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

3. Social customs

The exogamous sections are known as baink. The marriage of persons belonging to the same section and of first cousins is forbidden. Girls are generally married at an early age, as there is a scarcity of women in the caste, and they are snapped up as soon as available. As a natural consequence a considerable bride-price is paid, and the desire of the Kachera to make a profit by the marriage of his daughter is ridiculed in the following saying, supposed to be his prayer: “O God, give me a daughter. In exchange for her I shall get a pair of bullocks and a potful of rupees, and I shall be rich for the rest of my life. As her dowry I shall give her a sickle, a hoe and a spinning-machine, and these will suffice for my daughter to earn her livelihood.” The usual sum paid for a girl is Rs. 50. The marriage ceremony is performed by walking round the sacred pole, and after it the couple try their strength against each other, the bride trying to push a stone pestle on to a slab with her foot and the groom pushing it off with his. At the end of the wedding an omen is taken, a silver ornament known as dhāl231 which women wear in the ear being fixed on to a wall and milk poured over it. If the ornament is displaced by the stream of milk and falls down, it is considered that the union will be a happy one. The proceeding perhaps symbolises roughly the birth of a child. The marriage of widows is permitted, and in consequence of the scarcity of women the widow is usually married to her late husband’s younger brother, if there be one, even though he may be only a child. Divorce is permitted. Liaisons within the caste are usually overlooked, but a woman going wrong with an outsider is expelled from the community. The Kacheras commonly burn the dead. They employ Brāhmans for ceremonial purposes, but their social status is low and no high caste will take water from them. They eat flesh and fish, and some of them drink liquor, while others have given it up. They have a caste committee or panchāyat for the punishment of social offences, which is headed by officials known as Mālik and Dīwān. Their favourite deity is Devi, and in her honour they sow the Jawaras or pots of wheat corresponding to the gardens of Adonis during the nine days prior to the Rāmnaomi and Dasahra festivals in March and September. Some of them carry their devotion so far as to grow the plants of wheat on their bodies, sitting in one posture for nine days and almost giving up food and drink. At the Diwāli festival they worship the furnace in which glass bangles are made.

4. Occupation

The traditional occupation of the caste is the manufacture of glass bangles. They import the glass in lumps from northern India and melt it in their furnace, after which the colouring matter is applied and the ring is turned on a slab of stone. Nearly all Hindu married women have glass bangles, which are broken or removed if their husbands die. But the rule is not universal, and some castes do not wear them at all. Mārwāri women have bangles of ivory, and Dhangar (shepherd) women of cocoanut-shell. Women of several castes who engage in labour have glass bangles only on the left wrist and metal ones on the right, as the former are too fragile. Low-caste women sometimes wear the flat, black bangles known as khagga on the upper arm. In many castes the glass bangles are also broken after the birth of a child. Bangles of many colours are made, but Hindus usually prefer black or indigo-blue. Among Hindus of good caste a girl may wear green bangles while she is unmarried; at her wedding black bangles are put on her wrists, and thereafter she may have them of black, blue, red or yellow, but not green. Muhammadans usually wear black or dark-green bangles. A Hindu woman has the same number of bangles on each wrist, not less than five and more if she likes. She will never leave her arms entirely without bangles, as she thinks this would cause her to become a widow. Consequently when a new set are purchased one or two of the old ones are kept on each arm. Similarly among castes who wear lac bangles like Banjāras, five should be worn, and these cover the greater part of the space between the wrist and the elbow. The men of the caste usually stay at home and make the bangles, and the women travel about to the different village markets, carrying their wares on little ponies if they can afford them. It is necessary that the seller of bangles should be a woman, as she has to assist her customers to work them on to their wrists, and also display her goods to high-caste women behind the purda in their homes.

The Kacheras’ bangles are very cheap, from two to fourteen being obtainable for a pice (farthing), according to quality. Many are also broken, and the seller has to bear the loss of all those broken when the purchaser is putting them on, which may amount to 30 per cent. And though an improvement on the old lac bangles, the colours are very dull, and bracelets of better and more transparent glass imported from Austria now find a large sale and tend to oust the indigenous product. The Kachera, therefore, is, as a rule, far from prosperous. The incessant bending over the furnace tends to undermine his constitution and often ruins his eyesight. There is in fact a Hindi saying to the effect that, “When the Kachera has a son the rejoicings are held in the Kundera’s (turner’s) house. For he will go blind and then he will find nothing else to do but turn the Kundera’s lathe.”

Kāchhi

1. General notice

Kāchhi.—An important cultivating caste of the northern Districts, who grow vegetables and irrigated crops requiring intensive cultivation. The distinction between the Kāchhis and Mālis of the Hindustāni Districts is that the former grow regular irrigated crops, while the latter confine their operations to vegetables and flower-gardens; whereas the Māli or Marār of the Marātha country is both a cultivator and a gardener. The Kāchhis numbered about 120,000 persons in 1911, and resided mainly in the Saugor, Damoh, Jubbulpore and Narsinghpur Districts. The word Kāchhi may be derived from kachhār, the name given to the alluvial land lying on river banks, which they greatly affect for growing their vegetables. Another derivation is from kāchhni, a term used for the process of collecting the opium from the capsules of the poppy.232 The caste are probably an offshoot of the Kurmis. Owing to the resemblance of names they claim a connection with the Kachhwāha sept of Rājpūts, but this is not at all probable.

2. Subdivisions

The caste is divided into a number of subcastes, most of which take their names from special plants which they grow. Thus the Hardia Kāchhis grow haldi or turmeric; the Alias cultivate the āl or Indian madder, from which the well-known red dye is obtained; the Phūlias are flower-gardeners; the Jirias take their name from jira or cumin; the Murai or Murao Kāchhis are called after the muli or radish; the Pirias take their name from the piria or basket in which they carry earth; the Sanias grow san or hemp; the Mor Kāchhis are those who prepare the maur or marriage-crown for weddings; and the Līlia subcaste are called after the indigo plant (īl or nīl). In some localities they have a subcaste called Kāchhwāhi, who are considered to have a connection with the Rājpūts and to rank higher than the others.

3. Marriage customs

The social customs of the Kāchhis resemble those of the Kurmis. The descendants of the same parents do not intermarry for three generations. A man may have two sisters to wife at the same time. In the Damoh District, on the arrival of the bridegroom’s party, the bride is brought into the marriage-shed, and is there stripped to the waist while she holds a leaf-cup in her hand; this is probably done so that the bridegroom may see that the bride is free from any bodily defect. Girls are usually married before they are ten years old, and if the parents are too poor to arrange a match for their daughter, the caste-fellows often raise a subscription when she attains this age and get her married. The bridegroom should always be older than the bride, and the difference is generally from five to ten years. The bridegroom wears a loin-cloth and long coat reaching to the ground, both of which are stained yellow with turmeric; the bride wears a red cloth or one in which red is the main colour. The girl’s father gives her a dowry of a cow or jewels, or at least two rupees; while the boy’s father pays all the expenses of the wedding with the exception of one feast. The bridegroom gives the bride a present of three shoulder-cloths and three skirts, and one of these is worn by her at the wedding; this is the old northern method of dress, but married women do not usually adhere to it and have adopted the common sāri or single body-cloth. The principal ceremony is the bhānwar or walking round the sacred post. While the bride and bridegroom are engaged in this the parents and elderly relatives shut themselves into the house and weep. During the first four rounds of the post the bride walks in front bowing her head and the bridegroom places his right hand on her back; while during the last three the bridegroom walks in front holding the bride by her third finger. After this the bride is hidden somewhere in the house and the bridegroom has to search for her. Sometimes the bride’s younger sister is dressed up in her clothes and the bridegroom catches her in mistake for his wife, whereupon the old women laugh and say to him, ‘Do you want her also?’ If finally he fails to find the bride he must give her some ornament.

After the wedding the bridegroom’s marriage-crown is hung to the roof in a basket. And on the sixth day of the following month of Bhādon (August), he again dresses himself in his wedding clothes, and taking his marriage-crown on a dish, proceeds to the nearest stream or river accompanied by his friends. Here he throws the crown into the water, and the wedding coat is washed clean of the turmeric and unsewn and made up into ordinary clothes. This ceremony is known as moschatt and is common to Hindu castes generally. Widows are permitted to marry again, and the most usual match is with the younger brother of the deceased husband. Divorce is allowed at the instance either of the husband or wife, and may be effected by a simple declaration before the caste committee.

4. Childbirth

After a birth neither the mother nor child are given anything to eat the first day; and on the second they bring a young calf and give a little of its urine to the child, and to the mother a little sugar and the half of a cocoanut. In the evening of this day they buy all kinds of hot spices and herbs from a Bania and make a cake with them and give it to the mother to eat. On the second day the child begins to drink its mother’s milk. The navel-string is cut and buried in the room on the first day, and over it a fire is kept burning continuously during the period of impurity. The small piece which falls from the child’s body is buried beneath the mother’s bed. The period of impurity after the birth of a girl lasts for four days and five days for a boy. On the sixth day the mother is given rice to eat. Twelve days after a child is born the barber’s wife cuts its nails for the first time and throws the clippings away.

5. Ear-piercing

The ears of boys and girls are pierced when they are four or five years old; until this is done they are not considered as members of the caste and may take food from anyone. The ear is always pierced by a Sunār (goldsmith), who travels about the country in the pursuit of this calling. A brass pin is left in the ear for fifteen days, and is then removed and a strip of wood is substituted for it in a boy’s ear and a peacock’s feather in that of a girl to enlarge the hole. Girls do not have their nostrils pierced nor wear nose-rings, as the Kāchhis are a comparatively low caste. They are tattooed before or after marriage with patterns of a scorpion, a peacock, a discus, and with dots on the chin and cheek-bones. During the period of her monthly impurity a girl is secluded in the house and does not eat flesh or fish. When the time is finished she goes to the river and bathes and dresses her hair with earth, which is a necessary ceremony of purification.

6. Disposal of the dead

The bodies of children under five and of persons dying from smallpox, snake-bite or cholera are buried, and those of others are cremated. In Chhindwāra they do not wash or anoint the corpses of the dead, but sprinkle on them a little turmeric and water. On the day of the funeral or cremation the bereaved family is supplied with food by friends. The principal deity of the Kāchhis is Bhainsāsur, who is regarded as the keeper of the vegetable garden and is represented by a stone placed under a tree in any part of it. He is worshipped once a year after the Holi festival with offerings of vermilion, areca-nuts and cocoanuts, and libations of liquor. The Kāchhis raise all kinds of vegetables and garden crops, the principal being chillies, turmeric, tobacco, garlic, onions, yams and other vegetables. They are diligent and laborious, and show much skill in irrigating and manuring their crops.

Kadera

1. Historical notice

Kadera, Kandera, Golandāz, Bāndar, Hawāidar.233—A small occupational caste of makers of fireworks. The Kaderas numbered 2200 persons in 1911, and were most numerous in the Narsinghpur District. They consider themselves to have come from Bundelkhand, where the caste is also found, but it is in greatest strength in the Gwālior State. In former times Kaderas were employed to manufacture gunpowder and missiles of iron, and serve cannon in the Indian armies. The term Golandāz or ‘ball-thrower’ was also applied to native artillerymen. The Bāndar or ‘rocket-throwers’ were a separate class, who fired rockets containing missiles, the name being derived from vān, an arrow. With them may be classed the Deg-andāz or ‘mortar-throwers,’ who used thick earthenware pots filled with powder and having fuses attached, somewhat resembling the modern bomb—missiles which inflicted dreadful wounds.234 Mr. Irvine writes of the Mughal artillery as follows: “The fire was never very rapid. Orme speaks of the artillery firing once in a quarter of an hour. In 1721 the usual rate of fire of heavy guns was once every three hours. Artillery which fired once in two gharis or forty-four minutes was praised for its rapidity of action. The guns were usually posted behind the clay walls of houses; or they might take up a commanding position on the top of a brick-kiln; or a temporary entrenchment might be formed out of the earthen bank and ditch which usually surround a grove of mango-trees.” Hawāidār is a term for a maker of fireworks, while the name Kandera itself may perhaps be derived from kand, an arrow.

2. Subdivisions

In Narsinghpur the Kaderas have three subcastes, Rājpūt or Dāngiwāra, Dhunka, and Matwāla. The first claim to be Rājpūts, but the alternative name of Dāngiwāra indicates that they are a mixed group, perhaps partly of Rājpūt descent like the Dāngis of Saugor. It is by no means unlikely that the lower classes of Rājpūts should have been employed in the avocations of the Kaderas. The term Dhunka signifies a cotton-cleaner, and some of the Kaderas may have taken up this calling, when they could no longer find employment in the native armies. Matwāla means a drinker of country liquor, in which members of this group indulge. But with the exception of the Rājpūt Kaderas in Narsinghpur, other members of the caste also drink it.

3. Social customs

They celebrate their marriages by walking round the sacred post. Divorce and the remarriage of widows are permitted. They have a caste committee, with a headman called Chaudhri or Mehtar, and an inferior officer known as Diwān. When a man has been put out of caste the Chaudhri first takes food with him on readmission, and for this is entitled to a fee of a rupee and a turban, while the Diwān receives a smaller cloth. These offices are hereditary. The Kaderas have no purda system, and a wife may speak freely to her father-in-law. They bury the milk-teeth of children below the ghinochi, or stand for water-pots, with the idea probably of preventing heat and inflammation in the gums. A child’s jhāla or birth-hair is usually cut for the first time on the occasion of some marriage in the family, and is thrown into the Nerbudda or buried at a temple. Names are given by the Brāhman on the day of birth or soon afterwards, and a second pet name is commonly used in the family. If a child sees a lamp on the chhati or sixth day after its birth they think that it will squint.

4. Religion and occupation

The caste employ Brāhmans for religious ceremonies, but their social position is low, and they rank with castes from whom a Brāhman cannot take water. On the tenth day of Jeth (May) they worship Lukmān Hakīm, a personage whom they believe to have been the inventor of gunpowder. He is popularly identified with Solomon, and is revered with Muhammadan rites in the shop and not in the house. A Fakīr is called in who sacrifices a goat, and makes an offering of the head, which becomes his perquisite; sugar-cakes and sweet rice are also offered and given away to children, and the flesh of the goat is eaten by the family of the worshipper. Since the worship is paid only in the shop it would appear that Lukmān Hakīm is considered a deity foreign to the domestic religion, and is revered as having invented the substance which enables the caste to make their livelihood; and since he is clearly a Muhammadan deity, and is venerated according to the ritual of this religion by the Kaderas, who are otherwise Hindus, a recognition seems to be implied that as far at least as the Kaderas are concerned the introduction of gunpowder into India is attributed to the Muhammadans. It is not stated whether or not the month of May was selected of set purpose for the worship of the inventor of gunpowder, but it is at any rate a most appropriate season in India. At present the Kadera makes his own gunpowder and manufactures fireworks, and in this capacity he is also known as Atashbāz. The ingredients for gunpowder in Narsinghpur are a pound of saltpetre, two ounces of sulphur, and four ounces of charcoal of a light wood, such as sāleh235 or the stalks of arhar.236 Water is sprinkled on the charcoal and the ingredients are pounded together in a mortar, a dangerous proceeding which is apt to cause occasional vacancies in the family circle. Arsenic and potash are also used for different fireworks, and sesamum oil is added to prevent smoke. Fireworks form a very popular spectacle in India, and can be obtained of excellent quality even in small towns. Bharbhūnjas or grain-parchers now also deal in them.

Kahār

1. Origin and statistics

Kahār,237 Bhoi.—The caste of palanquin-bearers and watermen of northern India. No scientific distinction can be made between the Kahārs and Dhīmars, both names being applied to the same people. In northern India the term Kahār is generally used, and Mr. Crooke has an article on Kahār, but none on Dhīmar. In the Central Provinces the latter is the more common name for the caste, and in 1911 23,000 Kahārs were returned as against nearly 300,000 Dhīmars. Berār had also 27,000 Kahārs. The social customs of the caste are described in the article on Dhīmar, but a short separate notice is given to the Kahārs on account of their special social interest. Some Kahārs refuse to clean household cooking-vessels and hence occupy a slightly higher social position than the Dhīmars generally. Mr. Crooke derives the name of the caste from the Sanskrit Skandha-kāra, or ‘One who carries things on his shoulder.’ The Brāhmanical genealogists represent the Kahār as descended from a Brāhman father and a Chandāl or sweeper mother, and this is typical of the position occupied by the caste, who, though probably derived from the primitive non-Aryan tribes, have received a special position on account of their employment as household servants, so that all classes may take water and cooked food at their hands. As one of Mr. Crooke’s correspondents remarks: “This caste is so low that they clean the vessels of almost all castes except menials like the Chamār and Dhobi, and at the same time so high that, except Kanaujia Brāhmans, all other castes eat pakki and drink water at their hands.” Sir D. Ibbetson says of the Kahār: “He is a true village menial, receiving customary dues and performing customary service. His social standing is in one respect high; for all will drink water at his hands. But he is still a servant, though the highest of his class.” This comparatively high degree of social purity appears to have been conferred on the Kahārs and Dhīmars from motives of convenience, as it would be intolerable to have a palanquin-bearer or indoor servant from whom one could not take a drink of water.

2. The doli or palanquin

The proper occupation of the Kahār is that of doli or litter-bearer. When carts could not travel owing to the absence of roads this was the regular mode of conveyance of those who could afford it and did not ride. Buchanan remarks: “Few or none except some chief native officers of Government keep bearers in constant pay; but men of large estates give farms at low rents to their bearers, who are ready at a call and receive food when employed.”238 A superior kind of litter used by rich women had a domed roof supported on eight pillars with side-boards like Venetian blinds; and was carried on two poles secured to the sides beneath the roof. This is perhaps the progenitor of the modern Calcutta ghāri or four-wheeler, just as the body of the hansom-cab was modelled on the old sedan-chair. It was called Kharkhariya in imitation of the rattling of the blinds when in motion.239 The pālki or ordinary litter consisted of a couch slung under a long bamboo, which formed an arch over it. Over the arch was suspended a tilt made of cloth, which served to screen the passenger from sun and rain. A third kind was the Chaupala or square box open at the sides and slung on a bamboo; the passenger sat doubled up inside this. If as was sometimes the case the Chaupala was hung considerably beneath the bamboo the passenger was miserably draggled by dust and mud. Nowadays regular litters are so little used that they are not to be found in villages; but when required because one cannot ride or for travelling at night they are readily improvised by slinging a native wooden cot from two poles by strings of bamboo-fibre. Most of the Kahārs and Dhīmars have forgotten how to carry a litter, and proceed very slowly with frequent stops to change shoulders or substitute other bearers. But the Kols of Mandla still retain the art, and will do more than four miles an hour for several hours if eight men are allowed. Under native governments the privilege of riding in a palanquin was a mark of distinction; and a rule was enforced that no native could thus enter into the area of the forts in Madras and Bombay without the permission of the Governor; such permission being recorded in the order book at the gates of the fort and usually granted only to a few who were lame or otherwise incapacitated. When General Medows assumed the office of Governor of Bombay in 1788 some Parsis waited on him and begged for the removal of this restriction; to which the Governor replied, “So long as you do not force me to ride in this machine he may who likes it”; and so the rule was abrogated.240 A passage from Hobson-Jobson, however, shows that the Portuguese were much stricter in this respect: “In 1591 a proclamation of the Viceroy, Matthias d’Albuquerque, ordered: ‘That no person of what quality or condition soever, shall go in a palanquy without my express licence, save they be over sixty years of age, to be first proved before the Auditor-General of Police … and those who contravene this shall pay a penalty of 200 cruzados, and persons of mean estate the half, the palanquys and their belongings to be forfeited, and the bois or mouços who carry such palanquys shall be condemned to His Majesty’s galleys.’”241 The meaning of the last sentence appears to be that the bearers were considered as slaves, and were forfeited to the king’s service as a punishment to their owner. As the unauthorised use of this conveyance was so severely punished it would appear that riding in a palanquin must have been a privilege of nobility. Similarly to ride on a horse was looked upon in something of the same light; and when a person of inferior consequence met a superior or a Government officer while riding, he had to dismount from his horse as a mark of respect until the other had passed. This last custom still obtains to some extent, though it is rapidly disappearing.