Plate IIIDharkārs(Mirzapur district)
Plate IIIDharkārs(Mirzapur district)
Plate III
Dharkārs(Mirzapur district)
Of the Turko-Iranian tribes of the north-western frontier I need not speak at any length, since these tribes are all sturdy followers of the Prophet, and save that they are under British rule can hardly besaid to belong to India at all. There is no likelihood that they will ever be received into the tolerant bosom of Hinduism, since, to the Indian proper, the Baloch and the Afghan are disagreeable and swaggering caterans, who have an innate scorn for the typical Hindu hierarchy of caste. Among these tribes it is martial ability and valour that win a man consideration and wives.
Let us now turn to caste properly so called, the traditional social divisions of the Hindus. And first it is necessary to say something of the ancient Hindu theory of what caste is, and how it came into existence.
As with the Hebrews, the religious literature of India contains a vast mass of what can only be called law, and perhaps, the most famous of Indian law books is the Institutes of Manu, a compilation of rules relating to magic, religion, law, custom, ritual and metaphysics. Even to this day, these branches of speculation and enquiry, so distinct to western imaginations, are apt to be confused together as a result of the pantheistic feeling which pervades Hinduism. The Institutes is a comparatively modern book, but it repeats ideas which are found in a more or less explicit form in early authorities[1]. In this book we are told that in the beginning of things the Pan-theos who "contains all created things and is inconceivable"produced by effort of thought a golden egg, from which he himself was born as Brahmā, the creator of the known universe. From his mouth, his arms, his thighs, and his feet respectively he created the four great leading castes, the Brāhman, the Kshatriya, the Vaiçya, and the Sūdra. These were, briefly, the priests, the warriors and gentlefolk, the traders, and the servile classes of human society. The other castes were gradually formed, the theory states, by intermarriages between these. The three higher castes were allowed to take wives from lower castes. When the caste of the mother was next below that of the father, the child took the caste of his mother and no new caste was formed. But where the difference of condition was greater than this, new castes were formed, lower than those of either parent. Some discrepancies of rank produced unions which were regarded as peculiarly offensive to human feelings and as tantamount to incestuous intercourse. These resulted in very degraded castes. Where the father married beneath him, the marriage was described asanulomaor "with the hair." When a woman was guilty of amésalliance, the marriage was calledpratilomaor "against the hair." The most disgraceful union of this kind was that between a Brāhman woman and a Sūdra man, the resulting offspring being relegated to the caste of Chandāl. The unfortunate Chandāl is described as "that lowest of mortals," and is condemned,as Sir H. Risley says, to live outside the village, to clothe himself in the garments of the dead, to eat from broken dishes, to execute criminals, and to carry out the corpses of friendless men.
The most superficial acquaintance with existing caste divisions shows that this theory is not so much a hypothesis as a fanciful fiction. In eastern Bengal, for instance, the Chandāl is evidently a Mongoloid aboriginal, with a considerable strain of Dravidian and perhaps even of Aryan blood. Yet the fiction shows plainly enough the estimation in which one of the numerically largest divisions of local society is held. Some thirty years ago, when I was a young magistrate, a comely Chandāl girl appeared before me, her face streaming with blood from a scalp wound. She asserted gravely that a Sūdra of higher caste had struck her on the head with a stick, because he had found her reading a book as she sat in the doorway of her father's cottage. I was disinclined to believe this story, but her assailant was promptly sent for, and being brought straight to me, admitted the truth of the charge, and seemed surprised at my indignation at a cowardly assault.
As an attempt to account for the origin and explain the nature of caste the theory of Manu is obviously a failure. But it contains a picture of the early castes. It is also interesting because the idea of four originalvarnasor "colours" of men may havebeen borrowed from the old Persian social organisation. The early scriptures, the Vedas, show that this conception of four original castes was not brought to India by Aryan immigrants. But when caste came into being as a result of the contact of Aryan settlers with Dravidian aborigines, this mythological explanation, which gave such conspicuous eminence to priests and warriors, an eminence already conceded to them on account of the importance of their functions, was readily accepted as a convincing explanation of the hereditary differences between men in society, a difference not merely of function, but of colour, aspect, gesture, speech, breeding, and intelligence. It is necessary to mention this theory, however briefly, since it still holds ground, except among those Indians who have had a European education and even among them has the interest of early and sacred associations which, in Europe, belongs to the cosmological speculations of the book of Genesis.
What, next, are castes as they appear to the eye of the European ethnologist, free from preconceived prejudice, and only anxious to come as near the truth as is possible in his dealings with ancient institutions round which has gathered a vast mass of venerable superstition and religious speculation? In the first place, castes are often still recognisablytribes. Sometimes the leading men of an aboriginal tribe will acquire sufficient wealth and socialconsideration to wish to obtain the stamp of recognition as reputable Hindus. They will call themselves, for example, and induce their neighbours and the priests of these to call them, Rājputs. They may not at first succeed in intermarrying with true hereditary Rājputs, but in time they will be just Rājputs like any other Rājputs. Or, again, a number of non-Hindus, animists, will join one of the many Hindu sects or fraternities and will intermarry with Vaishnavas, Lingayats, Rāmayats, or other devotees of some favourite deity. Or again, a whole tribe or a considerable portion of a tribe, usually one of some political importance, will enter Hinduism by means of some plausible fiction. The instance quoted by Sir H. Risley is that of the Koches of north-eastern Bengal. These people are Tibeto-Burmans and until recent times spoke a dialect of the agglutinative Bodo language. They now call themselves Rājbansis, "of royal birth," or Bhāngā Kshatriyas, "broken warriors," names which enable them to claim an origin from the traditional dispersion of the Aryan warrior caste by the hero Parasu Rāma, "Rāma of the battle axe." They claim descent from the epic monarch Dasarath, father of Rāma, have their own Brāahmins, and have begun to adopt the Brāhminical system of exogamousgotras. But, as Sir H. Risley remarks, they are in a transitional state, since they have all hit upon the samegotra, and are therefore compelled to marrywithin it, except in the rare instances in which they contract unions with Bengali women.
A still more interesting, because more recent, instance of this sort is that of the Meithei, now known to Hindus as Manipuris. In the Mahābhāarata is told the tale of how the hero Arjuna wandered from his brethren into Southern and Eastern India, and, among other adventures, met (as Æneas with Dido) with Chitrangadā, the fair daughter of the King of Manipur, somewhere near the eastern coast. Some 150 years ago, the then king of the beautiful valley of Imphāl, between Assam and Burma, was thinking of becoming a Muhammadan, by way of courting the favour of the Muhammadan rulers of Bengal. But Hindu priests persuaded him that a better way of linking his fortunes with those of India, rather than with Ava (with whose royal family his dynasty had usually intermarried), was by becoming Hindu with all his people. Imphāl was identified with Manipur, and many of the Meithei race became Vishnuvite Hindus with their ruler, though they retain their primitive Tibeto-Burman language. I may mention a little personal reminiscence to show how completely the change by fictitious adoption was accepted in Bengal. In 1891, my old friend and chief, Mr Quinton, with all his staff, was treacherously murdered at Manipur. Subsequently when I was magistrate of Chittagong, I found thatmy head clerk, an extremely mild and intelligent Bengali Kāyastha, had celebrated the easily suppressed mutiny at Manipur by writing a drama based on the ancient legend of Arjuna's amours with Chitrangadā!
Sometimes an aboriginal tribe will become a Hindu caste without losing its old tribal designation. They will worship Hindu gods without daring wholly to neglect tribal deities, which, as might perhaps be expected, are left chiefly to the women of the tribe. Such a tribe will rapidly assimilate itself to the beliefs and practices of Hindu neighbours, and finally only its name and (except in case of occasional intermarriage with other castes) its physical aspect will remain to testify to its origin.
Castes are at present classified as follows:
(1) What Sir H. Risley callsthe tribal type, instances of which have been given above. Such tribal castes abound in all parts of India. It is not improbable that the great Sūdra division of Hindu tradition was originally the whole mass of Dravidian aboriginals as they came into contact with Aryan immigrants, and were conceded a subordinate place in their social system. It would be useless to give a list of the names of such castes, but I cannot refrain from mentioning the excellent Doms of the Assam Valley, whose name unfortunately associates them with very different people in India proper.They are obviously of Tibeto-Burman origin, and deserve closer study than they receive. Their long thatched places of worship, true synagogues for meeting together and curiously unlike the tinycellæof Hindu temples, are among the most conspicuous features of Assam villages. They have no idols, and place aputhi, a holy book, on what may pass for the village altar. They are vaguely Hinduised, but will humbly declare "āmi hindu na hô," "we are not Hindu folk." Yet they are well on their way towards acceptance into caste, and have already a strong infusion of Hindu blood.
Other border races, though they are still too savage and independent to become Hindu, are marked down for absorption. Such, for instance, are the Daflas of the northern border of Assam, cousins of the Abors to whom attention has been drawn by recent events. The Daflas are still frankly animistic; their love of strong spirits and other intoxicants, their addiction to their favourite diet of roast pork, their extremely uncleanly habits and barbarous speech, all make them very offensive to the gentle vegetarian Hindus their neighbours. But it happens that the tribal costume closely resembles the traditional dress of Mahādēva, the Destroyer, the most active and formidable member of the Hindu Trinity, and already some Hindus speak of these genial Highlanders as Siva-bansa, as "of Siva's race."Many other examples, with interesting details of fictional methods, will be found in Mr E. A. Gait's admirableHistory of Assam.
(2)The functional or occupational typeof caste. This is the form of caste best known to Europeans, because, since the first European missionaries and traders visited those parts of India where the caste system has had the longest opportunity to evolve, they came most into contact with this, which is probably the oldest and most elaborated form of caste. The Hindu theory of caste encouraged the adoption of special occupations, and now the evolution has proceeded so far that change of occupation may usually result in a change of caste. A remarkable instance of this is found in the Marāthi districts of the Central Provinces. Here is a separate and newly formed caste of village servants called Gārpagāri, "hail-averters," whose business it is to protect the village crops from hailstorms. Shepherds who take to tillage break away from their pastoral brethren, and so on. Even those who retain their traditional occupations are wont to adopt more seemly-sounding names than those that belong to their trade. I have known barbers who called themselves Chandra-vaidyas[2], which is a promotionmore subtle than a mere ascent to the status of "hair-dresser," and washermen who have followed suit by dubbing themselves Sukla-vaidya, a word of which "white-worker" is a crude but sufficiently suggestive translation.
(3) Thesectarian typeis a singularly interesting example of the strong social influence of Hindu sentiment. Nearly all new Hindu sects begin by renouncing caste in the enthusiastic following of some single deity, some new explanation of the mysteries of life, and love, and death. These sects are usually the followers of some reforming theorist, whose leadership is apt to become hereditary. Such sects almost always believe that all men are equal, or at all events, that all who accept their doctrines are equal. One of my most interesting recollections is of a now distant interview with a buxom middle-aged lady, the hereditary leader of the Kartā-bhajās of Central Bengal. She sat unveiled, and was accessible to all who, like myself, were interested in the community over which she exercised a firm but good-natured control. It is a picturesque detail that her chosen seat when receiving visitors was an ancient European four-poster bedstead. Her followers (and revenues) were growing rapidly, increased chiefly by the democratic instinct which, even in India, revolts against social prestige. But it would seem that when such a sect grows andspreads, the old separatist ideas reassert themselves, and the sect breaks up into smaller endogamous communities, whose status depends on the original position of the members in Hinduism. The most remarkable instance of this kind is furnished by the great Lingayat caste of Bombay, which contains over two and a half millions of members. In the twelfth century the Lingayats were a sect who believed in the equality of all men. In Mr P. J. Mead's Bombay Census Report for 1911 is a very interesting account of the present condition of the Lingayats, an account which shows how the scholar, the linguist, and the administrator can work together to find materials for the anthropologist. Dr Fleet's examination of ancient inscriptions has thrown much light on the origin of the sect, but the author of the Report holds that there may be some reason to think that the sect is much older than is commonly supposed. In any case, they are already divided into three great groups, comprising many subdivisions.
(4)Castes formed by crossingcome aptly to show that there was some basis for Manu's theory of caste after all. Castes, nowadays, increase by fission, by throwing off sub-castes, and one species of these sub-castes is created by mixed marriages. This tendency, curiously enough, is most evident in Dravidian tribes, such as the Mundās, which are not yet wholly Hinduised, but have beenaffected by Hindu example. So far as I know, these mixed castes do not occur among the Mongoloid peoples, and I have come across cases where a member of an aboriginal tribe has been accepted into the caste of a Hindu girl he has married. In one case, within my own experience, the bridegroom had begun as an animist, had become Christian, and finally entered by marriage into the quite respectable Koch caste. One interesting caste in Bengal, that of the Shāgirdpeshas, owes its origin to concubinage with the so-called slaves, the women of tenants surrounding a homestead who pay their rent in service. This, it will be observed, is a caste of illegitimacy, in which the relationship between the legitimate and illegitimate children of a man of good caste is recognised, but the two are not allowed to eat together. The classical instance of a mixed caste is the Khas of Nepāl, said to be the result of very ancient intermarriages between Rājput or Brāhman immigrants and the Mongolian "daughters of men."