The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 3

During the monthly period of menstruation women are spoken of as ‘Mund maili’ or having the head dirty, and are considered to be impure for four or five days, for which time they sleep on the ground and not on cots. In Kānker they are secluded in a separate room, and forbidden to cook or to touch the clothes or persons of other members of the family. They must not walk on a ploughed field, nor will the men of their family drive the plough or sow seed during the time of their impurity. On the fifth day they wash their heads with earth and boil their clothes in water mixed with wood ashes. Cloth stained with the menstrual blood is usually buried underground; if it is burnt it is supposed that the woman to whom it belonged will become barren, and if a barren woman should swallow the ashes of the cloth the fertility of its owner would be transferred to her.

15. Childbirth

When pregnant women experience longings for strange kinds of food, it is believed that these really come from the child in the womb and must be satisfied if its development is not to be retarded. Consequently in the fifth month of a wife’s first pregnancy, or shortly before delivery, her mother takes to her various kinds of rich food and feeds her with them. It is a common custom also for pregnant women, driven by perverted appetite, to eat earth of a clayey texture, or the ordinary black cotton soil, or dried clay scraped off the walls of houses, or the ashes of burnt cowdung cakes. This is done by low-caste women in most parts of the Province, and if carried to excess leads to severe intestinal derangement which may prove fatal. A pregnant woman must not cross a river or eat anything with a knife, and she must observe various precautions against the machinations of witches. At the time of delivery the woman sits on the ground and is attended by a midwife, who may be a Chamār, Mahār or Gānda by caste. The navel cord is burnt in the lying-in room, but the after-birth, known as Phul, is usually buried in a rubbish pit outside the house. The portion of the cord attached to the child’s body is also burnt when it falls off, but in the northern Districts it is preserved and used as a cure for the child if it suffers from sore eyes. If a woman who has borne only girl children can obtain the dried navel-string of a male child and swallow it, they believe that she will have a son, and that the mother of the boy will henceforth bear only daughters. This is the reason why the cord is carefully secreted and not simply thrown away. In Bastar on the sixth or naming day the female relatives and friends of the family are invited to take food at the house. The father touches the feet of the child with blades of dūb grass (Cynodon dactylon) steeped first in milk or melted butter, then in sandal-paste, and finally in water, and each time passes the blade over his head as a mark of respect. The blades of grass are afterwards thrown over the roof of the house, so that they may not be trampled under foot. The women guests then bring leaf-cups containing rice and a few copper coins, which they offer to the mother, the younger ones bowing before her with a prayer that the child may grow as old as the speaker. All the women kiss the child, and the elder ones the mother also. The offerings of rice and coins are taken by the midwife.

16. Names

The names of the Halbas are of the ordinary type found in Chhattīsgarh, but at present they often add the termination Sinha or Singh in imitation of the Rājpūts. Two names are sometimes given, one for daily use and the other for comparison with that of the girl when the marriage is to be arranged. As already seen, either the bride’s or bridegroom’s name may be changed to make their union auspicious. When a daughter-in-law comes into her husband’s house she is usually not called by her own name, but by some nickname or that of her home, as Jabalpurwāli, Raipurwāli (she who comes from Jabalpur or Raipur), and so on. Sometimes men of the caste are addressed by the name of the clan or section and not by their own. A woman must not utter the names of her husband, his parents or brothers, nor of the sons of his elder brother and his sisters. But for these last as well as for her own son-in-law she may invent fictitious names. These rules she observes to show her respect for her husband’s relatives. A child must not be called by name at night, because if an owl hears the name and repeats it the child will probably die. The owl is everywhere regarded as a bird of the most evil omen. Its hoot is unlucky, and a house in which its nest is built will be destroyed or deserted. If it perches on the roof of a house and hoots, some one of the family will probably fall ill, or if a member of the household is already ill, he or she will probably die.

17. Social status

The social customs of the caste present some differences. In Bastar, where they have a fairly high status, the Purāit Halbas abstain from liquor, though they will eat the flesh of clean animals and of the wild pig. The Halbas of Raipur on the other hand, who are usually farmservants, will eat fowls, pigs and rats, and abstain only from beef and the leavings of others. In Bastar, Sunārs, Kurmis and castes of similar position will take water from the hands of a Halba, and Kosaria Rāwats will eat all kinds of food with them. In Chhattīsgarh the Halbas will accept water from Telis, Kahārs and other like castes, and will also allow any of them to become a Halba. In Chhattīsgarh they will take even food cooked with water from the hands of a man of these castes, provided that they are not in their own villages. These differences of custom are probably due to the varying social status of the caste. In Bastar they hold land and behave accordingly, while in Chhattīsgarh they are only labourers. They do not employ Brāhmans for ceremonial purposes but have their own caste priest, known as Joshi, while among the Kabīrpanthis the local Mahant or Bairāgi of the sect takes his place.

18. Caste panchāyat

They have a caste panchāyat or committee, the headman of which is known as Kursha; he has jurisdiction over ten or twenty villages, and is usually chosen from the Kotwār, Chanap or Nāik sections. It is the duty of the men of these sections to scatter the sonpāni or ‘water of gold’147 as an act of purification over persons who have been temporarily put out of caste for social offences. They are also the first to eat food with such offenders on readmission to social intercourse, and thereby take the sins of these persons upon their own heads. In order to counteract the effect of this the purifier usually asks three or four other men to eat with him at his own house, and passes on a part of his burden to them. For such duties he receives a payment of money varying from four annas to a rupee and a half. Among the offences punished with temporary exclusion from caste are those of rearing the lac insect and tasar silk cocoons, probably because such work involves the killing of the insects and caterpillars which produce the dye and silk. In Bastar a man loses his caste if he is beaten with a shoe except by a Government servant, and is not readmitted to it. If a man seduces a married woman and is beaten with a shoe by her husband he is also finally expelled from caste. But happily, Mr. Panda Baijnāth remarks, shoes are very scarce in the State, and hence such cases do not often arise. They never yoke cows to the plough as other castes do in Bastar, nor do they tie up two cows with the same rope.

19. Dress

The dress of the Halbas, as of other Chhattīsgarh castes, is scanty, and most of them have only a short cloth about the loins and another round the shoulders. They dispense with both shoes and head-cloth, but every man must have a thread tied round his waist. To this thread in former times, Colonel Dalton remarks, the apron of leaves was not improbably suspended. The women do not wear nose-rings, spangles on the forehead or rings on the toes; but girl children have the left nostril pierced, and this must always be done on the full moon day of the month of Pūs (December). A copper ring is inserted in the nostril and worn for a few months, but must be removed before the girl’s marriage. A married woman has a cloth over her head, and smears vermilion on the parting of her hair and also on her forehead. An unmarried girl may have the copper ring already mentioned, and may place a dab of vermilion on her forehead, but must not smear it on the parting of her hair. She goes bare-headed till marriage, as is the custom in Chhattīsgarh. A widow should not have vermilion on her face at all, nor should she use glass bangles or ornaments about the ankles. She may have a string of glass beads about her neck. A woman’s cloth is usually white with a broad red border all round it. The Gonds and Halbas tie the cloth round the waist and carry the slack end from the left side behind up the back and over the head and right shoulder; while women of higher castes take the cloth from the right side over the head and left shoulder.

20. Tattooing

Girls are tattooed before marriage, usually at the age of four or five years, with dots on the left nostril and centre of the chin, and three dots in a line on the right shoulder. A girl is again tattooed after marriage, but before leaving for her husband’s house. On this occasion four pairs of parallel lines are made on the leg above the ankle, in front, behind, and on the sides. As a rule, the legs are not otherwise tattooed, nor the trunk of the body. Groups of dots, triangles and lines are made on the arms, and on the left arm is pricked a zigzag line known as the sikri or chain, the pattern of which is distinctive. Teli and Gahra (Ahīr) women also have the sikri, but in a slightly different form. The tattooing is done by a woman of the Dewar caste, and she receives some corn and the cloth worn by the girl at the time of the operation. If a child is slow in learning to walk they tattoo it on the loins above the hips, and believe that this is efficacious. Men who suffer from rheumatism also get the affected joints tattooed, and are said to experience much relief. The tattooing acts no doubt as a blister, and may produce a temporarily beneficial effect. It may be compared to the bee-sting cure for rheumatism now advocated in England. Tattooing is believed to enhance the beauty of women, and it is also said that the tattoo marks are the only ornament which will accompany the soul to the other world. From this belief it seems clear that they expect to have the same body in the after-life.

21. Occupation

Nearly all the Halbas are now engaged in agriculture as tenants and labourers. Seven zamīndāri estates are held by members of the caste, six in Bhandāra and one in Chānda, and they also have some villages in the south of the Raipur and Drūg Districts. It is probable that they obtained this property in reward for military service, at the period when they were employed in the armies of the Ratanpur kings and of the Gond dynasty of Chānda. In the forest tracts of Dhamtari they are considered the best cultivators next to the Telis, and they show themselves quite able to hold their own in the open country, where their villages are usually prosperous. In Bastar they still practise shifting cultivation, sowing their crops on burnt-out patches of forest. Though hunting is not now one of their regular occupations, Mr. Gokul Prasād describes them as catching game by the following method: Six or seven men go out together at night, tying round their feet ghunghunias or two small hollow balls of brass with stones inside which tinkle as they move, such as are worn by postal runners. They move in Indian file, the first man carrying a lantern and the others walking behind him in its shadow. They walk with measured tread, and the ghunghunias give out a rhythmical harmonious sound. Hares and other small animals are attracted by the sound, and at the same time half-blinded by the light, so that they do not see the line of men. They approach, and are knocked over or caught by the men following the leader.

Halwai

Halwai.—The occupational caste of confectioners, numbering about 3000 persons in the Central Provinces and Berār in 1911. The Halwai takes his name from halwa, a sweet made of flour, clarified butter and sugar, coloured with saffron and flavoured with almonds, raisins and pistachio-nuts.148 The caste gives no account of its origin in northern India, but it is clearly a functional group composed of members of respectable middle-class castes who adopted the profession of sweetmeat-making. The Halwais are also called Mithaihas, or preparers of sweets, and in the Uriya country are known as Guria from gur or unrefined sugar. The caste has several subdivisions with territorial names, generally derived from places in northern India, as Kanaujia from Kanauj, and Jaunpuria from Jaunpur; others are Kāndu, a grain-parcher, and Dobisya, meaning two score. One of the Guria subdivisions is named Haldia from haldi, turmeric, and members of this subcaste are employed to prepare the mahāprasād or cooked rice which is served at the temple of Jagannāth and which is eaten by all castes together without scruple. The Gurias have exogamous divisions or bargas, the names of which are generally functional, as Darbān, door-keeper; Sarāf, treasurer; Bhitarya, one who looks to household affairs, and others. Marriage within the barga is forbidden, but the union of first cousins is not prohibited. Marriage may be infant or adult. A girl who has a liaison with a man of the caste may be wedded to him by the form used for the remarriage of a widow, but if she goes wrong with an outsider she is finally expelled. Widow-marriage is allowed, and divorce may be effected for misconduct on the part of the wife.

Halwai or confectioner’s shop

The social standing of the Halwai is respectable. “His art,” says Mr. Nesfield,149 “implies rather an advanced state of culture, and hence his rank in the social scale is a high one. There is no caste in India which considers itself too pure to eat what a confectioner has made. In marriage banquets it is he who supplies a large part of the feast, and at all times and seasons the sweetmeat is a favourite food to a Hindu requiring a temporary refreshment. There is a kind of bread called puri, consisting of wheaten dough fried in melted butter, which is taken as a substitute for the chapāti or wheaten pancake by travellers and others who happen to be unable to have their bread cooked at their own fire, and is made by the Halwais.”

The real reason why the Halwai occupies a good position perhaps simply results from the necessity that other castes should be able to take cakes from him. Among the higher castes food cooked with water should not be eaten except at the hearth after this has been specially cleansed and spread with cowdung, and those who are to eat have bathed and otherwise purified themselves. But as the need continuously arises for travellers and others to take a meal abroad where they cannot cook it for themselves, sweetmeats and cakes made without water are permitted to be eaten in this way, and the Halwai, as the purveyor of these, has been given the position of a pure caste from whose hands a Brāhman can take water. In a similar manner, water may be taken from the hands of the Dhīmar who is a household servant, the Kahār or palanquin-bearer, the Barai or betel-leaf seller, and the Bharbhūnja or rice-parcher, although some of these castes have a very low origin and occupy the humble position of menial servants.

The Halwai’s shop is one of the most familiar in an Indian bazār, and in towns a whole row of them may be seen together, this arrangement being doubtless adopted for the social convenience of the caste-fellows, though it might be expected to decrease the custom that they receive. His wares consist of trays full of white and yellow-coloured sweetmeats and cakes of flour and sugar, very unappetising to a European eye, though Hindu boys show no lack of appreciation of them. The Hindus are very fond of sweet things, which is perhaps a common trait of an uneducated palate. Hindu children will say that such sweets as chocolate almonds are too bitter, and their favourite drink, sherbet, is simply a mixture of sugar and water with some flavouring, and seems scarcely calculated to quench the thirst produced by an Indian hot weather. Similarly their tea is so sweetened with sugar and spices as to be distasteful to a European.

The ingredients of a Halwai’s sweets are wheat and gram-flour, milk and country sugar. Those called batāshas consist merely of syrup of sugar boiled with a little flour, which is taken out in spoonfuls and allowed to cool. They are very easy to make and are commonly distributed to schoolboys on any occasion of importance, and are something like a meringue in composition. The kind called barafi or ice is made from thick boiled milk mixed with sugar, and is more expensive and considered more of a treat than batāshas. Laddus are made from gram-flour which is mixed with water and dropped into boiling butter, when it hardens into lumps. These are taken out and dipped in syrup of sugar and allowed to cool. Pheni is a thin strip of dough of fine wheat-flour fried in butter and then dipped in syrup of sugar. Other sweets are made from the flour of singāra or water-nut and from chironji, the kernel of the achār150 nut, coated with sugar. Of ordinary sweets the cheaper kinds cost 8 annas a seer of 2 lb. and the more expensive ones 10 or 12 annas. Sweets prepared by Bengali confectioners are considered the best of all. The Halwai sits on a board in his shop surrounded by wooden trays of the different kinds of sweets. These are often covered with crowds of flies and in some places with a variety of formidable-looking hornets. The latter do not appear to be vicious, however, and when he wishes to take sweets off a tray the Halwai whisks them off with a palm-leaf brush. Only if one of them gets into his cloth, or he unguardedly pushes his hand down into a heap of sweets and encounters a hornet, he may receive a sting of which the mark remains for some time. The better-class confectioners now imitate English sweets, and at fairs when they retail boiled grain and ghī they provide spoons and little basins for their customers.

Hatkar

1. Derivation and historical notice

Hatkar, Hatgar.151—A small caste of Berār, numbering about 14,000 persons in 1911. They are found principally in the Pusad tāluk of Yeotmāl District, their villages being placed like a line of outposts along the Hyderābād border. The Hatkars are a branch of the Dhangar or shepherd caste, and in some localities they are considered as a subcaste of Dhangars. The derivation of the name Hatkar is obscure, but the Hatkars appear to be those Dhangars who first took to military service under Sivaji and hence became a distinct group. “Undisciplined, often unarmed, men of the Māwals or mountain valleys above the Ghauts who were called Māwallees, and of those below the mountains towards the sea, called Hetkurees, joined the young leader.”152 The Hatkars were thus the soldiers of the Konkan in Sivaji’s army. The Ain-i-Akbari states that the Hatkars were driven westward across the Wardha by the Gonds. At this time (A.D. 1600) they were holding the country round Bāsim by force of arms, and are described as a refractory and perfidious race.153 “The Hatkars of Berār are all Bargi or Bangi Dhangars, the shepherds with the spears. They say that formerly when going on any expedition they took only a blanket seven cubits long and a bear-spear. They would appear to have been all footmen. The Nāiks or village headman of Bāsim were principally Hatkars. The duty of a Nāik was to maintain order and stop robbery; but in time they became law-breakers and their men the dacoits of the country. Some of them were very powerful, and in 1818 Nowsāji Nāik’s troops gave battle to the Nizām’s regular forces under Major Pitman before Umarkhar. He was beaten and sent to Hyderābād, where he died, and the power of the Nāiks was broken by Major Sutherland. He hanged so many that the Nāiks pronounce his name to this day with awe. To some of the Nāiks he gave money and told them to settle down in certain villages. Others who also came, expecting money, were at once hanged.”154 But it would appear that only those leaders were hanged who did not come in before a certain fixed date.

2. The Gauli Hatkar’s reverence for cattle

The Hatkars are also called Bangi Dhangars, and in Berār rank above other Dhangars because they took to soldiering and obtained grants of land, just as the Marāthas rank above the Kunbis. Another group have given up sheep-tending and keep cattle, which is a more respectable occupation on account of the sanctity of cattle, and these call themselves Gauli Hatkars. These Gauli Hatkars have given up drinking liquor and eating fowls. They will not touch or sell the milk of buffaloes and cows before sunset on Mondays, the day on which they worship Krishna. If any one is in need of milk on that day they will let him milk the animal himself, but will take no price for the milk. On a Monday also they will not give fire from their house to any member of a low caste, such as a Mahār. On the day of Diwāli they worship their cows, tying a bunch of wool to the animal’s forehead and putting rice on it; they make a mud image of Govardhan, the mountain held up by Krishna as an umbrella to protect the people from the rain, and then let the cows trample it to pieces with their hoofs. If a bullock dies with the rope halter through its nose, the owner is put out of caste; this rule also obtains among the Ahīrs and Gaulis, and is perhaps responsible for the objection felt in some localities to putting string through the nostrils of plough- and cart-bullocks, though it is the only means of obtaining any control over them.

3. Funeral rites

Formerly the Hatkars burned the corpses only of men who died in battle or the chase or subsequently of their wounds, cremation being reserved for this honourable end. Others were buried sitting cross-legged, and a small piece of gold was placed in the mouth of the corpse. Now they either burn or bury the dead according to their means. Most of them at the time they were soldiers never allowed the hair on their face to be cut.

4. Exogamous groups

The Hatkars of Berār are said to be divided into three exogamous clans who apparently marry with each other, their names being Poli, Gurdi and Muski. In the Central Provinces they have a set of exogamous sections with titular names of a somewhat curious nature; among them are Hakkya, said to be so called because their ancestor was absent when his cow gave birth to a calf; Wakmar, one who left the Pangat or caste feast while his fellows were eating; and Polya, one who did not take off his turban at the feast.

Hijra

Hijra, Khasua.155—The class of eunuchs, who form a separate community, recruited by the admission of persons born with this deformity or reduced to the like condition by amputation. In Saugor it is said that the Khasuas are natural and the Hijras artificial eunuchs, and the Khasuas deny that they admit Hijras into their society. They may be either Hindus or Muhammadans by birth, but all become Muhammadans. Children born in the condition of eunuchs are usually made over to the Khasuas by their parents. The caste are beggars, and also sing and dance at weddings and at the births of male children, and obtain presents of grain from the cultivators at seedtime and harvest. They wear female clothes and ornaments and assume the names of women. They are admitted to mosques, but have to stand behind the women, and in Saugor they have their own mosque. They observe Muhammadan rites and festivals generally, and are permitted to smoke from the huqqas of other Muhammadans. They are governed by a caste panchāyat or committee, which imposes fines but does not expel any member from the community. Each Khasua has a beat or locality reserved to him for begging and no other may infringe on it, violations of this rule being punished by the committee. Sometimes a well-to-do Khasua adopts an orphan and celebrates the child’s marriage with as much expense and display as he can afford, and the Kāzi officiates at the ceremony.