The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 1

34. Position of women

The inferior status of women in Islām is inherited from Arabian society before the time of Muhammad. Among the pagan Arabs a woman was a mere chattel, and descended by inheritance. Hence the union of men with their step-mothers and mothers-in-law was common. Muhammad forbade these incestuous marriages, and also the prevalent practice of female infanticide. He legalised polygamy, but limited it to four wives, and taught that women as well as men could enter paradise. It would have been quite impossible to abolish polygamy in Arabia at the time when he lived, nor could he strike at the practice of secluding women even if he had wished to do so. This last custom has shown an unfortunate persistence, and is in full force among Indian Muhammadans, from whom the higher castes of Hindus in northern India have perhaps imitated it. Nor can it be said to show much sign of weakening at present. It is not universal over the Islamic world, as in Afghanistan women are not usually secluded. As a matter of fact both polygamy and divorce are very rare among Indian Muhammadans. Mr. Hughes quotes an interesting passage against polygamy from a Persian book on marriage customs: “That man is to be praised who confines himself to one wife, for if he takes two it is wrong and he will certainly repent of his folly. Thus say the seven wise women:

Be that man’s life immersed in gloomWho weds more wives than one,With one his cheeks retain their bloom,His voice a cheerful tone;These speak his honest heart at rest,And he and she are always blest;But when with two he seeks his joy,Together they his soul annoy;With two no sunbeam of delightCan make his day of misery bright.”

Adultery was punished by stoning to death in accordance with the Jewish custom.

35. Interest on money

Usury or the taking of interest on loans was prohibited by the Prophet. This precept was adopted from the Mosaic law and emphasised, and while it has to all appearance been discarded by the Jews, it is still largely adhered to by Moslems. In both cases the prohibition was addressed to a people in the pastoral stage of culture when loans were probably very rare and no profit could as a rule be made by taking a loan, as it would not lead to any increase. Loans would only be made for subsistence, and as the borrower was probably always poor, he would frequently be unable to pay the principal much less the interest, and would ultimately become the slave of the creditor in lieu of his debt. Usury would thus result in the enslavement of a large section of the free community, and would be looked upon as an abuse and instrument of tyranny. As soon as the agricultural stage is reached usury stands on a different footing. Loans of seed for sowing the land and of cattle or money for ploughing it then become frequent and necessary, and the borrower can afford to pay interest from the profit of the harvest. It is clearly right and proper also that the lender should receive a return for the risk involved in the loan and the capacity of gain thus conferred on the borrower, and usury becomes a properly legitimate and necessary institution, though the rate, being probably based on the return yielded by the earth to the seed, has a tendency to be very excessive in primitive societies. The prohibition of interest among Muhammadans is thus now a hopeless anachronism, which has closed to those who observe it some of the most important professions. A tendency is happily visible towards the abrogation of the rule, and Mr. Marten notes that the Berār Muhammadan Council has set an example by putting out its own money at interest.339

36. Muhammadan education

The Indian Muhammadans have generally been considered to be at a disadvantage in modern India as compared with the Hindus, owing to their unwillingness to accept regular English education for their sons, and their adherence to the simply religious teaching of their own Maulvis. However this may have been in the past, it is doubtful whether it is at all true of the present generation. While there is no doubt that Muhammadans consider it of the first importance that their sons should learn Urdu and be able to read the Korān, there are no signs of Muhammadan boys being kept away from the Government schools, at least in the Central Provinces. The rationalising spirit of Sir Saiyad Ahmad, the founder of the Aligarh College, and the general educational conference for Indian Muhammadans has, through the excellent training given by the College, borne continually increasing fruit. A new class of educated and liberal-minded Muhammadan gentlemen has grown up whose influence on the aims and prejudices of the whole Muhammadan community is gradually becoming manifest. The statistics of occupation given at the commencement of this article show that the Muhammadans have a much larger share of all classes of administrative posts under Government than they would obtain if these were awarded on a basis of population. Presumably when it is asserted that Muhammadans are less successful than Hindus under the British Government, what is meant is that they have partly lost their former position of the sole governing class over large areas of the country. The community are now fully awake to the advantages of education, and their Anjumāns or associations have started high schools which educate students up to the entrance of the university on the same lines as the Government schools. Where these special schools do not exist, Muhammadan boys freely enter the ordinary schools, and their standard of intelligence and application is in no way inferior to that of Hindu boys.

Nānakpanthi

1. Account of the sect

Nānakpanthi 340 Sect, Nānakshahi, Udāsi, Suthra Shahi.—The Nānakpanthi sect was founded by the well-known Bāba Nānak, a Khatri of the Lahore District, who lived between 1469 and 1538–39. He is the real founder of Sikhism, but this development of his followers into a military and political organisation was the work of his successors, Har Govind and Govind Singh. Nānak himself was a religious reformer of the same type as Kabīr and others, who tried to abolish the worship of idols and all the body of Hindu superstition, and substitute a belief in a single unseen deity without form or special name. As with most of the other Vaishnava reformers, Nānak’s creed was largely an outcome of his observation of Islām. “There is nothing in his doctrine,” Sir E.D. Maclagan says, “to distinguish it in any marked way from that of the other saints who taught the higher forms of Hinduism in northern India. The unity of God, the absence of any real distinction between Hindus and Musalmans, the uselessness of ceremonial, the vanity of earthly wishes, even the equality of castes, are topics common to Nānak and the Bhagats; and the Adi-Granth or sacred book compiled by Nānak is full of quotations from elder or contemporary teachers, who taught essentially the same doctrine as Nānak himself.” It was partly, he explains, because Nānak was the first reformer in the Punjab, and thus had the field practically to himself, and partly in consequence of the subsequent development of Sikhism, that his movement has been so successful and his adherents now outnumber those of any other reformer of the same period. Nānak’s doctrines were also of a very liberal character. The burden of his teaching was that there is no Hindu and no Muhammadan. He believed in transmigration, but held that the successive stages were but purifications, and that at last the soul, cleansed from sin, went to dwell with its maker. He prescribed no caste rules or ceremonial observances, and indeed condemned them as unnecessary and even harmful; but he made no violent attack on them, he insisted on no alteration in existing civil and social institutions, and was content to leave the doctrine of the equality of all men in the sight of God to work in the minds of his followers. He respected the Hindu veneration of the cow and the Muhammadan abhorrence of the hog, but recommended as a higher rule than either total abstinence from flesh. Nothing could have been gentler or less aggressive than his doctrine, nothing more unlike the teaching of his great successor Govind.341 Two other causes contributed to swell the numbers of the Nānakpanthis. The first of these was that during the late Mughal Empire the Hindus of the frontier tracts of the Punjab were debarred by the fanaticism of their Muhammadan neighbours from the worship of idols; and they therefore found it convenient to profess the faith of Nānak which permitted them to declare themselves as worshippers of one God, while not forcing them definitely to break with caste and Hinduism. The second was that Guru Govind Singh required the absolute abandonment of caste as a condition of the initiation of a Sikh; and hence many who would not consent to this remained Nānakpanthis without adopting Sikhism. The Nānakpanthis of the present day are roughly classified as Sikhs who have not adopted the term Singh, which is attached to the names of all true Sikhs; they also do not forbid smoking or insist on the adoption of the five Kakkas or K’s which are in theory the distinguishing marks of the Sikh; the Kes or uncut hair and unshaven beard; the Kachh or short drawers ending above the knee; the Kara or iron bangle; the Khanda or steel knife; and the Kanga or comb. The Nānakpanthi retains the Hindu custom of shaving the whole head except the choti or scalp-lock, and hence is often known as a Munda or shaven Sikh.342 The sect do not prohibit the consumption of meat and liquor, but some of them eat only the flesh of animals killed by the Sikh method of Jatka, or cutting off the head by a blow on the back of the neck. Their only form of initiation is the ordinary Hindu practice of drinking the foot-nectar or sugar and water in which the toe of the guru has been dipped, and this is not very common. It is known as the Charan ka pāhul or foot-baptism, as opposed to the Khande ka pāhul or sword-baptism of the Govindi Sikhs.343 Bāba Nānak himself, Sir E. Maclagan states, is a very favourite object of veneration among Sikhs of all kinds, and the picture of the guru with his long white beard and benevolent countenance is constantly met with in the sacred places of the Punjab.

2. Nānakpanthis in the Central Provinces

In 1901 about 13,000 persons returned themselves as Nānakpanthis in the Central Provinces, of whom 7000 were Banjāras and the remainder principally Kunbis, Ahīrs and Telis. The Banjāras generally revere Nānak, as shown in the article on that caste. A certain number of Mehtars or sweepers also profess the sect, being attached to it, as to the Sikh religion, by the abolition of caste restrictions and prejudices advocated by their founders; but this tolerance has not been perpetuated, and the unclean classes, such as the Mazbi or scavenger Sikhs, are as scrupulously avoided and kept at a distance by the Sikh as by the Hindu, and are even excluded from communion, and from the rites and holy places of their religion.344

3. Udasis

The Udāsis are a class of ascetics of the Nānakpanthi or Sikh faith, whose order was founded by Sri Chand, the younger son of Nānak. They are recruited from all castes and will eat food from any Hindu. They are almost all celibates, and pay special reverence to the Adi-Granth of Nānak, but also respect the Granth of Govind Singh and attend the same shrines as the Sikhs generally. Their service consists of a ringing of bells and blare of instruments, and they chant hymns and wave lights before the Adi-Granth and the picture of Bāba Nānak. In the Central Provinces members of several orders which have branched off from the main Nānakpanthi community are known as Udāsi. Thus some of them say they do not go to any temples and worship Nirankal or the deity without shape or form, a name given to the supreme God by Nānak. In the Punjab the Nirankaris constitute a separate order from the Udāsis.345 These Udāsis wear a long rope of sheep’s wool round the neck and iron chains round the wrist and waist. They carry half a cocoanut shell as a begging-bowl and have the chameta or iron tongs, which can also be closed and used as a poker. Their form of salutation is ‘Matha Tek,’ or ‘I put my head at your feet.’ They never cut their hair and have a long string of wool attached to the choti or scalp-lock, which is coiled up under a little cap. They say that they worship Nirankal without going to temples, and when they sit down to pray they make a little fire and place ghī or sweetmeats upon it as an offering. When begging they say ‘Alakh,’ and they accept any kind of uncooked and cooked food from Brāhmans.

4. Suthra Shāhis

Another mendicant Nānakpanthi order, whose members visit the Central Provinces, is that of the Suthra Shāhis. Here, however, they often drop the special name, and call themselves simply Nānakshahi. The origin of the order is uncertain, and Sir E. Maclagan gives various accounts. Here they say that their founder was a disciple of Nānak, who visited Mecca and brought back the Seli and Syahi which are their distinctive badges. The Seli is a rope of black wool which they tie round their heads like a turban, and Syāhi the ink with which they draw a black line on their foreheads, though this is in fact usually made with charcoal. They carry a wallet in which these articles are kept, and also the two small ebony sticks which they strike against each other as an accompaniment to their begging-songs. The larger stick is dedicated to Nānak and the smaller to the Goddess Kāli. They are most importunate beggars, and say that the privilege of levying a pice (farthing) was given to them by Aurāngzeb. They were accustomed in former times to burn their clothes and stand naked at the door of any person who refused to give them alms. They also have a bahi or account-book in which the gifts they receive, especially from Banias, are recorded. Mr. Crooke states that “They indulge freely in intoxicants and seldom cease from smoking. Their profligacy is notorious, and they are said to be composed mainly of spendthrifts who have lost their wealth in gambling. They are recruited from all castes and always add the title Shāh to their names. A proverb says in allusion to their rapacity:

Kehu mare, Kehu jīye,Suthra gur batāsa piye;

or, ‘Others may live or die, but the Suthra Shāhi must have his drink of sugar and water.’346

Parmārthi Sect

Parmārthi Sect.—A Vishnuite sect of which 26,000 persons were returned as members in the census of 1901. Nearly all of these belonged to the Uriya State of Kālāhandi, since transferred to Bihār and Orissa. The following account of the sect has been furnished by Rai Bahādur Panda Baijnāth, formerly Diwān of Kālāhandi State.

This sect penetrated the State from the Orissa side, and seems to belong to Bengal. In the beginning it consisted only in pure devotion to the worship of Krishna, but later it has been degraded by sexual indulgence and immorality, and this appears to be the main basis of its ritual at present. Outwardly its followers recite the Bhāgavad Gīta and pretend to be persons of very high morals. Their secret practices were obtained from one of his officials who had entered the sect in the lowest grade. On the day of initiation there is a great meeting of members at the cost of the neophyte. A text is taught to him, and the initiation is completed by all the members partaking together of a feast without distinction of caste. The food eaten at this is considered to be Mahāprasād, or as if offered to Vishnu in his form of Jagannāth at Puri, and to be therefore incapable of defilement. The mantra or text taught to the disciple is as follows:

O Hari, O Krishna, O Hari, O Krishna,O Krishna, O Krishna, O Hari, O Hari,O Hari, O Rāmo, O Hari, O Rāmo,O Rāmo, O Rāmo, O Hari, O Hari.

The disciple is enjoined to repeat this text a prescribed number of times, 108 or more, every day. To those pupils who show their devotional ardour by continual repetition of the first text others are taught.

The next step is that the disciple should associate himself or herself with some other Parmārthi of the opposite sex and tend and serve them. This relation, which is known as Asra-patro, cannot exist between husband and wife, some other person having to be chosen in each case, and it results of course in an immoral connection. Following this is the further rite of Almo-Samarpana or offering of oneself, in which the disciple is required to give his wife to the Guru or preceptor as the acme of self-sacrifice. The guru calls the disciple by a female name of one of the milkmaids of Brindāban to indicate that the disciple regards Krishna with the same devotion as they did. Sometimes the guru and a woman personate Krishna and Rādha, but reverse the names, the guru calling himself Rādha and the woman Krishna. The other disciples wait upon and serve them, and they perform an immoral act in public. Parmārthi women sometimes have the mantra or text, ‘O Hari, O Krishna,’ tattooed on their breasts.

The Parmārthis often deny the accusation of immorality, and the above statements may not be true of all of them; but they are believed to be true as regards a considerable part of the sect at any rate. “With all his cleanliness, vegetarianism and teetotalism,” one writer remarks, “the Vaishnava is perhaps the most dangerous in the whole list of Hindu sects. He has done very good service in civilising the lower classes to some extent and in suppressing the horrors of the Tāntric worship. But the moral laxity which the Vaishnava encourages by the stories of the illicit loves between the God and Goddess, and by the strong tendency to imitate them which his teachings generate, outweigh the good done by him.” This statement applies, however, principally to one or two sects devoted to Krishna, and by no means to all nor to the majority of the Vaishnava sects.

Pārsi or Zoroastrian Religion

[Bibliography of works quoted: Dr. Martin Haug’s Essays on the Pārsis, Trübner’s Oriental Series; Bombay Gazetteer, vol. ix. part ii., Pārsis of Gujarāt. by the late Mr. Kharsedji Nasarvanji Seervai, J.P., and Khān Bahādur Bāmanji Behrāmji Patel; M. Salomon Reinach’s Orphéus; Rev. J. Murray Mitchell’s Great Religions of India. The whole account of the customs and social life of the Pārsis is taken from the excellent description in the Bombay Gazetteer.]

1. Introductory

The number of Pārsis in the Central Provinces in 1911 was about 1800. They are immigrants from Bombay, and usually reside in large towns, where they are engaged in different branches of trade, especially in the manufacture and vend of liquor and the management of cotton mills and factories.347 The word Pārsi means a resident of the province of Fārs or Pārs in Persia, from which the name of the country is also derived.

2. The Zoroastrian religion

Also known as Mazdaism, the Zoroastrian religion was that of the ancient Magi or fire-worshippers of Persia, mentioned in Scripture. It is supposed that Zoroaster or Spitama Zarathustra, if he was a historical personage, effected a reformation of this religion and placed it on a new basis at some time about 1100 B.C. It is suggested by Haug348 that Zarathustra was the designation of the high priests of the cult, and Spitama the proper name of that high priest who carried out its distinctive reformation, and perhaps separated the religion of the Persian from the Indian Aryans. This would account for the fact that the sacred writings, which, according to the testimony of Greek and Roman authors, were of great extent, their compilation probably extending over several centuries, were subsequently all ascribed to one man, or to Zarathustra alone. The Zend-Avesta or sacred book of the Pārsis does not mention the fire priests under the name of Magi, but calls them Athravan, the same word as the Sanskrit Atharva-Veda. The reason for this, M. Reinach suggests, is that the Magi had rebelled against Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, in the sixth century B.C., during his absence in Egypt, and placed a rival creature of their own on the throne. Darius, the son of Hystaspes, overthrew him and re-established the Persian kingdom in 523 B.C., and this may have discredited the Magian priests and caused those of the reformed religion to adopt a new name.349 It is certain that Cyrus conformed to the precept of the Avesta against the pollution of the sacred element water, when he diverted the course of the river Gyndanes in order to recover the body of a horse which had been drowned in it, and that Darius I. invokes in his inscriptions Ormazd or Ahura Mazda, the deity of the Avesta.350 On the subversion of the Persian empire by Alexander, and the subsequent conquest of Persia by the Arsacid Parthian dynasty, the religion of the fire-worshippers fell into neglect, but was revived on the establishment of the Sassanian dynasty of Ardeshir Bābegan or Artaxerxes in A.D. 226, and became the state religion, warmly supported by its rulers, until the Arab conquest in A.D. 652. It was at the beginning of this second period of prosperity that the Zend-Avesta as it still exists was collected and reduced to writing, but it is thought that the greater part of the remains of the ancient texts recovered at the time were again lost during the Arab invasion, as the original literature is believed to have been very extensive.

3. The Zend-Avesta

The language of the Zend-Avesta is the ancient east Iranian or Bactrian dialect, which probably died out finally in the third century B.C., modern Persian being descended from the west Iranian or Median tongue. The Bactrian language of the Zend-Avesta is, Haug states, a genuine sister of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Gothic. “The relationship of the Avesta language to the most ancient Sanskrit, the so-called Vedic dialect, is as close as that of the different dialects of the Greek language, Aeolic, Ionic, Doric or Attic, to each other. The languages of the sacred hymns of the Brāhmans, and of those of the Pārsis, are only the two dialects of two separate tribes of one and the same nation. As the Ionians, Dorians, Aetolians, etc., were different tribes of the Greek nation whose general name was Hellenes, so the ancient Brāhmans and Pārsis were two tribes of the nation which is called Aryas both in the Veda and Zend-Avesta.”351 The sections of the Zend-Avesta which remain are about equal in size to the Bible. They consist of sacrificial hymns, prayers and accounts of the making of the world, in the form of conversations between Ahura Mazda and Zoroaster. The whole arrangement is, however, very fragmentary and chaotic, and much of the matter is of a trivial character. It cannot be compared in merit with the Old Testament.

4. The Zend Avesta and the Vedas

A cuneiform inscription discovered in the centre of Asia Minor at Ptorium proves that about 1400 B.C. certain tribes who had relations with the Hittite empire had for their deities Mitra, Indra, Varūna and the Nasātyas. The first two names are common to the Persian and Indian Aryans, while the last two are found only in India. It appears then that at this time the ancestors of the Hindus and Iranians were not yet separated.352 Certain important contrasts between the ancient Zoroastrian and Vedic religions have led to the theory that the separation was the result of a religious and political schism. The words Deva and Asura have an exactly opposite significance in the two religions. Deva353 is the term invariably used for the gods of the Hindus in the whole Vedic and Brahmānical literature. In the Zend-Avesta, on the other hand, Deva (Pers. div) is the general name of an evil spirit, a fiend, demon or devil, who is inimical to all that is good and comes from God. The part of the Avesta called the Vendidād, consisting of a collection of spells and incantations, means vī-daevo-dāta or given against the Devas or demons. The Devas, Dr. Haug states, are the originators of all that is bad, of every impurity, of death; and are constantly thinking of causing the destruction of the fields and trees, and of the houses of religious men. “Asura, occurring as Ahura in the first part of Ahura-Mazda (Hormazd), is the name of God among the Pārsis; and the Zoroastrian religion is distinctly called the Ahura religion, in strict opposition to the Deva religion. But among the Hindus Asura has assumed a bad meaning, and is applied to the bitterest enemies of their Devas (gods), with whom the Asuras are constantly waging war. This is the case throughout the whole Purānic literature and as far back as the later parts of the Vedas; but in the older parts of the Rig-Veda Sanhita we find the word Asura used in as good and elevated a sense as in the Zend-Avesta. The chief gods, such as Indra, Varūna, Agni, Savitri, Rudra or Siva, are honoured with the epithet ‘Asura,’ which means ‘living, spiritual,’ and signifies the divine in its opposition to human nature.