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

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

When the Bhīls turned out to fight they let down their long hair prior to beginning the conflict with their bows and arrows.307 The pirates of Surat, before boarding a ship, drank bhāng and hemp-liquor, and when they wore their long hair loose they gave no quarter.308 The Mundas appear to have formerly worn their hair long and some still do. Those who are converted to Christianity must cut their hair, but a non-Christian Munda must always keep the chundi or pigtail. If the chundi is very long it is sometimes tied up in a knot.309 Similarly the Oraons wore their hair long like women, gathered in a knot behind, with a wooden or iron comb in it. Those who are Christians can be recognised by the fact that they have cut off their pigtails. A man of the low Pārdhi caste of hunters must never have his hair touched by a razor after he has once killed a deer. As already seen, every orthodox Hindu wore till recently a choti or scalp-lock, which should theoretically be as long as a cow’s tail. Perhaps the idea was that for those who were not warriors it was sufficient to retain this and have the rest of the head shaved. The choti was never shaved off in mourning for any one but a father. The lower castes of Muhammadans, if they have lost several children, will allow the scalp-lock to grow on the heads of those subsequently born, dedicating it to one of their Muhammadan saints. The Kanjars relate of their heroic ancestor Māna that after he had plunged a bow so deeply into the ground that no one could withdraw it, he was set by the Emperor of Delhi to wrestle against the two most famous Imperial wrestlers. These could not overcome him fairly, so they made a stratagem, and while one provoked him in front the other secretly took hold of his choti behind. When Māna started forward his choti was thus left in the wrestler’s hands, and though he conquered the other wrestler, showing him the sky as it is said, the loss of his choti deprived him for ever after of his virtue as a Hindu and in no small degree of his renown as an ancestor.310 Thus it seems clear that a special virtue attaches to the choti. Before every warlike expedition the people of Minahassa in Celebes used to take the locks of hair of a slain foe and dabble them in boiling water to extract the courage; this infusion of bravery was then drunk by the warriors.311 In a modern Greek folk-tale a man’s strength lies in three golden hairs on his head. When his mother plucks them out, he grows weak and timid and is slain by his enemies.312 The Red Indian custom of taking the scalp, of a slain enemy and sometimes wearing the scalps at the waist-belt may be due to the same relief.

Hindu men showing the choti or scalp-lock

In Ceram the hair might not be cut because it was the seat of a man’s strength; and the Gaboon negroes for the same reason would not allow any of their hair to pass into the possession of a stranger.313

10. Hair of kings and priests

If the hair was considered to be the special source of strength and hence frequently of life, that of the kings and priests, in whose existence the primitive tribe believed its own communal life to be bound up, would naturally be a matter of peculiar concern. That it was so has been shown in the Golden Bough. Two hundred years ago the hair and nails of the Mikādo of Japan could only be cut when he was asleep.314 The hair of the Flamen Dialis at Rome could be cut only by a freeman and with a bronze knife, and his hair and nails when cut had to be buried under a lucky tree.315 The Frankish kings were never allowed to crop their hair; from their childhood upwards they had to keep it unshorn. The hair of the Aztec priests hung down to their hams so that the weight of it became very troublesome; for they might never crop it so long as they lived, or at least till they had been relieved from their office on the score of old age.316 In the Māle Pahāria tribe from the time that any one devoted himself to the profession of priest and augur his hair was allowed to grow like that of a Nazarite; his power of divination entirely disappeared if he cut it.317 Among the Bawarias of India the Bhuva or priest of Devi may not cut or shave his hair under penalty of a fine of Rs. 10. A Parsi priest or Mobed must never be bare-headed and never shave his head or face.318 Professor Robertson Smith states: “As a diadem is in its origin nothing more than a fillet to confine hair that is worn long, I apprehend that in old times the hair of Hebrew princes like that of a Maori chief, was taboo, and that Absalom’s long locks (2 Sam. xiv. 26) were the mark of his political pretensions and not of his vanity. When the hair of a Maori chief was cut, it was collected and buried in a sacred place or hung on a tree; and it is noteworthy that Absalom’s hair was cut annually at the end of the year, in the sacred season of pilgrimage, and that it was collected and weighed.”319

11. The beard

The importance attached by other races to the hair of the head seems among the Muhammadans to have been concentrated specially in the beard. The veneration displayed for the beard in this community is well known. The Prophet ordained that the minimum length of the beard should be the breadth of five fingers. When the beard is turning grey they usually dye it with henna and sometimes with indigo; it may be thought that a grey beard is a sign of weakness. The Prophet said, ‘Change the whiteness of your hair, but not with anything black.’ It is not clear why black was prohibited. It is said that the first Caliph Abu Bakar was accustomed to dye his beard red with henna, and hence this practice has been adopted by Muhammadans.320 The custom of shaving the chin is now being adopted by young Muhammadans, but as they get older they still let the beard grow. A very favourite Muhammadan oath is, ‘By the beard of the Prophet’; and in Persia if a man thinks another is mocking him he says, ‘Do you laugh at my beard?’ Neither Hindus nor Muhammadans have any objection to becoming bald, as the head is always covered by the turban in society. But when a man wishes to grow a beard it is a serious drawback if he is unable to do it; and he will then sometimes pluck the young wheat-ears and rub the juice over his cheeks and chin so that he may grow bearded like the wheat. Among the Hindus, Rājpūts and Marāthas, as well as the Sikhs, commonly wore beards, all of these being military castes. Both the beard and hair were considered to impart an aspect of ferocity to the countenance, and when the Rājpūts and Muhammadans were going into battle they combed the hair and trained the beard to project sideways from the face. When a Muhammadan wears a beard he must have hair in the centre of his chin, whereas a Hindu shaves this part. A Muhammadan must have his moustache short so that it may not touch and defile food entering the mouth. It is related that a certain Kāzī had a small head and a very long beard; and he had a dream that a man with a small head and a long beard must be a fool. When he woke up he thought this was applicable to himself. As he could not make his head larger he decided to make his beard smaller, and looked for scissors to cut part of it off. But he could not find any scissors, and being in a hurry to shorten his beard he decided to burn away part of it, and set it alight. But the fire consumed the whole of his beard before he could put it out, and he then realised the truth of the dream.

12. Significance of removal of the hair and shaving the head

If the hair was considered to be the source of a man’s strength and vigour, the removal of it would involve the loss of this and might be considered especially to debar him from fighting or governing. The instances given from the Golden Bough have shown the fear felt by many people of the consequences of the removal of their hair. The custom of shaving the head might also betoken the renunciation of the world and of the pursuit of arms. This may be the reason why monks shaved the head, a practice which was followed by Buddhist as well as Christian monks. A very clear case is also given by Sir James Frazer: “When the wicked brothers Clotaire and Childebert coveted the kingdom of their dead brother Clodomir, they inveigled into their power their little nephews, the two sons of Clodomir; and having done so, they sent a messenger bearing scissors and a naked sword to the children’s grandmother, Queen Clotilde, at Paris. The envoy showed the scissors and the sword to Clotilde, and bade her choose whether the children should be shorn and live, or remain unshorn and die. The proud queen replied that if her grandchildren were not to come to the throne she would rather see them dead than shorn. And murdered they were by their ruthless uncle Clotaire with his own hand.”321 In this case it appears that if their hair was shorn the children could not come to the throne but would be destined to become monks. Similarly, in speaking of the Georgians, Marco Polo remarks that they cut their hair short like churchmen.322 When a member of the religious order of the Mānbhaos is initiated his head is shaved clean by the village barber, and the scalp-lock and moustache must be cut off by his guru or preceptor, this being perhaps the special mark of his renunciation of the world. The scalp-locks are preserved and made into ropes which some of them fasten round their loins. Members of the Hindu orders generally shave their scalp-locks and the head on initiation, probably for the same reason as the Mānbhaos. But afterwards they often let the whole of their hair grow long. These men imagine that by the force of their austerities they will obtain divine power, so their religious character appears to be of a different order from monasticism. Perhaps, therefore, they wear their hair long in order to increase their spiritual potency. They themselves now say that they do it in imitation of the god Siva and the ancient ascetics who had long matted locks. The common Hindu practice of shaving the heads of widows may thus be interpreted as a symbol of their complete renunciation of the world and of any idea of remarriage. It was accompanied by numerous other rules designed to make a widow’s life a continual penance. This barbarous custom was formerly fairly general, at least among the higher castes, but is rapidly being abandoned except by one or two of the stricter sections of Brāhmans. Shaving the head might also be imposed as a punishment. Thus in the time of the reign of the Emperor Chandraguptra Maurya in the fourth century B.C. it is stated that ordinary wounding by mutilation was punished by the corresponding mutilation of the offender, in addition to the amputation of his hand. The crime of giving false evidence was visited with mutilation of the extremities; and in certain unspecified cases, serious offences were punished by the shaving of the offender’s hair, a penalty regarded as specially infamous.323 The cutting off of some or all of the hair is at the present time a common punishment for caste offences. Among the Korkus a man and woman caught in adultery have each a lock of hair cut off. If a Chamār man and woman are detected in the same offence, the heads of both are shaved clean of hair. A Dhīmar girl who goes wrong before marriage has a lock of her hair cut off as a penalty, the same being done in several other castes.