Kitabı oku: «The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 2», sayfa 19

Bharbhūnja

1. General notice

Bharbhūnja. ²⁷¹—The occupational caste of grain-parchers. The name is derived from the Sanskrit bhrāstra, a frying-pan, and bhārjaka, one who fries. The Bharbhūnjas numbered 3000 persons in 1911, and belong mainly to the northern Districts, their headquarters being in Upper India. In Chhattīsgarh the place of the Bharbhūnjas is taken by the Dhūris. Sir H. Elliot²⁷² remarks that the caste are traditionally supposed to be descended from a Kahār father and a Sūdra mother, and they are probably connected with the Kahārs. In Saugor they say that their ancestors were Kānkubja Brāhmans who were ordered to parch rice at the wedding of the great Rāma, and in consequence of this one of their subcastes is known as Kānbajia. But Kānkubja is one of the commonest names of subcastes among the people of northern India, and merely indicates that the bearers belong to the tract round the old city of Kanauj; and there is no reason to suppose that it means anything more in the case of the Bharbhūnjas. Another group are called Kaitha, and they say that their ancestors were Kāyasths, who adopted the profession of grain-parching. It is said that in Bhopāl proper Kāyasths will take food from Kaitha Bharbhūnjas and smoke from their huqqa; and it is noticeable that in northern India Mr. Crooke gives²⁷³ not only the Kaitha subcaste, but other groups called Saksena and Srivāstab, which are the names of well-known Kayasth subdivisions. It is possible, therefore, that the Kaitha group may really be connected with the Kāyasths. Other subcastes are the Benglāh, who are probably immigrants from Bengal; and the Kāndu, who may also come from that direction, Kāndu being the name of the corresponding caste of grain-parchers in Bengal.

2. Social customs.

The social customs of the Bharbhūnjas resemble those of Hindustāni castes of fairly good position.²⁷⁴ They employ Brāhmans for their ceremonies, and the family priest receives five rupees for officiating at a wedding, three rupees for a funeral, one rupee for a birth, and four annas on ordinary occasions. No price is paid for a bride, and at their marriages the greater part of the expense falls on the girl’s father, who has to give three feasts as against two provided by the bridegroom’s father. After the wedding the bridegroom’s father puts on women’s clothes given by the bride’s father and dances before the family. Rose-coloured water and powder are sprinkled over the guests and the proceeding is known as Phāg, because it is considered to have the same significance as the Holi festival observed in Phāgun. This is usually done on the bank of a river or in some garden outside the village. At the gauna or going-away ceremony the bride and bridegroom take their seats on two wooden boards and then change places. Divorce and the remarriage of widows are permitted. The union of a widow with her deceased husband’s younger brother is considered a suitable match, but is not compulsory. When a bachelor marries a widow, he first goes through the proper ceremony either with a stick or an ear-ring, and is then united to the widow by the simple ritual employed for widow remarriage. A girl who is seduced by a member of the caste may be married to him as if she were a widow, but if her lover is an outsider she is permanently expelled from the caste.

3. Occupation.

The Bharbhūnjas occupy a fairly high social position, analogous to that of the Barais, Kahārs and other serving castes, the explanation being that all Hindus require the grain parched by them; this, as it is not cooked with water, may be eaten abroad, on a journey or in the market-place. This is known as pakki food, and even Brāhmans will take it from their hands. But Mr. Crooke notes²⁷⁵ that the work they do, and particularly the sweeping up of dry leaves for fuel, tends to lower them in the popular estimation, and it is a favourite curse to wish of an enemy that he may some day come to stoke the kiln of a grain-parcher. Of their occupation Sir H. Risley states that “Throughout the caste the actual work of parching grain is usually left to the women. The process is a simple one. A clay oven is built, somewhat in the shape of a bee-hive, with ten or twelve round holes at the top. A fire is lighted under it and broken earthen pots containing sand are put on the holes. The grain to be parched is thrown in with the sand and stirred with a flat piece of wood or a broom until it is ready. The sand and parched grain are then placed in a sieve, through which the former escapes. The wages of the parcher are a proportion of the grain, varying from one-eighth to one-fourth. In Bengal the caste was spoken of by early English travellers under the quaint name of the frymen.”²⁷⁶ In the Central Provinces also grain-parching is distinctly a woman’s industry, only twenty-two per cent of those shown as working at it being men. There are two classes of tradesmen, those who simply keep ovens and parch grain which is brought to them, and those who keep the grain and sell it ready parched. The rates for parching are a pice a seer or an eighth part of the grain. Gram and rice, husked or unhusked, are the grains usually parched. When parched, gram is called phutāna (broken) and rice lāhi. The Bharbhūnjas also prepare sathu, a flour made by grinding parched gram or wheat, which is a favourite food for a light morning meal, or for travellers. It can be taken without preparation, being simply mixed with water and a little salt or sugar. The following story is told about sathu to emphasise its convenience in this respect. Once two travellers were about to take some food before starting in the morning, of whom one had sathu and the other dhān (unhusked rice). The one with the dhān knew that it would take him a long time to pound, and then cook and eat it, so he said to the other, “My poor friend, I perceive that you only have sathu, which will delay you because you must find water, and then mix it, and find salt, and put it in, before your sathu can be ready, while rice—pound, eat and go. But if you like, as you are in a greater hurry than I am, I will change my rice for your sathu.” The other traveller unsuspectingly consented, thinking he was getting the best of the bargain, and while he was still looking for a mortar in which to pound his rice, the first traveller had mixed and eaten the sathu and proceeded on his journey. In the vernacular the point is brought out by the onomatopoeic character of the lines, which cannot be rendered in English. The caste are now also engaged in selling tobacco and sweetmeats and the manufacture of fireworks. They stoke their ovens with any refuse they can collect from the roads, and hence comes the saying, ‘Bhār men dālna’, ‘To throw into the oven,’ meaning to throw away something or to make ducks and drakes with it; while Bhār-jhokna signifies to light or heat the oven, and, figuratively, to take up a mean occupation (Platts). Another proverb quoted by Mr. Crooke is, ‘Bharbhūnja ka larki kesar ka tīka,’ or ‘The Bharbhūnja’s slut with saffron on her forehead,’ meaning one dressed in borrowed plumes. Another saying is, ‘To tum kya abhi tak bhār bhunjte rahe,’ or ‘Have you been stoking the oven all this time?’—meaning to imply that the person addressed has been wasting his time, because the profits from grain-parching are so small. The oven of the Psalmist into which the grass was cast no doubt closely resembled that of the Bharbhūnjas.

Bharia

1. Origin and tribal legend.

Bharia, Bharia-Bhumia. ²⁷⁷—A Dravidian tribe numbering about 50,000 persons and residing principally in the Jubbulpore District, which contains a half of the total number. The others are found in Chhindwāra and Bilāspur. The proper name of the tribe is Bharia, but they are often called Bharia-Bhumia, because many of them hold the office of Bhumia or priest of the village gods and of the lower castes in Jubbulpore, and the Bharias prefer the designation of Bhumia as being the more respectable. The term Bhumia or ‘Lord of the soil’ is an alternative for Bhuiya, the name of another Dravidian tribe, and no doubt came to be applied to the office of village priest because it was held by members of this tribe; the term Baiga has a similar signification in Mandla and Bālāghāt, and is applied to the village priest though he may not belong to the Baiga tribe at all. The Bharias have forgotten their original affinities, and several stories of the origin of the tribe are based on far-fetched derivations of the name. One of these is to the effect that Arjun, when matters were going badly with the Pandavas in their battle against the Kauravas, took up a handful of bharru grass and, pressing it, produced a host of men who fought in the battle and became the ancestors of the Bharias. And there are others of the same historical value. But there is no reason to doubt that Bharia is the contemptuous form of Bhar, as Telia for Teli, Jugia for Jogi, Kuria for Kori, and that the Bharias belong to the great Bhar tribe who were once dominant in the eastern part of the United Provinces, but are now at the bottom of the social scale, and relegated by their conquerors to the degrading office of swineherds. The Rājjhars, who appear to have formed a separate caste as the landowning subdivision of the Bhars, like the Rāj-Gonds among Gonds, are said to be the descendants of a Rāja and a Bharia woman. The Rājjhars form a separate caste in the Central Provinces, and the Bharias acknowledge some connection with them, but refuse to take water from their hands, as they consider them to be of impure blood. The Bharias also give Mahoba or Bāndhogarh as their former home, and these places are in the country of the Bhars. According to tradition Rāja Karna Deva, a former king of Dāhal, the classical name of the Jubbulpore country, was a Bhar, and it may be that the immigration of the Bharias into Jubbulpore dates from his period, which is taken as 1040 to 1080 A.D. While then it may be considered as fairly certain that the Bharias are merely the Bhar tribe with a variant of the name, it is clear from the titles of their family groups, which will shortly be given, that they are an extremely mixed class and consist largely of the descendants of members of other castes, who, having lost their own social position, have taken refuge among the Bharias at the bottom of the social scale. Mr. Crooke says of the Bhars:²⁷⁸ “The most probable supposition is that the Bhars were a Dravidian race closely allied to the Kols, Cheros and Seoris, who at an early date succumbed to the invading Aryans. This is borne out by their appearance and physique, which closely resemble that of the undoubted non-Aryan aborigines of the Vindhyan-Kaimūr plateau.” In the Central Provinces the Bharias have been so closely associated with the Gonds that they have been commonly considered to belong to that tribe. Thus Mr. Drysdale says of them:²⁷⁹ ‘The Bharias were the wildest of the wild Gonds and were inveterate dhayā²⁸⁰ cutters.’ Although, however, they have to some extent intermarried with the Gonds, the Bharias were originally quite a distinct tribe, and would belong to the Kolarian or Munda group but that they have entirely forgotten their own language and speak only Hindi, though with a peculiar intonation especially noticeable in the case of their women.

2. Tribal subdivisions.

The structure of the tribe is a very loose one, and though the Bharias say that they are divided into subcastes, there are none in reality. Members of all castes except the very lowest may become Bharias, and one Bharia will recognise another as a fellow-tribesman if he can show relationship to any person admitted to occupy that position. But a division is in process of formation in Bilāspur based on the practice of eating beef, from which some abstain, and in consequence look down on the others who are addicted to it, and call them Dhur Bharias, the term dhur meaning cattle. The abstainers from beef now refuse to marry with the others. The tribe is divided into a number of exogamous groups, and the names of these indicate the very heterogeneous elements of which it consists. Out of fifty-one groups reported not less than fifteen or sixteen have names derived from other castes or clans, showing almost certainly that such groups were formed by a mixed marriage or the admission of a family of outsiders. Such names are: Agaria, from the Agarias or iron-workers: this clan worships Loha-Sur, the god of the Agarias; Ahirwār, or the descendants of an Ahīr: this clan worships the Ahīr gods; Bamhania, born of a Brāhman ancestor; Binjhwār or Binjha, perhaps from the tribe of that name; Chandel, from a Rājpūt clan; Dagdoha, a synonym of Basor: persons of this sept hang a piece of bamboo and a curved knife to the waist of the bride at their marriages; Dhurua, born of a Dhurua Gond; Kuānpa, born of an Ahīr subcaste of that name; Kurka, of Korku parentage; Marāvi, the name of a Gond clan; Rāthor from a Rājpūt clan; Samarba from a Chamār; and Yarkara, the name of a Gond clan. These names sufficiently indicate the diverse elements of which the tribe is made up. Other group names with meanings are: Gambhele, or those who seclude their women in a separate house during the menstrual period; Kaitha, from the kaith tree (Feronia elephantum); Karondiha, from the karonda plant (Carissa Carandas); Magarha, from magar a crocodile: members of this group worship an image of a crocodile made with flour and fried in oil; Sonwāni, from sona gold: members of this group perform the ceremony of readmission of persons temporarily put out of caste by sprinkling on them a little water in which gold has been dipped. Any person who does not know his clan name calls himself a Chandel, and this group, though bearing the name of a distinguished Rājpūt clan, is looked upon as the lowest. But although the rule of exogamy in marriage is recognised, it is by no means strictly adhered to, and many cases are known in which unions have taken place between members of the same clan. So long as people can recollect a relationship between themselves, they do not permit their families to intermarry. But the memory of the Bharia does not extend beyond the third generation.

3. Marriage.

Marriages are adult, and the proposal comes from the boy’s father, who has it conveyed to the girl’s father through some friend in his village. If a betrothal is arranged the bride’s father invites the father and friends of the bridegroom to dinner; on this occasion the boy’s father brings some necklaces of lac beads and spangles and presents them to the bride’s female relatives, who then come out and tie the necklaces round his neck and those of his friends, place the spangles on their foreheads, and then, catching hold of their cheeks, press and twist them violently. Some turmeric powder is also thrown on their faces. This is the binding portion of the betrothal ceremony. The date of marriage is fixed by a Brāhman, this being the only purpose for which he is employed, and a bride-price varying from six to twelve rupees is paid. On this occasion the women draw caricatures with turmeric or charcoal on the loin-cloth of the boy’s father, which they manage to purloin. The marriage ceremony follows generally the Hindu form. The bridegroom puts on women’s ornaments and carries with him an iron nut-cracker or dagger to keep off evil spirits. After the wedding, the midua, a sort of burlesque dance, is held. The girl’s mother gets the dress of the boy’s father and puts it on, together with a false beard and moustaches, and dances, holding a wooden ladle in one hand and a packet of ashes in the other. Every time she approaches the bridegroom’s father on her rounds she spills some of the ashes over him, and occasionally gives him a crack on the head with her ladle, these actions being accompanied by bursts of laughter from the party and frenzied playing by the musicians. When the party reach the bridegroom’s house on their return, his mother and the other women come out and burn a little mustard and human hair in a lamp, the unpleasant smell emitted by these articles being considered potent to drive away evil spirits. Every time the bride leaves her father’s house she must weep, and must cry separately with each one of her caste-sisters when taking leave of them. When she returns home she must begin weeping loudly on the boundary of the village, and continue doing so until she has embraced each of her relatives and friends, a performance which in a village containing a large number of Bharias may take from three to six hours. These tears are, however, considered to be a manifestation of joy, and the girl who cannot produce enough of them is often ridiculed. A prospective son-in-law who serves for his wife is known as Gharjiān. The work given him is always very heavy, and the Bharias have a saying which compares his treatment with that awarded to an ox obtained on hire. If a girl is seduced by a man of the tribe, she may be married to him by the ceremony prescribed for the remarriage of a widow, which consists merely in the placing of bangles on the wrists and a present of a new cloth, together with a feast to the caste-fellows. Similarly if she is seduced by a man of another caste who would be allowed to become a Bharia, she can be married as a widow to any man of the tribe. A widow is expected to marry her late husband’s younger brother, but no compulsion is exercised. If a bachelor espouses a widow, he first goes through the ceremony of marriage with a ring to which a twig of the date-palm is tied, by carrying the ring seven times round the marriage post. This is necessary to save him from the sin of dying unmarried, as the union with a widow is not reckoned as a true marriage. In Jubbulpore divorce is said to be allowed only for conjugal misbehaviour, and a Bharia will pass over three transgressions on his wife’s part before finally turning her out of his house. A woman who wishes to leave her husband simply runs away from him and lives with somebody else. In this case the third party must pay a goat to the husband by way of compensation and give a feast to the caste-fellows.

4. Childbirth.

The carelessness of the Bharias in the matter of childbirth is notorious, and it is said that mothers commonly went on working up to the moment of childbirth and were delivered of children in the fields. Now, however, the woman lies up for three days, and some ceremonies of purification are performed. In Chhattīsgarh infants are branded on the day of their birth, under the impression that this will cause them to digest the food they have taken in the womb. The child is named six months after birth by the father’s sister, and its lips are then touched with cooked food for the first time.

5. Funeral ceremonies.

The tribe both burn and bury the dead, and observe mourning for an adult for ten days, during which time they daily put out a leaf-cup containing food for the use of the deceased. In the third year after the death, the mangan or caste beggar visits the relatives of the deceased, and receives what they call one limb (ang), or half his belongings; the ang consists of a loin-cloth, a brass vessel and dish, an axe, a scythe and a wrist-ring.

6. Religion and magic.

The Bharias call themselves Hindus and worship the village deities of the locality, and on the day of Diwāli offer a black chicken to their family god, who may be Bura Deo, Dūlha Deo or Karua, the cobra. For this snake they profess great reverence, and say that he was actually born in a Bharia family. As he could not work in the fields he was usually employed on errands. One day he was sent to the house, and surprised one of his younger brother’s wives, who had not heard him coming, without her veil. She reproached him, and he retired in dudgeon to the oven, where he was presently burnt to death by another woman, who kindled a fire under it not knowing that he was there. So he has been deified and is worshipped by the tribe. The Bharias also venerate Bāgheshwar, the tiger god, and believe that no tiger will eat a Bharia. On the Diwāli day they invite the tiger to drink some gruel which they place ready for him behind their houses, at the same time warning the other villagers not to stir out of doors. In the morning they display the empty vessels as a proof that the tiger has visited them. They practise various magical devices, believing that they can kill a man by discharging at him a mūth or handful of charmed objects such as lemons, vermilion and seeds of urad. This ball will travel through the air and, descending on the house of the person at whom it is aimed, will kill him outright unless he can avert its power by stronger magic, and perhaps even cause it to recoil in the same manner on the head of the sender. They exorcise the Sudhiniyas or the drinkers of human blood. A person troubled by one of these is seated near the Bharia, who places two pots with their mouths joined over a fire. He recites incantations and the pots begin to boil, emitting blood. This result is obtained by placing a herb in the pot whose juice stains the water red. The blood-sucker is thus successfully exorcised. To drive away the evil eye they burn a mixture of chillies, salt, human hair and the husks of kodon, which emits a very evil smell. Such devices are practised by members of the tribe who hold the office of Bhumia or village priest. The Bharias are well-known thieves, and they say that the dark spots on the moon are caused by a banyan tree, which God planted with the object of diminishing her light and giving thieves a chance to ply their trade. If a Bhumia wishes to detect a thief, he sits clasping hands with a friend, while a pitcher is supported on their hands. An oblation is offered to the deity to guide the ordeal correctly, and the names of suspected persons are recited one by one, the name at which the pitcher topples over being that of the thief. But before employing this method of detection the Bhumia proclaims his intention of doing so on a certain date, and in the meantime places a heap of ashes in some lonely place and invites the thief to deposit the stolen article in the ashes to save himself from exposure. By common custom each person in the village is required to visit the heap and mingle a handful of ashes with it, and not infrequently the thief, frightened at the Bhumia’s powers of detection, takes the stolen article and buries it in the ash-heap where it is duly found, the necessity for resorting to the further method of divination being thus obviated. Occasionally the Bharia in his character of a Hindu will make a vow to pay for a recitation of the Satya Nārāyan Katha or some other holy work. But he understands nothing of it, and if the Brāhman employed takes a longer time than he had bargained for over the recitation he becomes extremely bored and irritated.

7. Social life and customs.

The scantiness of the Bharia’s dress is proverbial, and the saying is ‘Bharia bhwāka, pwānda langwāta’, or ‘The Bharia is verily a devil, who only covers his loins with a strip of cloth.’ But lately he has assumed more clothing. Formerly an iron ring carried on the wrist to exorcise the evil spirits was his only ornament. Women wear usually only one coarse cloth dyed red, spangles on the forehead and ears, bead necklaces, and cheap metal bracelets and anklets. Some now have Hindu ornaments, but in common with other low castes they do not usually wear a nose-ring, out of respect to the higher castes. Women, though they work in the fields, do not commonly wear shoes; and if these are necessary to protect the feet from thorns, they take them off and carry them in the presence of an elder or a man of higher caste. They are tattooed with various devices, as a cock, a crown, a native chair, a pitcher stand, a sieve and a figure called dhandha, which consists of six dots joined by lines, and appears to be a representation of a man, one dot standing for the head, one for the body, two for the arms and two for the legs. This device is also used by other castes, and they evince reluctance if asked to explain its meaning, so that it may be intended as a representation of the girl’s future husband. The Bharia is considered very ugly, and a saying about him is: ‘The Bharia came down from the hills and got burnt by a cinder, so that his face is black.’ He does not bathe for months together, and lives in a dirty hovel, infested by the fowls which he loves to rear. His food consists of coarse grain, often with boiled leaves as a vegetable, and he consumes much whey, mixing it with his scanty portion of grain. Members of all except the lowest castes are admitted to the Bharia community on presentation of a pagri and some money to the headman, together with a feast to the caste-fellows. The Bharias do not eat monkeys, beef or the leavings of others, but they freely consume fowls and pork. They are not considered as impure, but rank above those castes only whose touch conveys pollution. For the slaughter of a cow the Bilāspur Bharias inflict the severe punishment of nine daily feasts to the caste, or one for each limb of the cow, the limbs being held to consist of the legs, ears, horns and tail. They have an aversion for the horse and will not remove its dung. To account for this they tell a story to the effect that in the beginning God gave them a horse to ride and fight upon. But they did not know how to mount the horse because it was so high. The wisest man among them then proposed to cut notches in the side of the animal by which they could climb up, and they did this. But God, when he saw it, was very angry with them, and ordered that they should never be soldiers, but should be given a winnowing-fan and broom to sweep the grain out of the grass and make their livelihood in that way.

8. Occupation.

The Bharias are usually farmservants and field-labourers, and their services in these capacities are in much request. They are hardy and industrious, and so simple that it is an easy matter for their masters to involve them in perpetual debt, and thus to keep them bound to service from generation to generation. They have no understanding of accounts, and the saying, ‘Pay for the marriage of a Bharia and he is your bond-slave for ever,’ sufficiently explains the methods adopted by their employers and creditors.