The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 2

3. Social customs.

The Daharias, in theory at any rate, observe the same rules in regard to their women as Brāhmans and Rājpūts. Neither divorce nor the marriage of widows is permitted, and a woman who goes wrong is finally expelled from the caste. Their social customs resemble those of the higher Hindustāni castes. When the bridegroom starts for the wedding he is dressed in a long white gown reaching to the ankles, with new shoes, and he takes with him a dagger; this serves the double purpose of warding off evil spirits, always prone to attack the bridal party, and also of being a substitute for the bridegroom himself, as in case he should for some unforeseen reason be rendered unable to appear at the ceremony, the bride could be married to the dagger as his representative. It may also be mentioned that, before the bridegroom starts for the wedding, after he has been rubbed with oil and turmeric for five days he is seated on a wooden plank over a hole dug in the courtyard and bathed. He then changes his clothes, and the women bring twenty-one small chukias or cups full of water and empty them over him. His head is then covered with a piece of new cloth, and a thread wound round it seven times by a Brāhman. The thread is afterwards removed, and tied round an iron ring with some mango leaves, and this ring forms the kankan which is tied to the bridegroom’s wrist, a similar one being worn by the bride. Before the wedding the bride goes round to the houses of her friends, accompanied by the women of her party singing songs, and by musicians. At each house the mistress appears with her forehead and the parting of her hair profusely smeared with vermilion. She rubs her forehead against the bride’s so as to colour it also with vermilion, which is now considered the symbol of a long and happy married life. The barber’s wife applies red paint to the bride’s feet, the gardener’s wife presents her with a garland of flowers, and the carpenter’s wife gives her a new wooden doll. She must also visit the potter’s and washerman’s wives, whose benisons are essential; they give her a new pot and a little rice respectively. When the bridegroom comes to touch the marriage-shed with his dagger he is resisted by the bride’s sister, to whom he must give a rupee as a present. The binding portion of the marriage consists in the couple walking seven times round the marriage-post. At each turn the bridegroom seizes the bride’s right toe and with it upsets one of seven little cups of rice placed near the marriage-post. This is probably a symbol of fertility. After it they worship seven pairs of little wooden boxes smeared with vermilion and called singhora and singhori as if they were male and female. The bridegroom’s father brings two little dough images of Mahādeo and Pārvati as the ideal married pair, and gives them to the couple. The new husband applies vermilion to his wife’s forehead, and covers and uncovers her head seven times, to signify to her that, having become a wife, she should henceforth be veiled when she goes abroad. The bride’s maid now washes her face, which probably requires it, and the wedding is complete. The Daharias usually have a guru or spiritual preceptor, but husband and wife must not have the same one, as in that case they would be in the anomalous position of brother and sister, a guru’s disciples being looked upon as his children. The Daharias were formerly warriors in the service of the Ratanpur kings, and many families still possess an old sword which they worship on the day of Dasahra. Their names usually end in Singh or Lāl. They are now engaged in cultivation, and many of them are proprietors of villages, and tenants. Some of them are employed as constables and chuprāssies, but few are labourers, as they may not touch the plough with their own hands. They eat the flesh of clean animals, but do not drink liquor, and avoid onions and tomatoes. They have good features and fair complexions, the traces of their Rājpūt blood being quite evident. Brāhmans will take water from them, but they now rank below Rājpūts, on a level with the good cultivating castes.

Dāngi

1. Origin and traditions.

Dāngi.—A cultivating caste found almost exclusively in the Saugor District, which contained 23,000 persons out of a total of 24,000 of the caste in the Central Provinces in 1911. There are also considerable numbers of them in Rājputāna and Central India, from which localities they probably immigrated into the Saugor District during the eleventh century. The Dāngis were formerly dominant in Saugor, a part of which was called Dāngiwāra after them. The kings of Garhpahra or old Saugor were Dāngis, and their family still remains at the village of Bilehra, which with a few other villages they hold as a revenue-free grant. The name of the caste is variously derived. The traditional story is that the Rājpūt king of Garhpahra detained the palanquins of twenty-two married women of different castes and kept them as his wives. The issue of the illicit intercourse were named Dāngis, and there are thus twenty-two subdivisions of the caste, besides three other subdivisions who are held to be descended from pure Rājpūts. The name is said to be derived from dāng, fraud, on account of the above deception. A more plausible derivation is from the Persian dāng, a hill, the Dāngis being thus hillmen; and they may not improbably have been a set of robbers and freebooters in the Vindhyan Hills, like the Gūjars and Mewātis in northern India, naturally recruiting their band from all classes of the population, as is shown by ingenious implication in this story itself. ‘Khet men bāmi, gaon men Dāngi,’ or ‘A Dāngi in the village is like the hole of a snake in one’s field’ is a proverb which shows the estimation in which they were formerly held. The three higher septs may have been their leaders and may well have been Rājpūts. Since they have settled down as respectable cultivators and enjoy a good repute among their neighbours, the Dāngis have disowned the above story, and now say that they are descended from Rāja Dāng, a Kachhwāha Rājpūt king of Narwar in Central India. Nothing is known of Rāja Dāng except a rude couplet which records how he was cheated by a horse-dealer:

Jitki ghori tit gayiDāng hāth karyāri rahi,

‘The mare bolted to the seller again, leaving in Dāng’s hand nothing except the reins.’

The Dāngis have a more heroic version of this story to the effect that the mare was a fairy of Indra’s court, who for some reason had been transformed into this shape and was captured by Rāja Dāng. He refused to give her up to Indra and a battle was about to ensue, when the mare besought them to place her on a pyre and sacrifice her instead of fighting. They agreed to do this, and out of the flames of the pyre the fairy emerged and floated up to heaven, leaving only the reins and bridle of the mare in Rāja Dāng’s hand. Yet a third story is that their original ancestor was Rāja Nipāl Singh of Narwar, and when he was fighting with Indra over the fairy, Krishna came to Indra’s assistance. But Nipāl Singh refused to bow down to Krishna, and being annoyed at this and wishing to teach him a lesson the god summoned him to his court. At the gate through which Nipāl Singh had to pass, Krishna fixed a sword at the height of a man’s neck, so that he must bend or have his head cut off. But Nipāl Singh saw the trick, and, sitting down, propelled himself through the doorway with his head erect. The outwitted god remarked, ‘Tum bare dāndi ho,’ or ‘You are very cunning,’ and the name Dāndi stuck to Nipāl Singh and was afterwards corrupted to Dāngi. There can be little doubt that the caste are an offshoot of Rājpūts of impure blood, and with a large admixture of other classes of the population. Some of their sept names indicate their mixed descent, as Rakhya, born of a potter woman, Dhoniya, born of a washerwoman, and Pavniya, born of a weaver woman. In past times the Dāngis served in the Rājpūt and Marātha armies, and a small isolated colony of them is found in one village of Indora in the Nāgpur District, the descendants of Dāngis who engaged in military service under the Bhonsla kings.

2. Caste subdivisions.

The Dāngis have no subcastes distinguished by separate names, but they are divided into three classes, among whom the principle of hypergamy prevails. As already seen, there were formerly twenty-five clans, of whom the three highest, the Nahonias, Bhadonias and Nadias, claimed to be pure Rājpūts. The other twenty-two clans are known as Baīsa (22) or Prithwipat Dāngis, after the king who is supposed to have been the ancestor of all the clans. Each of his twenty-two wives is said to have been given a village for her maintenance, and the clans are named after these villages. But there are now only thirteen of these local clans left, and below them is a miscellaneous group of clans, representing apparently later accretions to the caste. Some of them are named from the places from which they came, as Mahobia, from Mahoba, Narwaria, from Narwar, and so on. The Solakhia sept is named after the Solanki Rājpūts, of whom they may be the partly illegitimate descendants. The Parnāmi sept are apparently those who have the creed of the Dhāmis, the followers of Prānnāth of Panna. And as already seen, some are named from women of low caste, from whom by Dāngi fathers they are supposed to be descended. The whole number of septs is thus divided into three groups, the highest containing the three quasi-Rājpūt septs already mentioned, the next highest the thirteen septs of Prithwipat Dāngis, and the lowest all the other septs. Pure Rājpūts will take daughters in marriage from the highest group, and this in turn takes girls of the Prithwipat Dāngis of the thirteen clans, though neither will give daughters in return; and the Prithwipat Dāngis will similarly accept the daughters of the miscellaneous septs below them in marriage with their sons. Matches are, however, not generally arranged according to the above system of hypergamy, but each group marries among its own members. Girls who are married into a higher group have to be given a larger dowry, the fathers often being willing to pay Rs. 500 or Rs. 1000 for the social distinction which such an alliance confers on the family. Among the highest septs there is a further difference between those whose ancestors accepted food from Rāja Jai Singh, the founder of Jaisinghnagar, and those who refused it. The former are called Sakrodia or those who ate the leavings of others, and the latter Deotaon ki sansār, or the divine Dāngis. Pure Rājpūts will take daughters only from the members of the latter group in each sept. Marriage within the sept or baink is prohibited, and as a rule a man does not marry a wife belonging to the same sept as his mother or grandmother. Marriage by exchange also is not allowed, that is, a girl cannot be married into the same family as that in which her brother has married.

3. Marriage.

Girls are generally married between seven and twelve and boys between ten and twenty, but no stigma attaches to a family allowing an unmarried girl to exceed the age of puberty. The bridegroom should always be older than the bride. Matches are arranged by the parents, the horoscopes of the children being compared among the well-to-do. The zodiacal sign of the boy’s horoscope should be stronger than that of the girl’s, so that she may be submissive to him in after-life. Thus a girl whose zodiac sign is the lion should not be married to a boy whose sign is the ram, because in that case the wife would dominate the husband. There is no special rule as to the time of the betrothal, and the ceremony is very simple, consisting in the presentation of a cocoanut by the bride’s father to the bridegroom’s father, and the distribution of sweets to the caste-fellows. The betrothal is not considered to have any particularly binding force and either party may break through it. Among the Dāngis a bridegroom-price is usually paid, which varies according to the social respectability of the boy’s sept, as much as Rs. 2000 having been given for a bridegroom of higher class according to the rule of hypergamy already described. But no value is placed on educational qualifications, as is the case among Brāhmans and Kāyasths. The marriage ceremony is conducted according to the ritual prevalent in the northern Districts, and presents no special features. Two feasts are given by the bride’s father to the caste-fellows, one consisting of katchi food or that which is cooked with water, and another of pakki food cooked with ghī (butter). If the bride is of marriageable age the gauna or sending away ceremony is performed at once, otherwise it takes place in the third or fifth year after marriage. At the gauna ceremony the bride’s cloth is tied to that of the bridegroom, and they change seats. Widow-marriage is not fashionable, and the caste say that it is not permitted, but several instances are known of its having occurred. Divorce is not allowed, and a woman who goes wrong is finally expelled from the caste. Polygamy is allowed, and many well-to-do persons have more than one wife.

4. Religious and social customs.

The Dāngis pay special reverence to the goddess Durga or Devi as the presiding deity of war. They worship her during the months of Kunwār (September) and Chait (March), and at the same time pay reverence to their weapons of war, their swords and guns, or if they have not got these, to knives and spears. They burn their dead, but children are usually buried. They observe mourning for three days for a child and for ten days for an adult, and on the 13th day the caste-fellows are feasted. Their family priests, who are Jijhotia Brāhmans, used formerly to shave the head and beard when a death occurred among their clients as if they belonged to the family, but this practice was considered derogatory by other Brāhmans, and they have now stopped it. The Dāngis perform the shrādhh ceremony in the month of Kunwār. The caste wear the sacred thread, but it is said that they were formerly not allowed to do so in Bundelkhand. They eat fish and flesh, including that of wild boars, but not fowls or beef, and they do not drink liquor. They take pakki food or that cooked without water from Kāyasths and Gahoi Banias, and katchi food, cooked with water, from Jijhotia and Sanādhya Brāhmans. Jijhotia Brāhmans formerly took pakki food from Dāngis, but have now ceased to do so. The Dāngis require the services of Brāhmans at all ceremonies. They have a caste panchāyat or committee. A person who changes his religion or eats with a low caste is permanently expelled, while temporary exclusion is awarded for the usual delinquencies. In the case of the more serious offences, as murder or killing of a cow, the culprit must purify himself by a pilgrimage to a sacred river.

5. Occupation and character.

The Dāngis were formerly, as already stated, of a quarrelsome temperament, but they have now settled down and, though spirited, are of a good disposition, and hard-working cultivators. They rank slightly above the representative cultivating castes owing to their former dominant position, and are still considered to have a good conceit of themselves, according to the saying:

Tin men neh terah men,Mirdang bajāwe dere men,

or ‘Though he belong neither to the three septs nor the thirteen septs, yet the Dāngi blows his own trumpet in his own house.’ They are still, too, of a fiery disposition, and it is said that the favourite dish of gram-flour cooked with curds, which is known as karhi, is never served at their weddings. Because the word karhi also signifies the coming out of a sword from its sheath, and when addressed to another man has the equivalent of the English word ‘Draw’ in the duelling days. So if one Dāngi said it to another, meaning to ask him for the dish, it might result in a fight. They are very backward in respect of education and set no store by it. They consider their traditional occupation to be military service, but nearly all of them are now engaged in agriculture. At the census of 1901 over 2000 were returned as supported by the ownership of land and 3000 as labourers and farmservants. Practically all the remainder are tenants. They are industrious, and their women work in the fields. The only crops which they object to grow are kusum or safflower and san-hemp. The Nahonia Dāngis, being the highest subcaste, refuse to sell milk or ghī. The men usually have Singh as a termination to their names, like Rājpūts. Their dress and ornaments are of the type common in the northern Districts. The women tattoo their bodies.

Dāngri

Dāngri. 508—A small caste of melon and vegetable growers, whose name is derived from dāngar or dāngra, a water-melon. They reside in the Wardha and Bhandāra Districts, and numbered about 1800 persons in 1911. The caste is a mixed one of functional origin, and appears to be an offshoot from the Kunbis with additions from other sources. In Wardha they say that their ancestor was one of two brothers to whom Mahādeo gave the seeds of a juāri plant and a water-melon respectively for sowing. The former became the ancestor of the Kunbis and the latter of the Dāngris. On one occasion when Mahādeo, assuming the guise of a beggar, asked the Dāngri brother for a water-melon, he refused to give it, and on this account his descendants were condemned to perpetual poverty. In fact, the Dāngris, like the other market-gardening castes, are badly off, possibly on account of their common habit of marrying a number of wives, whom they utilise as labourers in their vegetable gardens; for though a wife is better than a hired labourer for their particular method of cultivation, where supervision is difficult and the master may be put to serious loss from bad work and petty pilfering, while there is also much scope for women workers; yet on the other hand polygamy tends to the breeding of family quarrels and to excessive subdivision of property. The close personal supervision which is requisite perhaps also renders it especially difficult to carry on the business of market-gardening on a large scale. In any case the agricultural holdings of the Mālis and Dāngris are as a rule very small. The conclusion indicated by the above story that the Dāngris are an offshoot from the Kunbi caste of cultivators appears to be correct; and it is supported by the fact that they will accept food cooked with water from the Baone Kunbis. But their subcastes show that even this small body is of very heterogeneous composition; for they are divided into the Teli, the Kalār, the Kunbi and the Gādiwān Dāngris, thus showing that the caste has received recruits from the Telis or oilmen and the Kalārs or liquor-sellers. The Gādiwān, as their name denotes, are a separate section who have adopted the comparatively novel occupation of cart-driving for a livelihood. In Wardha there is also a small class of Pānibhar or waterman Dāngris who are employed as water-bearers, this occupation arising not unnaturally from that of growing melons and other crops in river-beds. And a few members of the caste have taken to working in iron. The bulk of the Dāngris, however, grow melons, chillies and brinjals on the banks or in the beds of rivers; but as the melon crop is raised in a period of six weeks during the hot season, they can also undertake some ordinary cultivation. When the melons ripen the first fruits are offered to Mahādeo and given to a Brāhman to ensure the success of the crop. When the melon plants are in flower, a woman must not enter the field during the period of her monthly impurity, as it is believed that she would cause the crop to wither. While it may safely be assumed that the Dāngris originated from the great Kunbi caste, it may be noted that some of them tell a story to the effect that their original home was Benāres, and that they came from there into the Central Provinces; hence they call themselves Kāshi Dāngri, Kāshi being the classical name for Benāres. This legend appears to be entirely without foundation, as their family names, speech and customs are alike of purely Marāthi origin. But it is found among other castes also that they like to pretend that they came from Benāres, the most sacred centre of Hinduism. The social customs of the Dāngris resemble those of the Kunbis, and it is unnecessary to describe them in detail. Before their weddings they have a curious ceremony known as Dewat Pūja. The father of the bridegroom, with an axe over his shoulder and accompanied by his wife, goes to a well or a stream. Here they clean a small space with cow-dung and make an offering of rice, flowers, turmeric and incense, after which the man, breaking his bangle from off his wrist, throws it into the water, apparently as a propitiatory offering for the success of the marriage. It is not stated what the bangle is made of, but it may be assumed that a valuable one would not thus be thrown away. As among some of the other Marātha castes, the bridegroom must be wrapped in a blanket on his journey to the bride’s village. If a bachelor desires to espouse a widow he must first go through the ceremony of marriage with a swallow-wort plant. Polygamy is freely permitted, and some Dāngris are known to have as many as five wives. As already stated, wives are of great assistance in gardening work, which demands much hand-labour. Divorce and the remarriage of widows are allowed. The Dāngris commonly bury the dead, and they place cotton leaves over the eyes and ears of the corpse. In Bhandāra they say that this is done when it is believed the dead person was possessed by an evil spirit, and there is possibly some idea of preventing the escape of the spirit from the body. In Wardha the Dāngris have rather a bad reputation, and a saying current about them is ‘Dāngri beta puha chor,’ or ‘A Dāngri will steal even a shred of cotton’; but this may be a libel.

Darzi

1. General notice.

Darzi, Shimpi, Chhīpi, Sūji.—The occupational caste of tailors. In 1911 a total of 51,000 persons were returned as belonging to the caste in the Central Provinces and Berār. The Darzis are an urban caste and are most numerous in Districts with large towns. Mr. Crooke derives the word Darzi from the Persian darz, meaning a seam. The name Sūji from sui, a needle, was formerly more common. Shimpi is the Marātha name, and Chhīpi, from Chhīpa a calico-printer or dyer, is another name used for the caste, probably because it is largely recruited from the Chhīpas. In Bombay they say that when Parasurāma was destroying the Kshatriyas, two Rājpūt brothers hid themselves in a temple and were protected by the priest, who set one of them to sew dresses for the idol and the other to dye and stamp them. The first brother was called Chhīpi and from him the Darzis are descended, the name being corrupted to Shimpi, and the second was called Chhīpa and was the ancestor of the dyers. The common title of the Darzis is Khalīfa, an Arabic word meaning ‘The Successor of the Prophet.’ Colonel Temple says that it is not confined to them but is also used by barbers, cooks and monitors in schools.509 The caste is of comparatively recent formation. In fact Sir D. Ibbetson wrote510 that “Darzi, or its Hindi equivalent Sūji, is purely an occupational term, and though there is a Darzi guild in every town, there is no Darzi caste in the proper acceptation of the word. The greater number of Darzis belong perhaps to the Dhobi and Chhīmba castes, more especially to the latter.”

2. Subdivisions.

The Darzis, however, are now recognised as a distinct caste, but their mixed origin is shown by the names of their subcastes and exogamous sections. Thus they have a Bāman subdivision named after the Brāhman caste. These will not take food from any other caste except Brāhmans and are probably an offshoot from them. They are considered to be the highest subdivision, and next to them come the Rai or Rāj Darzis. Another subcaste is named Kaithia, after the Kāyasths, and a third Srivāstab, which is the name of a well-known subcaste of Kāyasths derived from the town of Srāvasti, now Sahet Mahet in the Gonda District.511 In Betūl the Srivāstab Darzis are reported to forbid the remarriage of widows, thus showing that they desire to live up to their distinguished ancestry. A third subcaste is known as Chamarua and appears to be derived from the Chamārs. Other subcastes are of the territorial type as Mālwi, Khāndeshi, Chhattīsgarhi, Mathuria and so on, and the section or family names are usually taken from villages. Among them, however, we find Jugia from Jogi, Thākur or Rājpūt, Gūjar, Khawās or barber, and Baroni, the title of a female Dhīmar. Mr. Crooke gives several other names.