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

Nāhal

1. The tribe and its subdivisions

Nāhal, Nihāl. 288—A forest tribe who are probably a mixture of Bhīls and Korkus. In 1911 they numbered 12,000 persons, of whom 8000 belonged to the Hoshangābād, Nimār and Betūl Districts, and nearly 4000 to Berār. They were classed at the census as a subtribe of Korkus. According to one story they are descended from a Bhīl father and a Korku mother, and the writer of the Khāndesh Gazetteer calls them the most savage of the Bhīls. But in the Central Provinces their family or sept names are the same as those of the Korkus, and they speak the Korku language. Mr. Kitts289 says that the Korkus who first went to Berār found the Nāhals in possession of the Melghāt hills. Gradually the latter caste lost their power and became the village drudges of the former. He adds that the Nāhals were fast losing their language, and the younger generation spoke only Korku. The two tribes were very friendly, and the Nāhals acknowledged the superior position of the Korkus. This, if it accurately represents the state of things prevailing for a long period, and was not merely an incidental feature of their relative position at the time Mr. Kitts’ observations were made, would tend to show that the Nāhals were the older tribe and had been subjected by the Korkus, just as the Korkus themselves and the Baigas have given way to the Gonds. Mr. Crosthwaite also states that the Nāhal is the drudge of the Korku and belongs to a race which is supposed to have been glorious before the Korku star arose, and which is now fast dying out. In any case there is no doubt that the Nāhals are a very mixed tribe, as they will even now admit into the community Gonds, Korkus and nearly all the Hindu castes, though in some localities they will not eat from the other tribes and the lower Hindu castes and therefore refuse to admit them. There are, moreover, two subdivisions of the caste called Korku and Marāthi Nāhals respectively. The latter are more Hinduised than the former and disclaim any connection with the Korkus. The Nāhals have totemistic exogamous septs. Those of the Kāsa sept worship a tortoise and also a bell-metal plate, which is their family god. They never eat off a bell-metal plate except on one day in the month of Māgh (January), when they worship it. The members of the Nāgbel sept worship the betel-vine or ‘snake-creeper,’ and refrain from chewing betel-leaves, and they also worship the Nāg or cobra and do not kill it, thus having a sort of double totem. The Bhawaria sept, named after the bhaunr or black bee, do not eat honey, and if they see a person taking the honey-comb from a nest they will run away. The Khadia sept worship the spirits of their ancestors enshrined in a heap of stones (khad), or according to another account they worship a snake which sits on a heap of pebbles. The Surja sept worship Sūrya or the sun by offering him a fowl in the month of Pūs (December-January), and some members of the sept keep a fast every Sunday. The Saoner sept worship the san or flax plant.

2. Marriage

Marriage is prohibited between members of the same sept, but there are no other restrictions and first cousins may marry. Both sexes usually marry when adult, and sexual license before wedlock is tolerated. A Brāhman is employed only for fixing the date of the ceremony. The principal part of the marriage is the knotting together of the bride’s and bridegroom’s clothes on two successive days. They also gamble with tamarind seeds, and it is considered a lucky union if the bridegroom wins. A bride-price is usually paid consisting of Rs. 1–4 to Rs. 5 in cash, some grain and a piece of cloth for the bride’s mother. The remarriage of widows is allowed, and the couple go five times round a bamboo stick which is held up to represent a spear, the ceremony being called barchhi se bhānwar phirna or the marriage of the spear.

3. Religion

The Nāhals worship the forest god called Jhārkhandi in the month of Chait, and until this rite has been performed they do not use the leaves or fruits of the palās,290 aonlā291 or mango trees. When the god is worshipped they collect branches and leaves of these trees and offer cooked food to them and thereafter commence using the new leaves, and the fruit and timber. They also worship the ordinary village godlings. The dead are buried, except in the case of members of the Surja or sun sept, whose corpses are burnt. Cooked food is offered at the grave for four days after the death.

4. Occupation

The Nāhals were formerly a community of hill-robbers, ‘Nāhal, Bhīl, Koli’ being the phrase generally used in old documents to designate the marauding bands of the western Satpūra hills. The Rāja of Jītgarh and Mohkot in Nimār has a long account in his genealogy of a treacherous massacre of a whole tribe of Nāhals by his ancestor in Akbar’s time, in recognition of which the Jītgarh pargana was granted to the family. Mr. Kitts speaks of the Nāhals of Berār as having once been much addicted to cattle-lifting, and this propensity still exists in a minor degree in the Central Provinces, accentuated probably by the fact that a considerable number of Nāhals follow the occupation of graziers. Some of them are also village watchmen, and another special avocation of theirs is the collection of the oil of the marking-nut tree (Semecarpus anacardium). This is to some extent a dangerous trade, as the oil causes swellings on the body, besides staining the skin and leaving a peculiar odour. The workers wrap a fourfold layer of cloth round their fingers with ashes between each fold, while the rest of the body is also protected by cloth when gathering the nuts and pounding them to extract the oil. At the end of the day’s work powdered tamarind and ghī are rubbed on the whole body. The oil is a stimulant, and is given to women after delivery and to persons suffering from rheumatism.

5. Social status

The social status of the Nāhals is very low and they eat the flesh of almost all animals, while those who graze cattle eat beef. Cow-killing is not regarded as an offence. They are also dirty and do not bathe for weeks together. To get maggots in a wound is, however, regarded as a grave offence, and the sufferer is put out of the village and has to live alone until he recovers.

Nai

1. Structure of the caste

Nai, Nao, Mhāli, Hajjām, Bhanāri, Mangala.292—The occupational caste of barbers. The name is said to be derived from the Sanskrit nāpita according to some a corruption of snāpitri, one who bathes. In Bundelkhand he is also known as Khawās, which was a title for the attendant on a grandee; and Birtiya, or ‘He that gets his maintenance (vritti) from his constituents.’293 Mhāli is the Marāthi name for the caste, Bhandāri the Uriya name and Mangala the Telugu name. The caste numbered nearly 190,000 persons in the Central Provinces in 1911, being distributed over all Districts. Various legends of the usual type are related of its origin, but, as Sir. H. Risley observes, it is no doubt wholly of a functional character. The subcastes in the Central Provinces entirely bear out this view, as they are very numerous and principally of the territorial type: Telange of the Telugu country, Marāthe, Pardeshi or northerners, Jhāria or those of the forest country of the Wainganga Valley, Bandhaiya or those of Bāndhogarh, Barāde of Berār, Bundelkhandi, Mārwāri, Mathuria from Mathura, Gadhwarīa from Garha near Jubbulpore, Lānjia from Lānji in Bālāghāt, Mālwi from Mālwa, Nimāri from Nimār, Deccane, Gujarāti, and so on. Twenty-six divisions in all are given. The exogamous groups are also of different types, some of them being named after Brāhman saints, as Gautam, Kashyap, Kosil, Sandil and Bhāradwāj; others after Rājpūt clans as Sūrajvansi, Jāduvansi, Solanki and Panwār; while others are titular or totemistic, as Nāik, leader; Seth, banker; Rāwat, chief; Nāgesh, cobra; Bāgh, a tiger; Bhādrawa, a fish.

2. Marriage and other customs

The exogamous groups are known as khero or kul, and marriage between members of the same group is prohibited. Girls are usually wedded between the ages of eight and twelve and boys between fifteen and twenty. A girl who goes wrong before marriage is finally expelled from the caste. The wedding ceremony follows the ritual prevalent in the locality as described in the articles on Kurmi and Kunbi. At an ordinary wedding the expenses on the girl’s side amount to about Rs. 150, and on the boy’s to Rs. 200. The remarriage of widows is permitted. In the northern Districts the widow may wed the younger brother of her deceased husband, but in the Marātha country she may not be married to any of his relatives. Divorce may be effected at the instance of the husband before the caste committee, and a divorced woman is at liberty to marry again. The Nais worship all the ordinary Hindu deities. On the Dasahra and Diwāli festivals they wash and revere their implements, the razor, scissors and nail-pruners. They pay regard to omens. It is unpropitious to sneeze or hear the report of a gun when about to commence any business; and when a man is starting on a journey, if a cat, a squirrel, a hare or a snake should cross the road in front of him he will give it up and return home. The bodies of the dead are usually burnt. In Chhattīsgarh the poor throw the corpses of their dead into the Mahānadi, and the bodies of children dying under one year of age were until recently buried in the courtyard of the house. The period of mourning for adults is ten days and for children three days. The chief mourner must take only one meal a day, which he cooks himself until the ceremony of the tenth day is performed.

3. Occupation

“The barber’s trade,” Mr. Crooke states,294 “is undoubtedly of great antiquity. In the Veda we read, ‘Sharpen us like the razor in the hands of the barber’; and again, ‘Driven by the wind, Agni shaves the hair of the earth like the barber shaving a beard.’” In early times they must have enjoyed considerable dignity; Upali the barber was the first propounder of the law of the Buddhist church. The village barber’s leather bag contains a small mirror (ārsi), a pair of iron pincers (chimta), a leather strap, a comb (kanghi), a piece of cloth about a yard square and some oil in a phial. He shaves the faces, heads and armpits of his customers, and cuts the nails of both their hands and feet. He uses cold water in summer and hot in winter, but no soap, though this has now been introduced in towns. For the poorer cultivators he does a rapid scrape, and this process is called ‘asūdhal’ or a ‘tearful shave,’ because the person undergoing it is often constrained to weep. The barber acquires the knowledge of his art by practice on the more obliging of his customers, hence the proverb, ‘The barber’s son learns his trade on the heads of fools.’ The village barber is usually paid by a contribution of grain from the cultivators, calculated in some cases according to the number of ploughs of land possessed by each, in others according to the number of adult males in the family. In Saugor he receives 20 lbs. of grain annually for each adult male or 22½ lbs. per plough of land, besides presents of a basket of grain at seed-time and a sheaf at harvest. Cultivators are usually shaved about once a fortnight. In towns the barber’s fee may vary from a pice to two annas for a shave, which is, as has been seen, a much more protracted operation with a Hindu than with a European. It is said that Berār is now so rich that even ordinary cultivators can afford to pay the barber two annas (2d.) for a single shave, or the same price as in the suburbs of London.

4. Other services

After he has shaved a client the barber pinches and rubs his arms, presses his fingers together and cracks the joints of each finger, this last action being perhaps meant to avert evil spirits. He also does massage, a very favourite method of treatment in India, and also inexpensive as compared with Europe. For one rupee a month in towns the barber will come and rub a man’s legs five or ten minutes every day. Cultivators have their legs rubbed in the sowing season, when the labour is intensely hard owing to the necessity of sowing all the land in a short period. If a man is well-to-do he may have his whole head and body rubbed with scented oil. Landowners have often a barber as a family servant, the office descending from father to son. Such a man will light his master’s chilam (pipe-bowl) or huqqa (water-pipe), clean and light lamps, prepare his bed, tell his master stories to send him to sleep, act as escort for the women of the family when they go on a journey and arrange matches for the children. The barber’s wife attends on women in child-birth after the days of pollution are over, and rubs oil on the bodies of her clients, pares their nails and paints their feet with red dye at marriages and on other festival occasions.

5. Duties at weddings

The barber has also numerous and important duties295 in connection with marriages and other festival occasions. He acts as the Brāhman’s assistant, and to the lower castes, who cannot employ a Brāhman, he is himself the matrimonial priest. The important part which he plays in marriage ceremonies has led to his becoming the matchmaker among all respectable castes. He searches for a suitable bride or bridegroom, and is often sent to inspect the other party to a match and report his or her defects to his clients. He may arrange the price or dowry, distribute the invitations and carry the presents from one house to the other. He supplies the leaf-plates and cups which are used at weddings, as the family’s stock of metal vessels is usually quite inadequate for the number of guests. The price of these is about 4 annas (4d.) a hundred. He also provides the torans or strings of leaves which are hung over the door of the house and round the marriage-shed. At the feast the barber is present to hand to the guests water, betel-leaf and pipes as they may desire. He also partakes of the food, seated at a short distance from the guests, in the intervals of his service. He lights the lamps and carries the torches during the ceremony. Hence he was known as Masālchi or torch-bearer, a name now applied by Europeans to a menial servant who lights and cleans the lamps and washes the plates after meals. The barber and his wife act as prompters to the bride and bridegroom, and guide them through the complicated ritual of the wedding ceremony, taking the couple on their knees if they are children, and otherwise sitting behind them. The barber has a prescriptive right to receive the clothes in which the bridegroom goes to the bride’s house, as on the latter’s arrival he is always presented with new clothes by the bride’s father. As the bridegroom’s clothes may be an ancestral heirloom, a compact is often made to buy them back from the barber, and he may receive as much as Rs. 50 in lieu of them. When the first son is born in a family the barber takes a long bamboo stick, wraps it round with cloth and puts an earthen pot over it and carries this round to the relatives, telling them the good news. He receives a small present from each household.

6. The barber-surgeon

The barber also cleans the ears of his clients and cuts their nails, and is the village surgeon in a small way. He cups and bleeds his patients, applies leeches, takes out teeth and lances boils. In this capacity he is the counterpart of the barber-surgeon of mediaeval Europe. The Hindu physicians are called Baid, and are, as a rule, a class of Brāhmans. They derive their knowledge from ancient Sanskrit treatises on medicine, which are considered to have divine authority. Consequently they think it unnecessary to acquire fresh knowledge by experiment and observation, as they suppose the perfect science of medicine to be contained in their sacred books. As these books probably do not describe surgical operations, of which little or nothing was known at the time when they were written, and as surgery involves contact with blood and other impure substances, the Baids do not practise it, and the villagers are left to get on as best they can with the ministrations of the barber. It is interesting to note that a similar state of things appears to have prevailed in Europe. The monks were the early practitioners of medicine and were forbidden to practise surgery, which was thus left to the barber-chirurgeon. The status of the surgeon was thus for long much below that of the physician.296 The mediaeval barber of Europe kept a bottle of blood in his window, to indicate that he undertook bleeding and the application of leeches, and the coloured bottles in the chemist’s window may have been derived from this. It is also said that the barber’s pole originally served as a support for the patient to lean on while he was being bled, and those barbers who did the work of bleeding patients painted their poles in variegated red and white stripes to show it.

7. A barber at the court of Oudh

Perhaps the most successful barber known to Indian history was not a Hindu at all, but a Peninsular and Oriental Company’s cabin-boy, who became the barber of one of the last kings of Oudh, Nasīr-ud-Dīn, in the early part of the nineteenth century, and rose to the position of a favourite courtier. He was entrusted with the supply of every European article used at court, and by degrees became a regular guest at the royal table, and sat down to take dinner with the king as a matter of right; nor would his majesty taste a bottle of wine opened by any other hands than the barber’s.297 This was, however, a wise precaution as it turned out, since after he had finally been forced to part with the barber the king was poisoned by his own relatives. The barber was also made keeper of the royal menagerie, for which he supplied the animals and their food, and made enormous profits. The following is an account of the presentation of the barber’s monthly bill of expenses:298 “It was after tiffin, or lunch, when we usually retired from the palace until dinner-time at nine o’clock, that the favourite entered with a roll of paper in his hand. In India, long documents, legal and commercial, are usually written, not in books or on successive sheets, but on a long roll, strip being joined to strip for that purpose, and the whole rolled up like a map.

“‘Ha, Khan!’ said the king, observing him; ‘the monthly bill, is it?’

“‘It is, your majesty,’ was the smiling reply.

“‘Come, out with it; let us see the extent. Unroll it, Khan.’

“The king was in a playful humour; and the barber was always in the same mood as the king. He held the end of the roll in his hand, and threw the rest along the floor, allowing it to unroll itself as it retreated. It reached to the other side of the long apartment—a goodly array of items and figures, closely written too. The king wanted it measured. A measure was brought and the bill was found to be four yards and a half long. I glanced at the amount; it was upwards of Rs. 90,000, or £9000!”

The barber, however, encouraged the king in every form of dissipation and excess, until the state of the Oudh court became such a scandal that the king was forced by the British Government to dismiss him.299 He retired, it was said, with a fortune of £240,000.

8. Character and position of the barber

The barber is also, Mr. Low writes,300 the scandal-bearer and gossip-monger of the village. His cunning is proverbial, and he is known as Chhattīsa from the saying—

Nai hai chhattīsaKhai an ka pīsa,

or ‘A barber has thirty-six talents by which he eats at the expense of others.’ His loquacity is shown in the proverb, ‘As the crow among birds so the barber among men.’ The barber and the professional Brāhman are considered to be jealous of their perquisites and unwilling to share with their caste-fellows, and this is exemplified in the proverb, “The barber, the dog and the Brāhman, these three snarl at meeting one of their own kind.” The joint association of the Brāhman priest and the barber with marriages and other ceremonies has led to the saying, “As there are always reeds in a river so there is always a barber with a Brāhman.” The barber’s astuteness is alluded to in the saying, ‘Nine barbers are equal to seventy-two tailors.’ The fact that it is the barber’s duty to carry the lights in marriage processions has led to the proverb, “At the barber’s wedding all are gentlemen and it is awkward to have to ask somebody to carry the torch.” The point of this is clear, though no English equivalent occurs to the mind. And a similar idea is expressed by ‘The barber washes the feet of others but is ashamed to wash his own.’ It would appear from these proverbs that the Nai is considered to enjoy a social position somewhat above his deserts. Owing to the nature of his duties, which make him a familiar inmate of the household and bring him into contact with the persons of his high-caste clients, the caste of the Nai is necessarily considered to be a pure one and Brāhmans will take water from his hands. But, on the other hand, his calling is that of a village menial and has also some elements of impurity, as in cupping which involves contact with blood, and in cutting the nails and hair of the corpse before cremation. He is thus looked down upon as a menial and also considered as to some extent impure. No member of a cultivating caste would salute a barber first or look upon him as an equal, though Brāhmans put them on the same level of ceremonial purity by taking water from both. The barber’s loquacity and assurance have been made famous by the Arabian Nights, but they have perhaps been affected by the more strenuous character of life, and his conversation does not flow so freely as it did. Often he now confines himself to approving and adding emphasis to any remarks of the patron and greeting any of his little witticisms with bursts of obsequious laughter. In Madras, Mr. Pandiān states, the village barber, like the washerman, is known as the son of the village. If a customer does not pay him his dues, he lies low, and when he has begun to shave the defaulter, engages him in a dispute and says something to excite his anger. The latter will then become abusive to the barber, whom he regards as a menial, and perhaps strike him, and this gives the barber an opportunity to stop shaving him and rush off to lay a complaint at the village court-house, leaving his enemy to proceed home with half his head shaved and thus exposed to general ridicule.301

9. Beliefs about hair

Numerous customs appear to indicate that the hair was regarded as the special seat of bodily strength. The Rājpūt warriors formerly wore their hair long and never cut it, but trained it in locks over their shoulders. Similarly the Marātha soldiers wore their hair long. The Hatkars, a class of Marātha spearmen, might never cut their hair while engaged on military service. A Sikh writer states of Guru Govind, the founder of the militant Sikh confederacy: “He appeared as the tenth Avatār (incarnation of Vishnu). He established the Khālsa, his own sect, and by exhibiting singular energy, leaving the hair on his head, and seizing the scimitar, he smote every wicked person.”302 As is well known, no Sikh may cut his hair, and one of the five marks of the Sikh is the kanga or comb, which he must always carry in order to keep his hair in proper order. A proverb states that ‘The origin of a Sikh is in his hair.’303 The following story, related by Sir J. Malcolm, shows the vital importance attached by the Sikh to his hair and beard: “Three inferior agents of Sikh chiefs were one day in my tent. I was laughing and joking with one of them, a Khālsa Sikh, who said he had been ordered to attend me to Calcutta. Among other subjects of our mirth I rallied him on trusting himself so much in my power. ‘Why, what is the worst,’ he said, ‘that you can do to me?’ I passed my hand across my chin, imitating the act of shaving. The man’s face was in an instant distorted with rage and his sword half-drawn. ‘You are ignorant,’ he said to me, ‘of the offence you have given; I cannot strike you who are above me, and the friend of my master and the state; but no power,’ he added, indicating the Khālsa Sikhs, ‘shall save these fellows who dared to smile at your action.’ It was with the greatest difficulty and only by the good offices of some Sikh Chiefs that I was able to pacify his wounded honour.”304 These instances appear to show clearly that the Sikhs considered their hair of vital importance; and as fighting was their object in life, it seems most probable that they thought their strength in war was bound up in it. Similarly when the ancient Spartans were on a military expedition purple garments were worn and their hair was carefully decked with wreaths, a thing which was never done at home.305 And when Leonidas and his three hundred were holding the pass of Thermopylae, and Xerxes sent scouts to ascertain what the Greeks were doing in their camp, the report was that some of them were engaged in gymnastics and warlike exercises, while others were merely sitting and combing their long hair. If the hypothesis already suggested is correct, the Spartan youths so engaged were perhaps not merely adorning themselves for death, but, as they thought, obtaining their full strength for battle. “The custom of keeping the hair unshorn during a dangerous expedition appears to have been observed, at least occasionally, by the Romans. Achilles kept unshorn his yellow hair, because his father had vowed to offer it to the river Sperchius if ever his son came home from the wars beyond the sea.”306