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

The Jādams are proprietors, tenants and labourers, and are reckoned to be efficient cultivators; they plough with their own hands and allow their women to work in the fields. They will also eat food cooked with water in the field, which is against the practice of the higher castes. They eat flesh, including that of the wild pig, and fish, but abstain from liquor, and will take food cooked with water only from Jijhotia or Sanādhya Brāhmans who are their family priests. A Brāhman will take water from the hands of a Jādam in a metal, but not in an earthen, vessel. Boys are invested with the sacred thread at the time of their wedding, a common practice among the higher agricultural castes, and one pointing to the hypothesis suggested in the article on Gurao that the investiture with the sacred thread was in its origin a rite of puberty. The women wear a peculiar dress know as sawang, consisting of a small skirt of about six feet of cloth and a long body-cloth wrapped round the waist and over the shoulders. They also have larger spangles on the forehead than other women. The women of the caste are emancipated to an unusual degree, and it is stated that they commonly accompany their husbands to market for shopping, to prevent them from being cheated. Dr. Hunter describes the Jādam as a brave soldier, but a bad agriculturist; but in the Central Provinces his courage is rated less highly, and a proverb quoted about him is: ‘Patta khatka, Jādam satka,’ or ‘The Jādam trembles at the rustle of a leaf.’

Jādua

Jādua-, Jāduah-Brāhman.176—This is the name of a class of swindlers, who make money by pretending to turn other metals into gold or finding buried treasure. They are believed to have originated from the caste of Bhadris or Jyotishis, the astrologers of western India. The Jyotishi or Joshi astrologers are probably an offshoot of the Brāhman caste. The name Jādua is derived from jādu, magic. The Bhadris or Jyotishis were in former times, Mr. Knyvett writes, attached to the courts of all important rājas in western India, where they told fortunes and prophesied future events from their computations of the stars, often obtaining great influence and being consulted as oracles. Readers of Quentin Durward will not need to be reminded that an exactly similar state of things obtained in Europe. And both the European and Indian astrologers were continually searching for the philosopher’s stone and endeavouring by the practice of alchemy to discover the secret of changing silver and other metals into gold. It is easy to understand how the more dishonest members of the community would come to make a livelihood by the pretence of being possessed of this power. The Jāduas belong principally to Bihār, and Mr. Knyvett’s account of them is based on inquiries in that Province. But it is probable that, like the Bhadris, travelling parties of Jāduas occasionally visit the Central Provinces. Their method of procedure is somewhat as follows. They start out in parties of three or four and make inquiries for the whereabouts of some likely dupe, in the shape of an ignorant and superstitious person possessed of property. Sometimes they settle temporarily in a village and open a small grain-shop in order to facilitate their search. When the victim has been selected one of them proceeds to his village in the disguise of a Sādhu or anchorite, being usually accompanied by another as his chela or disciple. Soon afterwards the others come, one of them perhaps posing as a considerable landholder, and go about inquiring if a very holy Brāhman has been seen. They go to the house of their intended dupe, who naturally asks why they are seeking the Brāhman; they reply that they have come to do homage to him as he had turned their silver and brass ornaments into gold. The dupe at once goes with them in search of the Brāhman, and is greatly impressed by seeing the landholder worship him with profound respect and make him presents of cloth, money and cattle. He at once falls into the trap and says that he too has a quantity of silver which he would like to have turned into gold. The Brāhman pretends reluctance, but eventually yields to the dupe’s entreaties and allows himself to be led to the latter’s house, where with his chela he takes up his quarters in an inner room, dark and with a mud floor. A variety of tricks are now resorted to, to impress the dupe with the magic powers of the swindlers. Sometimes he is directed to place a rupee on his forehead and go to the door and look at the sun for five minutes, being assured that when he returns the Brāhman will have disappeared by magic. Having looked at the sun for five minutes he can naturally see nothing on returning to a dark room and expresses wonder at the Brāhman’s disappearance and gradual reappearance as his eyes get accustomed to the darkness. Or if the trick to be practised is the production of buried treasure, a rupee may be buried in the ground and after various incantations two rupees are produced from the same spot by sleight of hand. Or by some trickery the victim is shown the mouth of an earthen vessel containing silver or gold coins in a hole dug in the ground. He is told that the treasure cannot be obtained until more treasure has been added to it and religious rites have been performed. Sometimes the victim is made to visit a secluded spot, where he is informed that after repeating certain incantations Sivaji will appear before him. A confederate, dressed in tinsel and paint, appears before the victim posing as Sivaji, and informs him that there is treasure buried in his house, and it is only necessary to follow the instructions of the holy Brāhman in order to obtain it. The silver ornaments, all that can be collected, are then made over to the Brāhman, who pretends to tie them in a cloth or place them in an earthen pot and bury them in the floor of the room. If buried treasure is to be found the Brāhman explains that it is first necessary to bury more treasure in order to obtain it, and if the ornaments are to be turned into gold they are buried for the purpose of transmutation. During the process the victim is induced on some pretence to leave the room or cover himself with a sheet, when a bundle containing mud or stones is substituted for the treasure. The Brāhman calls for ghī, oil and incense, and lights a fire over the place where the ornaments are supposed to be buried, bidding his victim watch over it for some hours or days until his return. The Brāhman and his disciple, with the silver concealed about them, then leave the house, join their confederates and make their escape. The duped villager patiently watches the fire until he becomes tired of waiting for the Brāhman’s return, when he digs up the earth and finds nothing in the cloth but stones and rubbish.

Jangam

Jangam, Jangama.—A Sivite order of wandering religious mendicants. The Jangams are the priests or gurus of the Sivite sect of Lingāyats. They numbered 3500 persons in the Central Provinces and Berār in 1911, and frequent the Marātha country. The Jangam is said to be so called because he wears a movable emblem of Siva (jana gama, to come and go) in contradistinction to the Sthāwar or fixed emblems found in temples. The Jangams discard many of the modern phases of Hinduism. They reject the poems in honour of Vishnu, Rāma and Krishna, such as the Bhāgavad Gita and Rāmāyana; they also deny the authority of Brāhmans, the efficacy of pilgrimage and self-mortification, and the restrictions of caste; while they revere principally the Vedas and the teaching of the great Sivite reformer Shankar Achārya.177 Like other religious orders, the Jangams have now become a caste, and are divided into two groups of celibate and married members. The Gharbāris (married members) celebrate their weddings in the usual Marātha fashion, except that they perform no hom or fire sacrifice. They permit the remarriage of widows. The Jangams wear ochre-coloured or badāmi clothes and long necklaces of seeds called rudrāksha178 beads, which resemble a nutmeg in size, in colour and nearly in shape; they besmear their forehead, arms and various other parts of the body with cowdung ashes. They wear the lingam or phallic sign of Siva either about the neck or loins in a little casket of gold, silver, copper or brass. As the lingam is supposed to represent the god and to be eternal, they are buried and not burnt after death, because the lingam must be buried with them and must not be destroyed in the fire. If any Jangam loses the lingam he or she must not eat or drink until it has been replaced by the guru or spiritual preceptor. It must be worshipped thrice a day, and ashes and bel179 leaves are offered to it, besides food when the owner is about to partake of this himself. The Jangams worship no deity other than Siva or Mahādeo, and their great festival is the Shivrātri. Some of them make pilgrimages to Pachmarhi, to the Mahādeo hills. Most of them subsist by begging and singing songs in praise of Mahādeo. Grant-Duff gives the Jangam as one of the twenty-four village servants in a Marātha village, perhaps as the priest of the local shrine of Siva, or as the caste priest of the Lingāyats, who are numerous in some Districts of Bombay. He carries a wallet over the shoulder and a conch-shell and bell in the hand. On approaching the door of a house he rings his bell to bring out the occupant, and having received alms proceeds on his way, blowing his conch-shell, which is supposed to be a propitious act for the alms-giver, and to ensure his safe passage to heaven. The wallet is meant to hold the grain given to him, and on returning home he never empties it completely, but leaves a little grain in it as its own share. The Jangams are strict vegetarians, and take food only from the hands of Lingāyats. They bless their food before eating it and always finish it completely, and afterwards wash the dish with water and drink down the water. When a child is born, the priest is sent for and his feet are washed with water in a brass tray. The water is then rubbed over the bodies of those present, and a few drops sprinkled on the walls of the house as a ceremony of purification. The priest’s great toes are then washed in a cup of water, and he dips the lingam he wears into this, and then sips a few drops of the water, each person present doing the same. This is called karuna or sanctification. He then dips a new lingam into the holy water, and ties it round the child’s neck for a minute or two, afterwards handing it to the mother to be kept till the child is old enough to wear it. The dead are buried in a sitting posture, the lingam being placed in the palm of the hand. On the third day a clay image of Mahādeo is carried to the grave, and food and flowers are offered to it, as well as any intoxicants to which the deceased person may have been addicted. The following notice of the Jangams more than a century ago may be quoted from the Abbé Dubois, though the custom described does not, so far as is known, prevail at present, at least in the Central Provinces:180 “The gurus or priests of Siva, who are known in the Western Provinces by the name of Jangams, are for the most part celibates. They have a custom which is peculiar to themselves, and curious enough to be worth remarking. When a guru travels about his district he lodges with some member of the sect, and the members contend among themselves for the honour of receiving him. When he has selected the house he wishes to stay in, the master and all the other male inmates are obliged, out of respect for him, to leave it and go and stay elsewhere. The holy man remains there day and night with only the women of the house, whom he keeps to wait on him and cook for him, without creating any scandal or exciting the jealousy of the husbands. All the same, some scandal-mongers have remarked that the Jangams always take care to choose a house where the women are young.” The Jangams are not given to austerities, and go about well clad.

Jāt

1. Theories of the origin of the caste

Jāt.181—The representative cultivating caste of the Punjab, corresponding to the Kurmi of Hindustān, the Kunbi of the Deccan, and the Kāpu of Telingāna. In the Central Provinces 10,000 Jāts were returned in 1911, of whom 5000 belonged to Hoshangābād and the bulk of the remainder to Narsinghpur, Saugor and Jubbulpore. The origin of the Jāt caste has been the subject of much discussion. Sir D. Ibbetson stated some of the theories as follows:182 “Suffice it to say that both General Cunningham and Major Tod agree in considering the Jāts to be of Indo-Scythian stock. The former identifies them with the Zanthii of Strabo and the Jatii of Pliny and Ptolemy; and holds that they probably entered the Punjab from their home on the Oxus very shortly after the Meds or Mands, who also were Indo-Scythians, and who moved into the Punjab about a century before Christ.... Major Tod classes the Jāts as one of the great Rājpūt tribes, and extends his identification with the Getae to both races; but here General Cunningham differs, holding the Rājpūts to belong to the original Aryan stock, and the Jāts to a later wave of immigrants from the north-west, probably of Scythian race.” It is highly probable that the Jāts may date their settlement in the Punjab from one of the three Scythian inroads mentioned by Mr. V. A. Smith,183 but I do not know that there is as yet considered to be adequate evidence to identify them with any particular one.

The following curious passage from the Mahābhārata would appear to refer to the Jāts:184

“An old and excellent Brāhman reviling the countries Bāhīka and Madra in the dwelling of Dhritarāshtra, related facts long known, and thus described those nations. External to the Himāvan, and beyond the Ganges, beyond the Sārasvati and Yamuna rivers and Kurukshetra, between five rivers, and the Sindhu as the sixth, are situated the Bāhīkas, devoid of ritual or observance, and therefore to be shunned. Their figtree is named Govardhana (i.e. the place of cow-killing); their market-place is Subhadram (the place of vending liquor: at least so say the commentators), and these give titles to the doorway of the royal palace. A business of great importance compelled me to dwell amongst the Bāhīkas, and their customs are therefore well known to me. The chief city is called Shākāla, and the river Apaga. The people are also named Jarttikas; and their customs are shameful. They drink spirits made from sugar and grain, and eat meat seasoned with garlic; and live on flesh and wine: their women intoxicated appear in public places, with no other garb than garlands and perfumes, dancing and singing, and vociferating indecencies in tones more harsh than those of the camel or the ass; they indulge in promiscuous intercourse and are under no restraint. They clothe themselves in skins and blankets, and sound the cymbal and drum and conch, and cry aloud with hoarse voices: ‘We will hasten to delight, in thick forests and in pleasant places; we will feast and sport; and gathering on the highways spring upon the travellers, and spoil and scourge them!’ In Shākāla, a female demon (a Rākshasi) on the fourteenth day of the dark fortnight sings aloud: ‘I will feast on the flesh of kine, and quaff the inebriating spirit attended by fair and graceful females.’ The Sūdra-like Bāhīkas have no institutes nor sacrifices; and neither deities, manes, nor Brāhmans accept their offerings. They eat out of wooden or earthen plates, nor heed their being smeared with wine or viands, or licked by dogs, and they use equally in its various preparations the milk of ewes, of camels and of asses. Who that has drunk milk in the city Yugandhara can hope to enter Svarga? Bāhi and Hīka were the names of two fiends in the Vipāsha river; the Bāhīkas are their descendants and not of the creation of Brahma. Some say the Arattas are the name of the people and Bāhīka of the waters. The Vedas are not known there, nor oblation, nor sacrifice, and the gods will not partake of their food. The Prasthalas (perhaps borderers), Madras, Gandharas, Arattas, Khashas, Vasas, Atisindhus (or those beyond the Indus), Sauvīras, are all equally infamous. There one who is by birth a Brāhman, becomes a Kshatriya, or a Vaishya, or a Sūdra, or a Barber, and having been a barber becomes a Brāhman again. A virtuous woman was once violated by Aratta ruffians, and she cursed the race, and their women have ever since been unchaste. On this account their heirs are their sisters’ children, not their own. All countries have their laws and gods: the Yavanas are wise, and preeminently brave; the Mlechchas observe their own ritual, but the Madrakas are worthless. Madra is the ordure of the earth: it is the region of inebriety, unchastity, robbery, and murder: fie on the Panchanada people! fie on the Aratta race!”

In the above account the country referred to is clearly the Punjab, from the mention of the five rivers and the Indus. The people are called Bāhīka or Jarttika, and would therefore seem to be the Jāts. And the account would appear to refer to a period when they were newly settled in the Punjab and had not come under Hindu influence. But at the same time the Aryans or Hindus had passed through the Punjab and were settled in Hindustān. And it would therefore seem to be a necessary inference that the Jāts were comparatively late immigrants, and were one of the tribes who invaded India between the second century B.C. and the fifth century A.D. as suggested above.

2. Sir D. Ibbetson’s description of the caste

Sir D. Ibbetson held that the Jāts and Rājpūts must be, to some extent at least, of the same blood. Though the Jāts are represented in the Central Provinces only by a small body of immigrants it will be permissible to quote the following passages from his admirable and classical account of the caste:185

“It may be that the original Rājpūt and the original Jāt entered India at different periods in its history, though to my mind the term Rājpūt is an occupational rather than an ethnological expression. But if they do originally represent two separate waves of immigration, it is at least exceedingly probable, both from their almost identical physique and facial character and from the close communion which has always existed between them, that they belong to one and the same ethnic stock; while, whether this be so or not, it is almost certain that they have been for many centuries and still are so intermingled and so blended into one people that it is practically impossible to distinguish them as separate wholes. It is indeed more than probable that the process of fusion has not ended here, and that the people who thus in the main resulted from the blending of the Jāt and the Rājpūt, if these two were ever distinct, is by no means free from foreign elements....

3. Are the Jāts and Rājpūts distinct?

“But whether Jāts and Rājpūts were or were not originally distinct, and whatever aboriginal elements may have been affiliated to their society, I think that the two now form a common stock, the distinction between Jāt and Rājpūt being social rather than ethnic. I believe that those families of that common stock whom the tide of fortune has raised to political importance have become Rājpūts almost by mere virtue of their rise; and that their descendants have retained the title and its privileges on the condition, strictly enforced, of observing the rules by which the higher are distinguished from the lower castes in the Hindu scale of precedence; of preserving their purity of blood by refusing to marry with families of inferior social rank, of rigidly abstaining from widow-marriage, and of refraining from degrading occupations. Those who transgressed these rules have fallen from their high position and ceased to be Rājpūts; while such families as, attaining a dominant position in their territory, began to affect social exclusiveness and to observe the rules, have become not only Rājas but also Rājpūts or sons of Rājas. For the last seven centuries at least the process of elevation has been almost at a standstill. Under the Delhi Emperors king-making was practically impossible. Under the Sikhs the Rājpūt was overshadowed by the Jāt, who resented his assumption of superiority and his refusal to join him on equal terms in the ranks of the Khālsa, deliberately persecuted him wherever and whenever he had the power, and preferred his title of Jāt Sikh to that of the proudest Rājpūt. On the frontier the dominance of Pathāns and Biloches and the general prevalence of Muhammadan feelings and ideas placed recent Indian origin at a discount, and led the leading families who belonged to neither of these two races to claim connection not with the Kshatriyas of the Sanskrit classics but with the Mughal conquerors of India or the Qureshi cousins of the Prophet; in so much that even admittedly Rājpūt tribes of famous ancestry, such as the Khokha, have begun to follow the example. But in the hills, where Rājpūt dynasties, with genealogies perhaps more ancient and unbroken than can be shown by any other royal families in the world, retained their independence till yesterday, and where many of them still enjoy as great social authority as ever, the twin processes of degradation from and elevation to Rājpūt rank are still to be seen in operation. The Rāja is there the fountain not only of honour but also of caste, which is the same thing in India....

4. The position of the Jāt in the Punjab

“The Jāt is in every respect the most important of the Punjab peoples. In point of numbers he surpasses the Rājpūt, who comes next to him, in the proportion of nearly three to one; while the two together constitute twenty-seven per cent of the whole population of the Province. Politically he ruled the Punjab till the Khālsa yielded to our arms. Ethnologically he is the peculiar and most prominent product of the plain of the five rivers. And from an economical and administrative point of view he is the husbandman, the peasant, the revenue-payer par excellence of the Province. His manners do not bear the impress of generations of wild freedom which marks the races of our frontier mountains. But he is more honest, more industrious, more sturdy, and no less manly than they. Sturdy independence indeed and patient, vigorous labour are his strongest characteristics. The Jāt is of all Punjab races the most impatient of tribal or communal control, and the one which asserts the freedom of the individual most strongly. In tracts where, as in Rohtak, the Jāt tribes have the field to themselves, and are compelled, in default of rival castes as enemies, to fall back upon each other for somebody to quarrel with, the tribal ties are strong. But as a rule a Jāt is a man who does what seems right in his own eyes and sometimes what seems wrong also, and will not be said nay by any man. I do not mean, however, that he is turbulent; as a rule he is very far from being so. He is independent and he is self-willed; but he is reasonable, peaceably inclined if left alone, and not difficult to manage. He is usually content to cultivate his fields and pay his revenue in peace and quietness if people will let him do so; though when he does go wrong he takes to anything from gambling to murder, with perhaps a preference for stealing other people’s wives and cattle. As usual the proverbial wisdom of the villages describes him very fairly though perhaps somewhat too severely: ‘The soil, fodder, clothes, hemp, grass-fibre, and silk, these six are best beaten; and the seventh is the Jāt.’ ‘A Jāt, a Bhāt, a caterpillar, and a widow woman; these four are best hungry. If they eat their fill they do harm.’ ‘The Jāt, like a wound, is better when bound.’ In agriculture the Jāt is pre-eminent. The market-gardening castes, the Arāin, the Māli, the Saini are perhaps more skilful cultivators on a small scale; but they cannot rival the Jāt as landowners and yeoman cultivators. The Jāt calls himself zamīndār or ‘husbandman’ as often as Jāt, and his women and children alike work with him in the fields: ‘The Jāt’s baby has a plough-handle for a plaything.’ ‘The Jāt stood on his corn heap and said to the king’s elephant-drivers, Will you sell those little donkeys?’ Socially the Jāt occupies a position which is shared by the Ror, the Gūjar, and the Ahīr, all four eating and smoking together. He is, of course, far below the Rājpūt, from the simple fact that he practises widow-marriage. The Jāt father is made to say in the rhyming proverbs of the countryside, ‘Come, my daughter, and be married; if this husband dies there are plenty more.’ But among the widow-marrying castes he stands first. The Bania with his sacred thread, his strict Hinduism, and his twice-born standing, looks down on the Jāt as a Sūdra. But the Jāt looks down upon the Bania as a cowardly, spiritless money-grubber, and society in general agrees with the Jāt. The Khatri, who is far superior to the Bania in manliness and vigour, probably takes precedence of the Jāt. But among the races or tribes of purely Hindu origin, I think that the Jāt stands next after the Brāhman, the Rājpūt, and the Khatri.”