ceylon, Burma, Singapore, China and j.a.pan, and with ports of the Persian Gulf, Arabia and East Africa. Khojah boys go as apprentices in foreign Khojah firms on salaries of Rs. 200 to Rs. 2000 a year with board and lodging."

KHOND [509]

[The princ.i.p.al authorities on the Khonds are Sir H. Risley's Tribes and Castes of Bengal, Major-General Campbell's Wild Tribes of Khondistan, and Major MacPherson's Report on the Khonds of the Districts of Ganjam and Cuttack (Reprint, Madras Scottish United Press, 1863). When the inquiries leading up to these volumes were undertaken, the Central Provinces contained a large body of the tribe, but the bulk of these have pa.s.sed to Bihar and Orissa with the transfer of the Kalahandi and Patna States and the Sambalpur District. Nevertheless, as information of interest had been collected, it has been thought desirable to reproduce it, and Sir James Frazer's description of the human sacrifices formerly in vogue has been added. Much of the original information contained in this article was furnished by Mr. Panda Baijnath, Extra a.s.sistant Commissioner, when Diwan of Patna State. Papers were also contributed by Rai Sahib Dinbandhu Patnaik, Diwan of Sonpur, Mr. Mian Bhai, Extra a.s.sistant Commissioner, Sambalpur, and Mr. Charu Chandra Ghose, Deputy Inspector of Schools, Kalahandi.]

List of Paragraphs

1. Traditions of the tribe.

2. Tribal divisions.

3. Exogamous septs.

4. Marriage.

5. Customs at birth.

6. Disposal of the dead.

7. Occupation.

8. A Khond combat.

9. Social customs.

10. Festivals.

11. Religion.

12. Human sacrifice.

13. Last human sacrifices.

14. Khond rising in 1882.

15. Language.

1. Traditions of the tribe.

Khond, Kandh.1--A Dravidian tribe found in the Uriya-speaking tract of the Sambalpur District and the adjoining Feudatory States of Patna and Kalahandi, which up to 1905 were included in the Central Provinces, but now belong to Bihar and Orissa. The Province formerly contained 168,000 Khonds, but the number has been reduced to about 10,000, residing mainly in the Khariar zamindari to the south-east of the Raipur District and the Sarangarh State. The tract inhabited by the Khonds was known generally as the Kondhan. The tribe call themselves Kuiloka, or Kuienju, which may possibly be derived from ko or ku, a Telugu word for a mountain. [510] Their own traditions as to their origin are of little historical value, but they were almost certainly at one time the rulers of the country in which they now reside. It was the custom until recently for the Raja of Kalahandi to sit on the lap of a Khond on his accession while he received the oaths of fealty. The man who held the Raja was the eldest member of a particular family, residing in the village of Gugsai Patna, and had the t.i.tle of Patnaji. The coronation of a new Raja took place in this village, to which all the chiefs repaired. The Patnaji would be seated on a large rock, richly dressed, with a cloth over his knees on which the Raja sat. The Diwan or minister then tied the turban of state on the Raja's head, while all the other chiefs present held the ends of the cloth. The ceremony fell into abeyance when Raghu Kesari Deo was made Raja on the deposition of his predecessor for misconduct, as the Patnaji refused to install a second Raja, while one previously consecrated by him was still living. The Raja was also accustomed to marry a Khond girl as one of his wives, though latterly he did not allow her to live in the palace. These customs have lately been abandoned; they may probably be interpreted as a recognition that the Rajas of Kalahandi derived their rights from the Khonds. Many of the zamindari estates of Kalahandi and Sonpur are still held by members of the tribe.

2. Tribal divisions.

There is no strict endogamy within the Khond tribe. It has two main divisions: the Kutia Khonds who are hillmen and retain their primitive tribal customs, and the plain-dwelling Khonds who have acquired a tincture of Hinduism. The Kutia or hill Khonds are said to be so called because they break the skulls of animals when they kill them for food; the word kutia meaning one who breaks or smashes. The plain-dwelling Khonds have a number of subdivisions which are supposed to be endogamous, though the rule is not strictly observed. Among these the Raj Khonds are the highest, and are usually landed proprietors. A man, however, is not considered to be a Raj Khond unless he possesses some land, and if a Raj Khond takes a bride from another group he descends to it. A similar rule applies among some of the other groups, a man being relegated to his wife's division when he marries into one which is lower than his own. The Dal Khonds may probably have been soldiers, the word dal meaning an army. They are also known as Adi Kandh or the superior Khonds, and as Balusudia or 'Shaven.' At present they usually hold the honourable position of village priest, and have to a certain extent adopted Hindu usages, refusing to eat fowls or buffaloes, and offering the leaves of the tulsi (basil) to their deities. The Kandhanas are so called because they grow turmeric, which is considered rather a low thing to do, and the Pakhia because they eat the flesh of the por or buffalo. The Gauria are graziers, and the Nagla or naked ones apparently take their name from their paucity of clothing. The Utar or Satbhuiyan are a degraded group, probably of illegitimate descent; for the other Khonds will take daughters from them, but will not give their daughters to them.

3. Exogamous septs.

Traditionally the Khonds have thirty-two exogamous septs, but the number has now increased. All the members of one sept live in the same locality about some central village. Thus the Tupa sept are collected round the village of Teplagarh in the Patna State, the Loa sept round Sindhekala, the Borga sept round Bangomunda, and so on. The names of the septs are derived either from the names of villages or from t.i.tles or nicknames. Each sept is further divided into a number of subsepts whose names are of a totemistic nature, being derived from animals, plants or natural objects. Instances of these are Bachhas calf, Chhatra umbrella, Hikoka horse, Kelka the kingfisher, Konjaka the monkey, Mandinga an earthen pot, and so on. It is a very curious fact that while the names of the septs appear to belong to the Khond language, those of the subsepts are all Uriya words, and this affords some ground for the supposition that they are more recent than the septs, an opinion to which Sir H. Risley inclines. On the other hand, the fact that the subsepts have totemistic names appears difficult of explanation under this hypothesis. Members of the subsept regard the animal or plant after which it is named as sacred. Those of the Kadam group will not stand under the tree of that name. Those of the Narsingha [511] sept will not kill a tiger or eat the meat of any animal wounded or killed by this animal. The same subsept will be found in several different septs, and a man may not marry a woman belonging either to the same sept or subsept as his own. But kinship through females is disregarded, and he may take his maternal uncle's daughter to wife, and in Kalahandi is not debarred from wedding his mother's sister. [512]

4. Marriage.

Marriage is adult and a large price, varying from 12 to 20 head of cattle, was formerly demanded for the bride. This has now, however, been reduced in some localities to two or three animals and a rupee each in lieu of the others, or cattle may be entirely dispensed with and some grain given. If a man cannot afford to purchase a bride he may serve his father-in-law for seven years as the condition of obtaining her. A proposal for marriage is made by placing a bra.s.s cup and three arrows at the door of the girl's father. He will remove these once to show his reluctance, and they will be again replaced. If he removes them a second time, it signifies his definite refusal of the match, but if he allows them to remain, the bridegroom's friends go to him and say, 'We have noticed a beautiful flower in pa.s.sing through your village and desire to pluck it.' The wedding procession goes from the bride's to the bridegroom's house as among the Gonds; this custom, as remarked by Mr. Bell, is not improbably a survival of marriage by capture, when the husband carried off his wife and married her at his own house. At the marriage the bride and bridegroom come out, each sitting on the shoulders of one of their relatives. The bridegroom pulls the bride to his side, when a piece of cloth is thrown over them, and they are tied together with a string of new yarn wound round them seven times. A c.o.c.k is sacrificed, and the cheeks of the couple are singed with burnt bread. They pa.s.s the night in a veranda, and next day are taken to a tank, the bridegroom being armed with a bow and arrows. He shoots one through each of seven cowdung cakes, the bride after each shot washing his forehead and giving him a green twig for a tooth-brush and some sweets. This is symbolical of their future course of life, when the husband will procure food by hunting, while the wife will wait on him and prepare his food. s.e.xual intercourse before marriage between a man and girl of the tribe is condoned so long as they are not within the prohibited degrees of relationship, and in Kalahandi such liaisons are a matter of ordinary occurrence. If a girl is seduced by one man and subsequently married to another, the first lover usually pays the husband a sum of seven to twelve rupees as compensation. In Sambalpur a girl may choose her own husband, and the couple commonly form an intimacy while engaged in agricultural work. Such unions are known as Udhlia or 'Love in the fields.' If the parents raise any objection to the match the couple elope and return as man and wife, when they have to give a feast to the caste, and if the girl was previously betrothed to another man the husband must pay him compensation. In the last case the union is called Paisa moli or marriage by purchase. A trace of fraternal polyandry survives in the custom by which the younger brothers are allowed access to the elder brother's wife till the time of their own marriage. Widow-marriage and divorce are recognised.

5. Customs at birth.