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

The Khatīks are both Hindu and Muhammadan by religion, the latter being also known as Gai-Khatīk or cow-killer; but these may more suitably be classed with the Kasais or Muhammadan butchers. In the Marātha Districts the Hindu Khatīks are divided into two subcastes, the Berāria or those from Berār, and the Jhādi or those of the forest country of the Wainganga valley. These will take food together, but do not intermarry. They have the usual set of exogamous clans or septs, many of which are of a totemistic nature, being named after plants, animals or natural objects. In Jubbulpore, owing to their habit of keeping pigs and the dirty state of their dwellings, one of their divisions is named Lendha, which signifies the excrement of swine. Here the sept is called bān, while in Wardha it is known as kul or ādnām. Marriage within the sept is forbidden. When arranging a match they consider it essential that the boy should be taller than the girl, but do not insist on his being older. A bride-price is sometimes paid, especially if the parents of the girl are poor, but the practice is considered derogatory. In such a case the father is thought to sell his daughter and he is called Bād or Bhānd. Marriages commonly take place on the fifth, seventh or ninth day after the Holi festival, or on the festival of Badsāvitri, the third day of Baisākh (light fortnight). When the bridegroom leaves the house to set out for the wedding his mother or aunt waves a pestle and churning-stick round him, puts a piece of betel-vine in his mouth and gives him her breast to suck. He then steps on a little earthen lamp-saucer placed over an egg and breaks them, and leaves the house without looking back. These rites are common to many castes, but their exact significance is obscure. The pestle and churning-stick and egg may perhaps be emblems of fertility. At the wedding the fathers of the couple split some wood into shreds, and, placing it in a little pit with cotton, set a light to it. If it is all burnt up the ceremony has been properly performed, but if any is left, the people laugh and say that the corpses of the family’s ancestors were not wholly consumed on the pyre. To effect a divorce the husband and wife break a stick in the presence of the caste panchāyat or committee, and if a divorced woman or one who has deserted her husband marries again, the first husband has to give a feast to the caste on the tenth day after the wedding; this is perhaps in the nature of a funeral feast to signify that she is dead to him. The remarriage of widows is permitted. A girl who is seduced by a member of the caste, even though she may be delivered of a child, may be married to him by the maimed rites used for widows. But she cannot take part in auspicious ceremonies, and her feet are not washed by married women like those of a proper bride. Even if a girl be seduced by an outsider, except a Hindu of the impure castes or a Muhammadan, she may be taken back into the community and her child will be recognised as a member of it. But they say that if a Khatīk keeps a woman of another caste he will be excommunicated until he has put her away, and his children will be known as Akre or bastard Khatīks, these being numerous in Berār. The caste burn or bury the dead as their means permit, and on the third day they place on the pyre some sugar, cakes, liquor, sweets and fruit for the use of the dead man’s soul.

The occupation of the Khatīk is of course horrible to Hindu ideas, and the social position of the caste is very low. In some localities they are considered impure, and high-caste Hindus who do not eat meat will wash themselves if forced to touch a Khatīk. Elsewhere they rank just above the impure castes, but do not enter Hindu temples. These Khatīks slaughter sheep and goats and sell the flesh, but they do not cure the skins, which are generally exported to Madras. The Hindu Khatīks often refuse to slaughter animals themselves and employ a Muhammadan to do so by the rite of halāl. The blood is sometimes sold to Gonds, who cook and eat it mixed with grain. Other members of the caste are engaged in cultivation, or retail vegetables and grain.

Khatri

1. Rājpūt origin

Khatri.—A prominent mercantile caste of the Punjab, whose members to the number of about 5000 have settled in the Central Provinces and Berār, being distributed over most Districts. The Khatris claim to be derived from the Rājpūt caste, and say that their name is a corruption of Kshatriya. At the census of 1901 Sir Herbert Risley approved of their demand on the evidence laid before him by the leading representatives of the caste. This view is assented to by Mr. Crooke and Mr. Nesfield. In Gujarāt also the caste are known as Brahma-Kshatris, and their Rājpūt origin is considered probable, while their appearance bears out the claim to be derived either from the Aryans or some later immigrants from Central Asia: “They are a handsome fair-skinned class, some of them with blue or grey eyes, in make and appearance like Vānias (Banias), only larger and more vigorous.”501 Mr. Crooke states that, “their women have a reputation for their beauty and fair complexion. The proverb runs, ‘A Khatri woman would be fair without fine clothes or ornaments,’ and, ‘Only an albino is fairer than a Khatri woman.’”502 Their legend of origin is as follows: “When Parasurāma the Brāhman was slaying the Kshatriyas in revenge for the theft of the sacred cow Kāmdhenu and for the murder of his father, a pregnant Kshatriya woman took refuge in the hut of a Sāraswat Brāhman. When Parasurāma came up he asked the Brāhman who the woman was, and he said she was his daughter. Parasurāma then told him to eat with her in order to prove it, and the Brāhman ate out of the same leaf-plate as the woman. The child to whom she subsequently gave birth was the ancestor of the Khatris, and in memory of this Sāraswat Brāhmans will eat with Khatris to the present day.” The Sāraswat Brāhman priests of the Khatris do as a matter of fact take katcha food or that cooked with water from them, and smoke from their huqqas, and this is another strong argument in favour of their origin either from Brāhmans or Rājpūts.

The classical account of the Khatris is that given in Sir George Campbell’s Ethnology of India, and it may be reproduced here as in other descriptions of the caste:

2. Sir George Campbell’s account of the Khatris

“Trade is their main occupation; but in fact they have broader and more distinguishing features. Besides monopolising the trade of the Punjab and the greater part of Afghānistān, and doing a good deal beyond those limits, they are in the Punjab the chief civil administrators, and have almost all literate work in their hands. So far as the Sikhs have a priesthood, they are, moreover, the priests or gurus of the Sikhs. Both Nānak and Govind were, and the Sodis and Bedis of the present day are, Khatris. Thus then they are in fact in the Punjab, so far as a more energetic race will permit them, all that Mahratta Brāhmins are in the Mahratta country, besides engrossing the trade which the Mahratta Brāhmins have not. They are not usually military in their character, but are quite capable of using the sword when necessary. Diwān Sāwan Mal, Governor of Multan, and his notorious successor Mūlraj, and very many of Ranjīt Singh’s chief functionaries were Khatris.

“Even under Mahomedan rulers in the west they have risen to high administrative posts. There is a record of a Khatri Diwān of Badakshān or Kurdāz; and, I believe, of a Khatri Governor of Peshāwar under the Afghans. The Emperor Akbar’s famous minister, Todarmal, was a Khatri; and a relative of that man of undoubted energy, the great commissariat contractor of Agra, Joti Pershād, lately informed me that he also is a Khatri. Altogether, there can be no doubt that these Khatris are one of the most acute, energetic and remarkable races in India, though in fact, except locally in the Punjab, they are not much known to Europeans. The Khatris are staunch Hindus, and it is somewhat singular that, while giving a religion and priests to the Sikhs, they themselves are comparatively seldom Sikhs. The Khatris are a very fine, fair, handsome race, and, as may be gathered from what I have already said, they are very generally educated.

“There is a large subordinate class of Khatris, somewhat lower, but of equal mercantile energy, called Rors or Roras. The proper Khatris of higher grade will often deny all connection with them, or at least only admit that they have some sort of bastard kindred with Khatris, but I think there can be no doubt that they are ethnologically the same, and they are certainly mixed up with Khatris in their avocations. I shall treat the whole kindred as generically Khatris.

“Speaking of the Khatris then thus broadly, they have, as I have said, the whole trade of the Punjab and of most of Afghānistān. No village can get on without the Khatri who keeps the accounts, does the banking business, and buys and sells the grain. They seem, too, to get on with the people better than most traders and usurers of this kind. In Afghānistān, among a rough and alien people, the Khatris are as a rule confined to the position of humble dealers, shopkeepers and moneylenders; but in that capacity the Pathāns seem to look on them as a kind of valuable animal, and a Pathān will steal another man’s Khatri, not only for the sake of ransom, as is frequently done on the frontier of Peshāwar and Hazāra, but also as he might steal a milch-cow, or as Jews might, I dare say, be carried off in the Middle Ages with a view to render them profitable.

“I do not know the exact limits of Khatri occupation to the West, but certainly in all Eastern Afghānistān they seem to be just as much a part of the established community as they are in the Punjab. They find their way far into Central Asia, but the further they get the more depressed and humiliating is their position. In Turkistan, Vambéry speaks of them with great contempt, as yellow-faced Hindus of a cowardly and sneaking character. Under Turcoman rule they could hardly be otherwise. They are the only Hindus known in Central Asia. In the Punjab they are so numerous that they cannot all be rich and mercantile; and many of them hold land, cultivate, take service, and follow various avocations.”

3. Higher and lower groups

The Khatris have a very complicated system of subdivisions, which it is not necessary to detail here in view of their small strength in the Province. As a rule they marry only one wife, though a second may be taken for the purpose of getting offspring. But parents are very reluctant to give their daughters to a man who is already married. The remarriage of widows is forbidden and divorce also is not recognised, but an unfaithful wife may be turned out of the house and expelled from the caste. Though they practise monogamy, however, the Khatris place no restrictions on the keeping of concubines, and from the offspring of such women inferior branches of the caste have grown up. In Gujarāt these are known as the Dasa and Pancha groups, and they may not eat or intermarry with proper Khatris.503 The name Khatri seems there to be restricted to these inferior groups, while the caste proper is called Brahma-Kshatri. There is also a marked distinction in their occupation, for, while the Brahma-Kshatris are hereditary District officials, pleaders, bankers and Government servants, the Khatris are engaged in weaving, and formerly prepared the fine cotton cloth of Surat and Broach, while they also make gold and silver thread, and the lace used for embroidery.504 As a class they are said to be thriftless and idle, and at least the Khatris of Surat to be excessively fond of strong drink. The Khatris of Nimār in the Central Provinces are also weavers, and it seems not unlikely that they may be a branch of these Gujarāt Khatris of the inferior class, and that the well-known gold and silver lace and embroidery industry of Burhānpur may have been introduced by them from Surat. The Khatris of Narsinghpur are dyers, and may not improbably be connected with the Nimār weavers. The other Khatris scattered here and there over the Provinces may belong to the higher branch of the caste.

4. Marriage and funeral customs

In conclusion some extracts may be given from the interesting account of the marriage and funeral customs of the Brahma-Kshatris in Gujarāt:505 “On the wedding-day shortly before the marriage hour the bridegroom, his face covered with flower-garlands and wearing a long tunic and a yellow silk waistcloth, escorted by the women of his family, goes to the bride’s house on horseback in procession.... Before the bridegroom’s party arrive the bride, dressed in a head-cloth, bodice, a red robe, and loose yellow Muhammadan trousers, is seated in a closed palanquin or balai set in front of the house. The bridegroom on dismounting walks seven times round the palanquin, the bride’s brother at each turn giving him a cut with an oleander twig, and the women of the family throwing showers of cake from the windows. He retires, and while mounting his horse, and before he is in the saddle, the bride’s father comes out, and, giving him a present, leads him into the marriage-hall.... The girl keeps her eyes closed throughout the whole day, not opening them until the bridegroom is ushered into the marriage-booth, so that the first object she sees is her intended husband. On the first Monday, Thursday or Friday after the marriage the bride is hid either in her own or in a neighbour’s house. The bridegroom comes in state, and with the point of his sword touches the outer doors of seven houses, and then begins to search for his wife. The time is one of much fun and merriment, the women of the house bantering and taunting the bridegroom, especially when he is long in finding his wife’s hiding-place. When she is found the bridegroom leads the bride to the marriage-hall, and they sit there combing each other’s hair.”

In connection with their funeral ceremonies Mr. Bhīmbhai Kirpārām gives the following particulars of the custom of beating the breasts:506 “Contrary to the Gujarāt practice of beating only the breast, the Brahma-Kshatri women beat the forehead, breast and knees. For thirteen days after a death women weep and beat their breasts thrice a day, at morning, noon and evening. Afterwards they weep and beat their breasts every evening till a year has passed, not even excepting Sundays, Tuesdays or Hindu holidays. During this year of mourning the female relations of the deceased used to eat nothing but millet-bread and pulse; but this custom is gradually being given up.”

Khojāh

Khojāh.507—A small Muhammadan sect of traders belonging to Gujarāt, who retain some Hindu practices. They reside in Wardha, Nāgpur and the Berār Districts, and numbered about 500 persons in 1911 as against 300 in 1901. The Khojāhs are Muhammadans of the Shia sect, and their ancestors were converted Hindus of the Lohāna trading caste of Sind, who are probably akin to the Khatris. As shown in the article on Cutchi, the Cutchi or Meman traders are also converted Lohānas. The name Khojāh is a corruption of the Turkish Khwājah, Lord, and this is supposed to be a Muhammadan equivalent for the title Thākur or Thakkar applied to the Lohānas. The Khojāhs belong to the Nazārian branch of the Egyptian Ismailia sect, and the founder of this sect in Persia was Hasan Sabāh, who lived at the beginning of the eleventh century and founded the order of the Fidawis or devotees, who were the Assassins of the Crusades. Hasan subsequently threw off his allegiance to the Egyptian Caliph and made himself the head of his own sect with the title of Shaikh-ul-Jabal or Lord. He was known to the Crusaders as the ‘Old Man of the Mountain.’ His third successor Hasan (A.D. 1163) declared himself to be the unrevealed Imām and preached that no action of a believer in him could be a sin. It is through this Hasan that His Highness the Aga Khān traces his descent from Ali. Subsequently emissaries of the sect came to India, and one Pīr Sadr-ud-dīn converted the Lohānas. According to one account this man was a Hindu slave of Imām Hasan. Sadr-ud-dīn preached that his master Hasan was the Nishkalanki or tenth incarnation of Vishnu. The Adam of the Semitic story of the creation was identified with the Hindu deity Vishnu, the Prophet Muhammad with Siva, and the first five Imāms of Ismailia with the five Pāndava brothers. By this means the new faith was made more acceptable to the Lohānas. In 1845 Aga Shāh Hasan Ali, the Ismailia unrevealed Imām, came and settled in India, and his successor is His Highness the Aga Khān.

The Khojāhs retain some Hindu customs. Boys have their ears bored and a lock of hair is left on a child’s head to be shaved and offered at some shrine. Circumcision and the wearing of a beard are optional. They do not have mosques, but meet to pray at a lodge called the Jama’at Khāna. They repeat the names of their Pīrs or saints on a rosary made of 101 beads of clay from Karbala, the scene of the death of Hasan and Husain. At their marriages, deaths and on every new-moon day, contributions are levied which are sent to His Highness the Aga Khān. “A remarkable feature at a Khojāh’s death,” Mr. Farīdi states, “is the samarchhanta or Holy Drop. The Jama’at officer asks the dying Khojāh whether he wishes for the Holy Drop, and if the latter agrees he must bequeath Rs. 5 to Rs. 500 to the Jama’at. The officer dilutes a cake of Karbala clay in water and moistens the lips of the dying man with it, sprinkling the remainder over his face, neck and chest. The touch of the Holy Drop is believed to save the departing soul from the temptation of the Arch-Fiend, and to remove the death-agony as completely as among the Sunnis does the recital at a death-bed of the chapter of the Korān known as the Sūrah-i-Yā-sīn. If the dead man is old and grey-haired the hair after death is dyed with henna. A garland of cakes of Karbala clay is tied round the neck of the corpse. If the body is to be buried locally two small circular patches of silk cloth cut from the covering of Husain’s tomb, called chashmah or spectacles, are laid over the eyes. Those Khojāhs who can afford it have their bodies placed in air-tight coffins and transported to the field of Karbala in Persia to be buried there. The bodies are taken by steamer to Bāghdād, and thence by camel to Karbala.

“The Khojāhs are keen and enterprising traders, and are great travellers by land and sea, visiting and settling in distant countries for purposes of trade. They have business connections with Ceylon, Burma, Singapore, China and Japan, and with ports of the Persian Gulf, Arabia and East Africa. Khojāh boys go as apprentices in foreign Khojāh firms on salaries of Rs. 200 to Rs. 2000 a year with board and lodging.”

Khond508

[The principal authorities on the Khonds are Sir H. Risley’s Tribes and Castes of Bengal, Major-General Campbell’s Wild Tribes of Khondistān, and Major MacPherson’s Report on the Khonds of the Districts of Ganjām and Cuttack (Reprint, Madras Scottish United Press, 1863). When the inquiries leading up to these volumes were undertaken, the Central Provinces contained a large body of the tribe, but the bulk of these have passed to Bihār and Orissa with the transfer of the Kālāhandi and Patna States and the Sambalpur District. Nevertheless, as information of interest had been collected, it has been thought desirable to reproduce it, and Sir James Frazer’s description of the human sacrifices formerly in vogue has been added. Much of the original information contained in this article was furnished by Mr. Panda Baijnāth, Extra Assistant Commissioner, when Dīwān of Patna State. Papers were also contributed by Rai Sāhib Dīnbandhu Patnāik, Dīwān of Sonpur, Mr. Miān Bhai, Extra Assistant Commissioner, Sambalpur, and Mr. Chāru Chandra Ghose, Deputy Inspector of Schools, Kālāhandi.]

1. Traditions of the tribe

Khond, Kandh.*—A Dravidian tribe found in the Uriya-speaking tract of the Sambalpur District and the adjoining Feudatory States of Patna and Kālāhandi, which up to 1905 were included in the Central Provinces, but now belong to Bihār and Orissa. The Province formerly contained 168,000 Khonds, but the number has been reduced to about 10,000, residing mainly in the Khariār zamīndāri to the south-east of the Raipur District and the Sārangarh State. The tract inhabited by the Khonds was known generally as the Kondhān. The tribe call themselves Kuiloka, or Kuienju, which may possibly be derived from ko or kū, a Telugu word for a mountain.509 Their own traditions as to their origin are of little historical value, but they were almost certainly at one time the rulers of the country in which they now reside. It was the custom until recently for the Rāja of Kālāhandi to sit on the lap of a Khond on his accession while he received the oaths of fealty. The man who held the Rāja was the eldest member of a particular family, residing in the village of Gugsai Patna, and had the title of Patnaji. The coronation of a new Rāja took place in this village, to which all the chiefs repaired. The Patnaji would be seated on a large rock, richly dressed, with a cloth over his knees on which the Rāja sat. The Dīwān or minister then tied the turban of state on the Rāja’s head, while all the other chiefs present held the ends of the cloth. The ceremony fell into abeyance when Raghu Kesari Deo was made Rāja on the deposition of his predecessor for misconduct, as the Patnaji refused to install a second Rāja, while one previously consecrated by him was still living. The Rāja was also accustomed to marry a Khond girl as one of his wives, though latterly he did not allow her to live in the palace. These customs have lately been abandoned; they may probably be interpreted as a recognition that the Rājas of Kālāhandi derived their rights from the Khonds. Many of the zamīndāri estates of Kālāhandi and Sonpur are still held by members of the tribe.

2. Tribal divisions

There is no strict endogamy within the Khond tribe. It has two main divisions: the Kutia Khonds who are hillmen and retain their primitive tribal customs, and the plain-dwelling Khonds who have acquired a tincture of Hinduism. The Kutia or hill Khonds are said to be so called because they break the skulls of animals when they kill them for food; the word kutia meaning one who breaks or smashes. The plain-dwelling Khonds have a number of subdivisions which are supposed to be endogamous, though the rule is not strictly observed. Among these the Rāj Khonds are the highest, and are usually landed proprietors. A man, however, is not considered to be a Rāj Khond unless he possesses some land, and if a Rāj Khond takes a bride from another group he descends to it. A similar rule applies among some of the other groups, a man being relegated to his wife’s division when he marries into one which is lower than his own. The Dal Khonds may probably have been soldiers, the word dal meaning an army. They are also known as Adi Kandh or the superior Khonds, and as Bālūsudia or ‘Shaven.’ At present they usually hold the honourable position of village priest, and have to a certain extent adopted Hindu usages, refusing to eat fowls or buffaloes, and offering the leaves of the tulsi (basil) to their deities. The Kandhanas are so called because they grow turmeric, which is considered rather a low thing to do, and the Pākhia because they eat the flesh of the por or buffalo. The Gauria are graziers, and the Nāgla or naked ones apparently take their name from their paucity of clothing. The Utār or Satbhuiyān are a degraded group, probably of illegitimate descent; for the other Khonds will take daughters from them, but will not give their daughters to them.

3. Exogamous septs

Traditionally the Khonds have thirty-two exogamous septs, but the number has now increased. All the members of one sept live in the same locality about some central village. Thus the Tūpa sept are collected round the village of Teplagarh in the Patna State, the Loa sept round Sindhekala, the Borga sept round Bangomunda, and so on. The names of the septs are derived either from the names of villages or from titles or nicknames. Each sept is further divided into a number of subsepts whose names are of a totemistic nature, being derived from animals, plants or natural objects. Instances of these are Bachhās calf, Chhatra umbrella, Hikoka horse, Kelka the kingfisher, Konjaka the monkey, Mandinga an earthen pot, and so on. It is a very curious fact that while the names of the septs appear to belong to the Khond language, those of the subsepts are all Uriya words, and this affords some ground for the supposition that they are more recent than the septs, an opinion to which Sir H. Risley inclines. On the other hand, the fact that the subsepts have totemistic names appears difficult of explanation under this hypothesis. Members of the subsept regard the animal or plant after which it is named as sacred. Those of the Kadam group will not stand under the tree of that name. Those of the Narsingha511 sept will not kill a tiger or eat the meat of any animal wounded or killed by this animal. The same subsept will be found in several different septs, and a man may not marry a woman belonging either to the same sept or subsept as his own. But kinship through females is disregarded, and he may take his maternal uncle’s daughter to wife, and in Kālāhandi is not debarred from wedding his mother’s sister.512