The Kacháris

As might be expected among a purely agricultural community, the great annual pujas, which are three in number, are directly connected with the ingathering of the three chief rice crops of the year, i. e., the Áhu, Pharma, and Śáli crops. The dates for these annual pujas do not seem to be at all rigidly fixed, but are apparently settled by the village elders to meet the public convenience. There is no prescribed form of religious worship; indeed, the whole gathering is rather of the nature of a village merry-making than a religious service; and there is invariably a very large consumption of the national beverage (rice-beer) at all these gatherings.

There is said to be another puja known as morong-puja, of which the special object is to propitiate the cholera demon, to whom are made offerings of he-goats, pigeons, fowls and betel-nuts, &c. In addition to these, flowers, eggs, pounded rice-flour, &c., are sometimes placed on rafts and set afloat on a river; and occasionally animals (goats, &c.) are exposed in this way on rafts as an oblation to the river god (dǒi-ni madai).28 It may be taken for granted that, whenever these rafts are found on streams in the Kachári country, cholera or other malignant disease is or has been doing its deadly work among the people. In addition to the pujas above mentioned, which are more or less of a general character, offerings of goats, chickens, and a mixture of pulse and rice known as gazi, are often placed at the foot of certain trees, usually old trees, and finally left there. As a rule, only the heads of the goats, chicken, &c., so offered will be found at the foot of such trees, the bodies of the slaughtered animals being consumed by the offerers. These oblations are made, not by the village community as a whole, but by the heads of individual families, some one member of which is in severe trouble from sickness or other like cause. The money value of such offerings is sometimes not inconsiderable.

Priesthood

There is no authorised priestly caste among the Kacháris, nor are Brahmins ever employed in their religious ceremonies, these latter indeed being generally of a social, and even festive, rather than a religious character. In Kamrup, however, one of the recognised sub-tribes is, or was, known as “Brāhmarǒi,” a name which seems to point to Brahmins as having a certain standing in the Bådå community. All religious offices are now discharged by Deoris or Deodáis, who are usually men of a certain age and recognised social position in the village community; village elders in fact. The office is not hereditary, and any one versed in the usual forms of exorcism, &c., can discharge it. Another class of persons employed in religious ceremonies is known as the Ojhá or Ojhá-Burá, who is generally armed with shells, cowries, &c., by the manipulation of which he professes to be able to foretell prosperity or the reverse to those who consult him. These officials are supposed to be competent to deal with the ordinary ailments of village life by indicating the approximate method of propitiating the offended deity (modai), whose anger is held to be the cause of all the ills that flesh is heir to.

But in times of special emergency, e. g., plague, pestilence, famine, &c., the services of the “possessed” woman,29 the Deodáni, are called into action for a special puja organised on a somewhat large scale. These gatherings are not very common, but when they do occur the order of the proceedings is something as follows, as occasionally witnessed by the writer. A piece of ground about fifteen or twenty yards square, usually on the bank of a running stream, is selected for the purpose. The surface of the soil is carefully removed, and a rude screen of cotton cloth some six or eight feet high erected on bamboos at the western side of the cleared ground. At the eastern side a slight earthwork embankment, some three or four inches high and about a foot broad is thrown up; and on this a number of figures, usually seven or nine, but always an odd number, bearing a rude resemblance to the outlines of the human form, are placed in an upright position. These figures are roughly made of jungle grass twisted together, and are about one foot in height. Before each figure is placed a layer of the plantain tree with its concave side upwards, and in this are deposited the heads of slaughtered goats, pigeons, chickens, with salt, sugar-cane, plantains, gazi (a mixture of rice and pulse), &c., the whole being freely sprinkled with blood and pounded rice flour (pitháguri). The Deodáni, a somewhat weird-looking figure, with dishevelled hair, and vermilion-stained forehead, wearing a long petticoat, dances up and down to and fro before these figures, keeping time roughly with the music of cymbals and tom-toms played by four or five men, who act as her assistants. The ceremony is a prolonged one, often extending over many hours: and the Deodáni, whose faculties are apparently quite absorbed in what she is doing and who seems for the time to be lifted above the world of time and sense, gradually works herself up to a state of excitement bordering on frenzy. At this stage, which is only slowly attained, a goat is brought forward and taken up before one of the figures above mentioned, when the Deodáni, with one stroke of the long sacrificial sword, known as the imfi and reserved exclusively for such purposes, severs the victim’s head from the body. Most of the blood is held to be offered in sacrifice to the madái, before whose emblem the animal has been slaughtered; but some part is said to be sprinkled on the persons of the assembled worshippers. It is at this climax of the puja, i. e., at the sacrificial slaughtering of the goat, that the Deodáni is supposed to become possessed of the knowledge she is in search of, i. e., the name of the offended deity who has brought about the plague, &c., and also the best method of propitiating his anger; which usually involves an offering of pigs, goats, &c., to the angered god, and the giving of a feast to the whole village community, the expense being defrayed by a general contribution.

1. Ceremonies Attending Birth

In a Kachári village community there would seem to be no formally recognised midwives (dháis), any respectable and competent matron being at liberty to give attendance and assistance to the patient in such cases. In severing the umbilical cord no scissors, knife, or other implement of steel is ever used, nor is the severance effected at one stroke, but in a succession of slight cuts, seven such cuts being made in the case of a girl, and only five in that of a boy. The cutting instruments consist of thin hard strips of bamboo,30 shaped roughly into the form of a knife; and a separate bamboo knife must be used in making each slight cut, seven such knives being thus made use of for a female child and five for a male. It is not unusual for one of the bystanders to give a name to the newly-born child at the severing of the umbilical cord. The good matron who officiates as midwife receives no money payment for her services, but on the mother becoming convalescent a feast is given at the parent’s expense, in which pork and other flesh meat is always present in abundance; and at this feast the officiating midwife is accorded the place of honour, as some recognition of the value of her kindly ministrations in her neighbour’s hour of trial and need.

For about a month or six weeks, (the period seems to vary within these limits) after giving birth to a child, the mother is held to be technically “unclean,” and is subjected to certain social and religious limitations; e. g., she may not approach the dhám or domestic altar commonly found inside a Kachári’s dwelling-house, and on which she is ordinarily in the habit of making offerings of eggs, chickens, &c., in times of trouble. This period of ceremonial uncleanness is usually terminated by the use of the water of peace (śánti-jal). The deori freely sprinkles the mother as well as the house and its contents with this holy water, after which she is fully at liberty to resume social intercourse with her neighbours.31

Naming

There does not seem to be any special principle underlying the giving of names to children, nor do such names as a rule resemble those of their fathers. Like some of the lower castes among their Hindu neighbours, children often take the name of the day or the month in which they were born.32 Hence we often find such names as Deobar, Mangal, Budhu, as also Mághuá, Pháguná (names of months), &c., in use among the Kacháris. Other names are obviously adopted from the Hindus, e. g., Gangá Rám, Sáti Rám, &c. Others, again, were probably given by the mother in infancy expressive of some peculiarity in the new-born child’s mental or physical temperament. Of this type, probably, is a very common name, “Khángkhoá,” i. e., the “voracious one,” the “great eater.”33 Another illustration is the name Gáb-grá, i. e., the weeper, the crier, &c., &c. In short, any unusually prominent physical peculiarity is often seized upon to become the name by which the child is known throughout his whole after-life.

3. Marriage

A. The marriage contract. From certain scattered scraps of information on the subject that have incidentally come to the writer’s knowledge during the past forty years, it would seem that marriage by capture was largely, if not universally, in vogue among the Kacháris in earlier days. Some traces of this practice would seem to survive in the ordinary marriage ceremonial which still to a large extent holds the field. A case somewhat of this character came to the writer’s knowledge some twenty-five or thirty years ago. A young Kachári, employed as a village pandit some thirty miles from Tezpur, carried off a girl from the house of her parents some ten miles away. No actual violence apparently occurred in the matter, and very likely there had existed for some time previously a private understanding between the two young people concerned. But what was done clearly had not the approval of the girl’s parents; for these latter laid a complaint on the subject before the writer, and claimed redress for the wrong done to them. When the offending pandit was called to account for his conduct, he simply pleaded in defence that what he had done was quite in accordance with the time-honoured custom of his forefathers: and on payment of the usual bride-price, at a somewhat enhanced rate, the parents raised no further objection to their daughter’s union with the pandit.

But in modern times “marriage by capture” is rapidly passing out of vogue, if indeed it be not already absolutely a thing of the past; and the marriage contract is usually entered into in one of the four following ways: —

(a) The young people occasionally take the matter into their own hands, as in the case above mentioned, ignoring the wishes of their parents on either side. This procedure is looked upon by the community as blameworthy and irregular, but not invalid. The bride’s parents claim an immediate payment of Rs. 5/– from the bridegroom, and also exact the bride-price at a higher rate than usual. But if these conditions are duly complied with, no further objections are as a rule made to the union.

(b) The more usual practice is as follows. When the son of the house attains a marriageable age, i. e., from fifteen to twenty years, his parents at once set to work to find a suitable bride for him. Having made their choice, they pay a visit to the prospective bride’s parents, taking with them certain presents in the form of rice, liquor, betel-nuts, &c., and formally ask the daughter’s hand for their son. If the presents are accepted by the girl’s parents, it is assumed that the proposal is favourably received, and the respective parents at once proceed to settle the amount of the bride-price (gádhan),34 which is always paid by the bridegroom’s family to the parents of the bride. In Darrang the amount so paid rarely exceeds Rs. 40/– to Rs. 60/-, though in Kamrup and Goalpara it is said to be often double these sums; and even larger still among the Rábhás, Saraniyás, &c. In paying this formal visit to the prospective bride’s parents, those of the bridegroom are always accompanied by some of the elders or leading men of their own village, these latter acting as witnesses of the marriage contract, and so constituting in their own persons a very effective, if irregular, system of marriage registration. The stipulated “bride-price” need not be paid at once, nor does the actual union take place for some months after the marriage-contract has been entered into. And in no case does the bride leave her parents’ home until puberty has been attained; so that the manifold and obvious evils inseparable from the system of infant betrothals, and the prohibition of the marriage of child-widows among the higher castes of Hindus, happily find no place whatever in the more wholesome domestic life of the Kacháris.

(c) In cases where the bridegroom or his parents are unable to pay the bride-price demanded by the girl’s parents, it is usual for the young man to give the equivalent in personal service in the house of the bride’s parents, much as Jacob35 served in Laban’s house seven years for Rachel. The period of service is a matter of arrangement between the parents of the parties concerned, and seems to vary greatly, i. e., from three or four to upwards of twelve or fifteen years. Cohabitation, however, is allowed after about twelve or eighteen months’ service, and at the conclusion of the full period, the young people are free to depart whithersoever they will, though they usually return to the house of the bridegroom’s parents. This form of service is known commonly as “Olaó ghar-jiyá.”

(d) A modification of the above form of service is that which is known as “mál ghar-jiya” (Darrang) or “Khasrot-tháka ghar-jiya” (Kamrup). In this case the prospective bridegroom severs all connection with his own family, and identifies himself completely with that of his bride, in whose house he serves until the death of her parents, when with his wife he is entitled to the whole or the usual share of their property. On that of his own parents or relatives he retains no claim whatever.

The actual ceremony of marriage among the Kacháris can perhaps hardly be looked upon as of a religious character, but must be regarded as more of the nature of a social and festive gathering. The order of proceedings is somewhat as follows: – On a fixed day a party of the bridegroom’s friends, numbering some four or five women and thirty or forty men, set out for the house of the bride’s parents or guardians. The bridegroom may himself accompany the party but more frequently does not. The immediate object of the journey is to bring the bride to the bridegroom’s house. The party take with them nine loads of viands, i. e., two men carry a pig, other two a large jar containing rice-liquor, four men carry loads of támal-pan, whilst the last man carries a quantity of eatables meant for the men and cowherds, who, it is supposed, might otherwise attempt to prevent the marriage party from reaching the bride’s house. Two women called bairati are in charge of these materials for the wedding feast.36 On reaching the bride’s house her people pour freely on the whole party an irritating liquid known as kachu páni (water mixed with the juice of the kachu plant) and to this somewhat rough welcome the bridegroom’s party are bound to submit without complaining, although the liquid causes much irritation to, and even blisters, the skin. Finally the good things brought by the bridegroom’s party are taken charge of by the bride’s people, and the wedding feast is forthwith duly prepared. The village elders sit in front of the assembly, often a large one, and the younger people behind, each guest having in front of him either a brass plate or (more usually) a plantain leaf. On each of these plates the bride places a quantity of rice and curry, serving the elders first; and when all are duly provided for she makes obeisance to the assembled company, and sometimes kneels in their midst for their sanction and approval on entering upon the duties of married life, her husband when present kneeling with her. Then one of the village elders, acting as Deori, makes a short address on the obligations of the married state, ending by wishing every blessing, &c., to the newly wedded pair, the whole assembly joining in at the end with one voice “erŏina záthang,” i. e., “so may it be,” (Amen). The rest of the day is spent in feasting and merry-making, but towards evening the bride is formally taken to the bridegroom’s house. If on the journey she has to cross a river, road, or embankment (áli), &c., she is given at each such crossing nine areca nuts and nine pan-leaves as presents to overcome her assumed reluctance to proceed further. (Perhaps another relic of the “marriage by capture” practice.) Before the bride enters the bridegroom’s house, those who bring her are entitled to receive a jar of molasses as well as one of rice-liquor, and are hospitably entertained for the night. It is said that Kachári custom sanctions a certain interval of time, sometimes amounting to five days, between the bride’s entering her husband’s house and the consummation of the marriage. All expenses attending the marriage festival, which may extend to Rs. 200/– and upwards, are borne by the family of the bridegroom, the bride’s people as a rule contributing nothing.

4. Death

Immediately after death occurs, the corpse is carefully washed by the nearest relatives, the arms and legs straightened out, the head anointed with oil, and the hair reverently combed. A fowl or a pigeon is killed, and from its flesh a curry is prepared with vegetables and condiments. A portion of this food is then placed close by the deceased’s head, and the act of feeding him with a little of it is carried out up to a certain point, though no food is as a matter of fact actually placed within his lips. This act is repeated some ten or twelve times, and what remains of the curry, &c., is then thrown away, no one being allowed to consume it. The dead man’s body is then clothed with the best garments he owned in his lifetime, and the whole covered with a perfectly new cloth; and in this condition it is taken outside the homestead for final disposal.

Disposal of the dead. There are two recognised way of disposing of the dead, i. e., (1) Burial and (2) Cremation. The latter is looked upon as the more correct and respectable, though from motives of economy the former is by far the more common. 1. BurialWhen burial is decided upon the corpse is carried to its last resting place, which is often but not always on the banks of a running stream, by the nearest surviving relatives, no women being permitted to attend. Should it be necessary for the burial party to cross a river or irrigation canal, a cord is usually stretched from bank to bank at the crossing place, either above or below the water, to serve a kind of bridge for the spirit (jiwa), should he be at any time disposed to revisit the scenes amid which his earthly life has been passed.37 Arrived at a suitable place (there are no recognised cemeteries for the interment), some pice are thrown on the spot, to purchase the ground from the deity (madái) to whom it is supposed to belong. The body is laid on the ground and the grave duly dug, but before placing the corpse therein, the friends and relatives make a solemn procession around it, five times in the case of a man and seven in that of a woman. The body is then placed in the grave, a somewhat shallow one, and the nearest relatives proceed to fill it with earth. In carrying out this process a certain precaution is taken, i. e., a hollow reed or a stalk of jungle grass (kher) is placed perpendicularly in the grave extending from the nose of the deceased to a point somewhat above the natural level of the ground; and in filling the grave with earth, great care is taken not to injure or displace this reed, so that the deceased’s spirit may be able to breathe should he so desire. After filling the grave four posts are erected over it, one at each corner; and threads passed around them, in order to prevent the spirits of other men from interfering with the repose of the deceased. In the case of well-to-do people a certain number of rupees are usually buried with the corpse, and even the poorer classes make offerings of pice, &c., for this pious purpose; whilst brass and other utensils needed in every-day life are almost always left on the grave, it being supposed that the deceased may require the use of these things in the new state of existence on which he has recently entered. Finally, a rough shed of thatch is put up close by the grave to shelter the deceased’s spirit from rain and sun.

2. Cremation. Very much the same procedure is in vogue in the case of cremation, which is looked upon as the more respectable method of disposing of the dead among the wealthier members of the community. Cremation usually takes place on or near the banks of running streams, and is prefaced by the formal buying of the land from the deity (madái) of the locality. Here too a certain difference is made in disposing of the corpse of a man and of a woman respectively; for in the case of a woman seven layers of wood are placed under the body and seven above it, whilst in dealing with a man’s corpse five such layers under and five above the body are held to be sufficient. After placing the body on the funeral pile, the deceased’s friends and relatives pass round it in procession, five times in the case of a man and seven in that of a woman (see above). The funeral pile is then set on fire on all four sides at once, and the fire carefully fed until every vestige of the deceased’s body is consumed. The ashes are not carried away, but four posts are usually placed in the ground enclosing the oblong space on which the cremation has been carried out; and on the tops of these a cloth is spread, which is held to shelter the spirit of the deceased from sun and rain.

Indications of belief in life after death. From what has been written above, it would certainly seem that the Kachári has some idea, however vague and unsatisfactory, of a life prolonged after the great change we commonly call “death,” though his notion of the future life is merely that of the “first (earthly) life renewed.” It has obviously little or nothing in common with the hope of life eternal in Christ, i. e., life in God, life with God, life like God, given us in the New Testament (see 1 Cor. xv.; Phil. iii. 20, 21; 1 John iii. 2).

Festivities.1. Domestic. From such information as the writer has been able to ascertain, there would seem to be few well-marked domestic festivities among the Kacháris, though the race is a very sociable and hospitable one, and the people entertain each other freely and frequently.

The two following may perhaps be mentioned: —

A. “Mikham gadán zánái,” i. e., the “eating of the new rice.” This is a feast held about December 10th (there is apparently no fixed date), in celebration of the commencement of the cutting of the great rice crop of the year (sáli dhán). It is on this occasion that the proceeds of the newly harvested rice are first partaken of as an actual article of food. There is perhaps nothing of a religious character about it, its main feature being a very free consumption of rice-beer, often resulting in much drunkenness.

B. “Mahu hanai” (or thàmfoi hasa-nai K), i. e., “the driving away of mosquitoes.” This is a form of merry-making got up mainly by the young people of a village about the latter part of November or early in December, to celebrate the departure of the mosquito plague for the cold season. Some twenty-five years ago the writer was passing the night in a school-shed, and was aroused from sleep by much shouting, dancing, &c., just outside the door. On looking out into the moonlight he saw a group of fantastic figures, some of them clothed in dry plantain leaves, and wearing a head-dress made of thatch of preposterous proportions resembling an enormous conical-shaped “dunce cap.” On inquiring the reason of the gathering, he was told that the performers were “driving away the mosquitoes.” No doubt this is an amusement got up by the younger members of the community, who are sometimes rewarded for their efforts by small gifts of money, food, &c., from their elders (cf. “Guy Fawkes,” at home).