The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 4

The following are some particulars taken from an old account of the criminal Māngs;193 Their leader or headman was called the nāik and was elected by a majority of votes, though considerable regard was paid to heredity. The nāik’s person and property were alike inviolable; after a successful foray each of the gang contributed a quarter of his share to the nāik, and from the fund thus made up were defrayed the expenses of preparation, religious offerings and the triumphal feast. A pair of shoes were usually given to a Brāhman and alms to the poor. To each band was attached an informer, who was also receiver of the stolen goods. These persons were usually bangle- or perfume-sellers or jewellers. In this capacity they were admitted into the women’s apartments and so enabled to form a correct notion of the topography of a house and a shrewd guess as to the wealth of its inmates. Like all barbarous tribes and all persons addicted to criminal practices the Māngs were extremely superstitious. They never set out on an expedition on a Friday. After the birth of a child the mother and another woman stood on opposite sides of the cradle, and the former tossed her child to the other, commending it to the mercy of Jai Gopāl, and waited to receive it back in like manner in the name of Jai Govind. Both Gopāl and Govind are names of Krishna, The Māngs usually married young in life. If a girl happened to hang heavy on hand she was married at the age of puberty to the deity. In other words, she was attached as a prostitute to the temple of the god Khandoba or the goddess Yellama. Those belonging to the service of the latter were wont in the month of February to parade the streets in a state of utter nudity. When a bachelor wished to marry a widow he was first united to a swallow-wort plant, and this was immediately dug up and transplanted, and withering away left him at liberty to marry the widow. If a lady survived the sorrow caused by the death of two or three husbands she could not again enter the holy state unless she consented to be married with a fowl under her armpit; the unfortunate bird being afterwards killed to appease the manes of her former consorts.

Manihār

Manihār. 194—A small caste of pedlars and hawkers. In northern India the Manihārs are makers of glass bangles, and correspond to the Kachera caste of the Central Provinces. Mr. Nesfield remarks195 that the special industry of the Manihārs of the United Provinces is the making of glass bangles or bracelets. These are an indispensable adjunct to the domestic life of the Hindu woman; for the glass bangle is not worn for personal ornament, but as the badge of the matrimonial state, like the wedding-ring in Europe. But in the Central Provinces glass bangles are made by the Kacheras and the Muhammadan Turkāris or Sīsgars, and the Manihārs are petty hawkers of stationery and articles for the toilet, such as miniature looking-glasses, boxes, stockings, needles and thread, spangles, and imitation jewellery; and Hindu Jogis and others who take to this occupation are accustomed to give their caste as Manihār. In 1911 nearly 700 persons belonging to the caste were returned from the northern Districts of the Central Provinces. The Manihārs are nominally Muhammadans, but they retain many Hindu customs. At their weddings they erect a marriage-tent, anoint the couple with oil and turmeric and make them wear a kankan or wrist-band, to which is attached a small purse containing a little mustard-seed and a silver ring. The mustard is intended to scare away the evil spirits. When the marriage procession reaches the bride’s village it is met by her people, one of whom holds a bamboo in his hands and bars the advance of the procession. The bridegroom’s father thereupon makes a present of a rupee to the village panchāyat, and his people are allowed to proceed. When the bridegroom reaches the bride’s house he finds her younger sister carrying a kalās or pot of water on her head; he drops a rupee into it and enters the house. The bride’s sister then comes holding above her head a small frame like a tāzia196 with a cocoanut core hanging inside. She raises the frame as high as she can to prevent the bridegroom from plucking out the cocoanut core, which, however, he succeeds in doing in the end. The girl applies powdered mehndi or henna to the little finger of the boy’s right hand, in return for which she receives a rupee and a piece of cloth. The Kāzi then recites verses from the Korān which the bridegroom repeats after him, and the bride does the same in her turn. This is the Nikāh or marriage proper, and before it takes place the bridegroom’s father must present a nose-ring to the bride. The parents also fix the Meher or dowry, which, however, is not a dowry proper, but a stipulation that if the bridegroom should put away his wife after marriage he will pay her a certain agreed sum. After the Nikāh the bridegroom is given some spices, which he grinds on a slab with a roller. He must do the grinding very slowly and gently so as to make no noise, or it is believed that the married life of the couple will be broken by quarrels. A widow is permitted to marry the younger brother of her deceased husband, but not his elder brother. The caste bury their dead with the head to the north. The corpse is first bathed and wrapped in a new white sheet, with another sheet over it, and is then laid on a cot or in a janāza or coffin. While it is being carried to the cemetery the bearers are changed every few steps, so that every man who accompanies the funeral may carry the corpse for a short distance. When it is lowered into the grave the sheet is taken off and given to a Fakīr or beggar. When the body is covered with earth the priest reads the funeral verses at a distance of forty steps from the grave. Feasts are given to the caste-fellows on the third, tenth, twentieth and fortieth days after the death. The Manihārs observe the Shabrāt festival by distributing to the caste-fellows halua or a mixture of melted butter and flour. The Shabrāt is the middle night of the month Shabān, and Muhammad declared that on this night God registers the actions which every man will perform during the following year, and all those who are fated to die and the children who are to be born. Like Hindu widows the Manihār women break their bangles when their husband’s corpse is removed to the burial-ground. The Manihārs eat flesh, but not beef or pork; and they also abstain from alcoholic liquor. If a girl is seduced and made pregnant before marriage either by a man of the caste or an outsider, she remains in her father’s house until her child has been born, and may then be married either to her paramour or any other man of the caste by the simple repetition of the Nikāh or marriage verses, omitting all other ceremonies. The Manihārs will admit into their community converted Hindus belonging even to the lowest castes.

Mannewār

Mannewār. 197—A small tribe belonging to the south or Telugu-speaking portion of the Chānda District, where they mustered about 1600 persons in 1911. The home of the tribe is the Hyderābād State, where it numbers 22,000 persons, and the Mannewārs are said to have once been dominant over a part of that territory. The name is derived from a Telugu word mannem, meaning forest, while wār is the plural termination in Telugu, Mannewār thus signifying ‘the people of the forest.’ The tribe appear to be the inferior branch of the Koya Gonds, and they are commonly called Mannewār Koyas as opposed to the Koya Doras or the superior branch, Dora meaning ‘lord’ or master. The Koya Doras thus correspond to the Rāj-Gonds of the north of the Province and the Mannewār Koyas to the Dhur or ‘dust’ Gonds.198 The tribe is divided into three exogamous groups: the Nalugu Velpulu worshipping four gods, the Ayidu Velpulu worshipping five, and the Anu Velpulu six. A man must marry a woman of one of the divisions worshipping a different number of gods from his own, but the Mannewārs do not appear to know the names of these gods, and consequently no veneration can be paid to them at present, and they survive solely for the purpose of regulating marriage. When a betrothal is made a day is fixed for taking an omen. In the early morning the boy who is to be married has his face washed and turmeric smeared on his feet, and is seated on a wooden seat inside the house. The elders of the village then proceed outside it towards the rising sun and watch for any omen given by an animal or bird crossing their path. If this is good the marriage is celebrated, and if bad the match is broken off. In the former case five of the elders take their food on returning from the search for the omen and immediately proceed to the bride’s village. Here they are met by the Pesāmuda or village priest, and stay for three days, when the amount of the dowry is settled and a date fixed for the wedding. The marriage ceremony resembles that of the low Telugu castes. The couple are seated on a plough-yoke, and coloured rice is thrown on to their heads, and the bridegroom ties the mangalya or bead necklace, which is the sign of marriage, round the neck of the bride. If a girl is deformed, or has some other drawback which prevents her from being sought in marriage, she is given away with her sister to a first cousin199 or some other near relative, the two sisters being married to him together. A widow may marry any man of the tribe except her first husband’s brothers. If a man takes a widow to his house without marrying her he is fined three rupees, while for adultery with a married woman the penalty is twenty rupees. A divorce can always be obtained, but if the husband demands it he is mulcted of twenty rupees by the caste committee, while a wife who seeks a divorce must pay ten rupees. The Mannewārs make an offering of a fowl and some liquor to the ploughshare on the festival of Ganesh Chaturthi. After the picking of the flowers of the mahua200 they worship that tree, offering to it some of the liquor distilled from the new flowers, with a fowl and a goat. This is known as the Burri festival. At the Holi feast the Mannewārs make two human figures to represent Kāmi and Rati, or the god of love and his wife. The male figure is then thrown on to the Holi fire with a live chicken or an egg. This may be a reminiscence of a former human sacrifice, which was a common custom in many parts of the world at the spring festival. The caste usually bury the dead, but are beginning to adopt cremation. They do not employ Brāhmans for their ceremonies and eat all kinds of food, including the flesh of pigs, fowls and crocodiles, but in view of their having nominally adopted Hinduism, they abstain from beef.

Marātha

1. Numerical statistics

Marātha, Mahrātta.—The military caste of southern India which manned the armies of Sivaji, and of the Peshwa and other princes of the Marātha confederacy. In the Central Provinces the Marāthas numbered 34,000 persons in 1911, of whom Nāgpur contained 9000 and Wardha 8000, while the remainder were distributed over Raipur, Hoshangābād and Nimār. In Berār their strength was 60,000 persons, the total for the combined province being thus 94,000. The caste is found in large numbers in Bombay and Hyderābād, and in 1901 the India Census tables show a total of not less than five million persons belonging to it.

2. Double meaning of the term Marātha

It is difficult to avoid confusion in the use of the term Marātha, which signifies both an inhabitant of the area in which the Marāthi language is spoken, and a member of the caste to which the general name has in view of their historical importance been specifically applied. The native name for the Marāthi-speaking country is Mahārāshtra, which has been variously interpreted as ‘The great country’ or ‘The country of the Mahārs.’201 A third explanation of the name is from the Rāshtrakūta dynasty which was dominant in this area for some centuries after A.D. 750. The name Rāshtrakūta was contracted into Rattha, and with the prefix of Mahā or Great might evolve into the term Marātha. The Rāshtrakūtas have been conjecturally identified with the Rāthor Rājpūts. The Nāsik Gazetteer202 states that in 246 B.C. Mahāratta is mentioned as one of the places to which Asoka sent an embassy, and Mahārashtraka is recorded in a Chālukyan inscription of A.D. 580 as including three provinces and 99,000 villages. Several other references are given in Sir J. Campbell’s erudite note, and the name is therefore without doubt ancient. But the Marāthas as a people do not seem to be mentioned before the thirteenth or fourteenth century.203 The antiquity of the name would appear to militate against the derivation from the Rāshtrakūta dynasty, which did not become prominent till much later, and the most probable meaning of Mahārāshtra would therefore seem to be ‘The country of the Mahārs.’ Mahāratta and Marātha are presumably derivatives from Mahārāshtra.

3. Origin and position of the caste

The Marāthas are a caste formed from military service, and it seems probable that they sprang mainly from the peasant population of Kunbis, though at what period they were formed into a separate caste has not yet been determined. Grant-Duff mentions several of their leading families as holding offices under the Muhammadan rulers of Bījapur and Ahmadnagar in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as the Nimbhālkar, Ghārpure and Bhonsla;204 and presumably their clansmen served in the armies of those states. But whether or no the designation of Marātha had been previously used by them, it first became prominent during the period of Sivaji’s guerilla warfare against Aurāngzeb. The Marāthas claim a Rājpūt origin, and several of their clans have the names of Rājpūt tribes, as Chauhān, Panwār, Solanki and Suryavansi. In 1836 Mr. Enthoven states,205 the Sesodia Rāna of Udaipur, the head of the purest Rājpūt house, was satisfied from inquiries conducted by an agent that the Bhonslas and certain other families had a right to be recognised as Rājpūts. Colonel Tod states that Sivaji was descended from a Rājpūt prince Sujunsi, who was expelled from Mewār to avoid a dispute about the succession about A.D. 1300. Sivaji is shown as 13th in descent from Sujunsi. Similarly the Bhonslas of Nāgpur were said to derive their origin from one Bunbir, who was expelled from Udaipur about 1541, having attempted to usurp the kingdom.206 As Rājpūt dynasties ruled in the Deccan for some centuries before the Muhammadan conquest, it seems reasonable to suppose that a Rājpūt aristocracy may have taken root there. This was Colonel Tod’s opinion, who wrote: “These kingdoms of the south as well as the north were held by Rājpūt sovereigns, whose offspring, blending with the original population, produced that mixed race of Marāthas inheriting with the names the warlike propensities of their ancestors, but who assume the names of their abodes as titles, as the Nimalkars, the Phalkias, the Patunkars, instead of their tribes of Jādon, Tüār, Püār, etc.”207 This statement would, however, apply only to the leading houses and not to the bulk of the Marātha caste, who appear to be mainly derived from the Kunbis. In Sholāpur the Marāthas and Kunbis eat together, and the Kunbis are said to be bastard Marāthas.208 In Satāra the Kunbis have the same division into 96 clans as the Marāthas have, and many of the same surnames.209 The writer of the Satara Gazetteer says:210 “The census of 1851 included the Marāthas with the Kunbis, from whom they do not form a separate caste. Some Marātha families may have a larger strain of northern or Rājpūt blood than the Kunbis, but this is not always the case. The distinction between Kunbis and Marāthas is almost entirely social, the Marāthas as a rule being better off, and preferring even service as a constable or messenger to husbandry.” Exactly the same state of affairs prevails in the Central Provinces and Berār, where the body of the caste are commonly known as Marātha Kunbis. In Bombay the Marāthas will take daughters from the Kunbis in marriage for their sons, though they will not give their daughters in return. But a Kunbi who has got on in the world and become wealthy may by sufficient payment get his sons married into Marātha families, and even be adopted as a member of the caste.211 In 1798 Colonel Tone, who commanded a regiment of the Peshwa’s army, wrote212 of the Marāthas: “The three great tribes which compose the Marātha caste are the Kunbi or farmer, the Dhangar or shepherd, and the Goāla or cowherd; to this original cause may perhaps be ascribed that great simplicity of manner which distinguishes the Marātha people.”

Statue of Marātha leader, Bīmbāji Bhonsla, in armour

It seems then most probable that, as already stated, the Marātha caste was of purely military origin, constituted from the various castes of Mahārāshtra who adopted military service, though some of the leading families may have had Rājpūts for their ancestors. Sir D. Ibbetson thought that a similar relation existed in past times between the Rājpūts and Jāts, the landed aristocracy of the Jāt caste being gradually admitted to Rājpūt rank. The Khandaits or swordsmen of Orissa are a caste formed in the same manner from military service. In the Imperial Gazetteer Sir H. Risley suggests that the Marātha people were of Scythian origin:

“The physical type of the people of this region accords fairly well with this theory, while the arguments derived from language and religion do not seem to conflict with it.... On this view the wide-ranging forays of the Marāthas, their guerilla methods of warfare, their unscrupulous dealings with friend and foe, their genius for intrigue and their consequent failure to build up an enduring dominion, might well be regarded as inherited from their Scythian ancestors.”

4. Exogamous clans

In the Central Provinces the Marāthas are divided into 96 exogamous clans, known as the Chhānava Kule, which marry with one another. During the period when the Bhonsla family were rulers of Nāgpur they constituted a sort of inner circle, consisting of seven of the leading clans, with whom alone they intermarried; these are known as the Sātghare or Seven Houses, and consist of the Bhonsla, Gūjar, Ahirrao, Mahādik, Sirke, Palke and Mohte clans. These houses at one time formed an endogamous group, marrying only among themselves, but recently the restriction has been relaxed, and they have arranged marriages with other Marātha families. It may be noted that the present representatives of the Bhonsla family are of the Gūjar clan to which the last Rāja of Nāgpur, Raghūji III., belonged prior to his adoption. Several of the clans, as already noted, have Rājpūt sept names; and some are considered to be derived from those of former ruling dynasties; as Chālke, from the Chālukya Rājpūt kings of the Deccan and Carnatic; More, who may represent a branch of the great Maurya dynasty of northern India; Sālunke, perhaps derived from the Solanki kings of Gujarāt; and Yādav, the name of the kings of Deogiri or Daulatābād.213 Others appear to be named after animals or natural objects, as Sinde from sindi the date-palm tree, Ghorpade from ghorpad the iguana; or to be of a titular nature, as Kāle black, Pāndhre white, Bhāgore a renegade, Jagthāp renowned, and so on. The More, Nimbhālkar, Ghātge, Māne, Ghorpade, Dafle, Jādav and Bhonsla clans are the oldest, and held prominent positions in the old Muhammadan kingdoms of Bījapur and Ahmadnagar. The Nimbhālkar family were formerly Panwār Rājpūts, and took the name of Nimbhālkar from their ancestral village Nimbālik. The Ghorpade family are an offshoot of the Bhonslas, and obtained their present name from the exploit of one of their ancestors, who scaled a fort in the Konkan, previously deemed impregnable, by passing a cord round the body of a ghorpad or iguana.214 A noticeable trait of these Marātha houses is the fondness with which they clung to the small estates or villages in the Deccan in which they had originally held the office of a patel or village headman as a watan or hereditary right, even after they had carved out for themselves principalities and states in other parts of India. The present Bhonsla Rāja takes his title from the village of Deor in the Poona country. In former times we read of the Rāja of Satāra clinging to the watans he had inherited from Sivaji after he had lost his crown in all but the name; Sindhia was always termed patel or village headman in the revenue accounts of the villages he acquired in Nimār; while it is said that Holkar and the Panwār of Dhār fought desperately after the British conquest to recover the pateli rights of Deccan villages which had belonged to their ancestors.215

5. Other subdivisions

Besides the 96 clans there are now in the Central Provinces some local subcastes who occupy a lower position and do not intermarry with the Marāthas proper. Among these are the Deshkar or ‘Residents of the country’; the Waindesha or those of Berār and Khāndesh; the Gangthade or those dwelling on the banks of the Godāvari and Wainganga; and the Ghātmāthe or residents of the Mahādeo plateau in Berār. It is also stated that the Marāthas are divided into the Khāsi or ‘pure’ and the Kharchi or the descendants of handmaids. In Bombay the latter are known as the Akarmāshes or 11 māshas, meaning that as twelve māshas make a tola, a twelfth part of them is alloy.

6. Social customs

A man must not marry in his own clan or that of his mother. A sister’s son may be married to a brother’s daughter, but not vice versa. Girls are commonly married between five and twelve years of age, and the ceremony resembles that of the Kunbis. The bridegroom goes to the bride’s house riding on horseback and covered with a black blanket When a girl first becomes mature, usually after marriage, the Marathas perform the Shāntik ceremony. The girl is secluded for four days, after which she is bathed and puts on new clothes and dresses her hair and a feast is given to the caste-fellows. Sometimes the bridegroom comes and is asked whether he has visited his wife before she became mature, and if he confesses that he has done so a small fine is imposed on him. Such cases are, however, believed to be rare. The Marāthas proper forbid widow-marriage, but the lower groups allow it. If a maiden is seduced by one of the caste she may be married to him as if she were a widow, a fine being imposed on her family; but if she goes wrong with an outsider she is finally expelled. Divorce is not ostensibly allowed but may be concluded by agreement between the parties. A wife who commits adultery is cast off and expelled from the caste. The caste burn their dead when they can afford it and perform the shrāddh ceremony in the month of Kunwār (September), when oblations are offered to the dead and a feast is given to the caste-fellows. Sometimes a tomb is erected as a memorial to the dead, but without his name, and is surmounted usually by an image of Mahādeo. The caste eat the flesh of clean animals and of fowls and wild pig, and drink liquor. Their rules about food are liberal like those of the Rājpūts, a too great stringency being no doubt in both cases incompatible with the exigencies of military service. They make no difference between food cooked with or without water, and will accept either from a Brāhman, Rājpūt, Tirole Kunbi, Lingāyat Bania or Phūlmāli.

The Marāthas proper observe the parda system with regard to their women, and will go to the well and draw water themselves rather than permit their wives to do so. The women wear ornaments only of gold or glass and not of silver or any baser metal. They are not permitted to spin cotton as being an occupation of the lower classes. The women are tattooed in the centre of the forehead with a device resembling a trident. The men commonly wear a turban made of many folds of cloth twisted into a narrow rope and large gold rings with pearls in the upper part of the ear. Like the Rājpūts they often have their hair long and wear beards and whiskers. They assume the sacred thread and invest a boy with it when he is seven or eight years old or on his marriage. Till then they let the hair grow on the front of his head, and when the thread ceremony is performed they cut this off and let the choti or scalp-lock grow at the back. In appearance the men are often tall and well-built and of a light wheat-coloured complexion.