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

5. Death ceremonies

The Savars both burn and bury their dead, placing the corpse on the pyre with its head to the north, in the belief that heaven lies in that direction. On the eleventh day after the death in Sambalpur those members of the caste who can afford it present a goat to the mourners. The Savars believe that the souls of those who die become ghosts, and in Bundelkhand they used formerly to bury the dead near their fields in the belief that the spirits would watch over and protect the crops. If a man has died a violent death they raise a small platform of earth under a teak or sāj tree, in which the ghost of the dead man is believed to take up its residence, and nobody thereafter may cut down that tree. The Uriya Savars take no special measures unless the ghost appears to somebody in a dream and asks to be worshipped as Baghiapāt (tiger-eaten) or Masān (serpent-bitten). In such cases a gunia or sorcerer is consulted, and such measures as he prescribes are taken to appease the dead man’s soul. If a person dies without a child a hole is made in a stone, and his soul is induced to enter it by the gunia. A few grains of rice are placed in the hole, and it is then closed with melted lead to imprison the ghost, and the stone is thrown into a stream so that it may never be able to get out and trouble the family. Savars offer water to the dead. A second wife usually wears a metal impression of the first wife by way of propitiation to her.

6. Religion

The Savars worship Bhawāni under various names and also Dūlha Deo, the young bridegroom who was killed by a tiger. He is located in the kitchen of every house in some localities, and this has given rise to the proverb, ‘Jai chūlha, tai Dūlha,’ or ‘There is a Dūlha Deo to every hearth.’ The Savars are considered to be great sorcerers. ‘Sawara ke pānge, Rāwat ke bāndhe,’ or ‘The man bewitched by a Savar and the bullock tied up by a Rāwat (grazier) cannot escape’; and again, ‘Verily the Saonr is a cup of poison.’ Their charms, called Sabari mantras, are especially intended to appease the spirits of persons who have died a violent death. If one of their family was seriously ill they were accustomed formerly to set fire to the forest, so that by burning the small animals and insects which could not escape they might propitiate the angry gods.

7. Occupation

The dress of the Savars is of the scantiest. The women wear khilwān or pith ornaments in the ear, and abstain from wearing nose-rings, a traditional method of deference to the higher castes. The proverb has it, ‘The ornaments of the Sawara are gumchi seeds.’ These are the red and black seeds of Abrus precatorius which are used in weighing gold and silver and are called rati. Women are tattooed and sometimes men also to avoid being pierced with a red-hot iron by the god of death. Tattooing is further said to allay the sexual passion of women, which is eight times more intense than that of men. Their occupations are the collection of jungle produce and cultivation. They are very clever in taking honeycombs: ‘It is the Savar who can drive the black bees from their hive.’ The eastern branch of the caste is more civilised than the Saonras of Bundelkhand, who still sow juāri with a pointed stick, saying that it was the implement given to them by Mahādeo for this purpose. In Saugor and Damoh they employ Brāhmans for marriage ceremonies if they can afford it, but on other occasions their own caste priests. In some places they will take food from most castes but in others from nobody who is not a Savar. Sometimes they admit outsiders and in others the children only of irregular unions; thus a Gond woman kept by a Savar would not be recognised as a member of the caste herself but her children would be Savars. A woman going wrong with an outsider of low caste is permanently excommunicated.

Sonjhara

1. Origin and constitution of the caste

Sonjhara, Jhara, Jhora, Jhira.—A small occupational caste who wash for gold in river-beds, belonging to the Sambalpur, Mandla, Bālāghāt and Chānda Districts and the Chota Nāgpur Feudatory States. In 1911 they numbered about 1500 persons. The name probably comes from sona, gold, and jhārna, to sweep or wash, though, when the term Jhara only is used, some derive it from jhori a streamlet. Colonel Dalton surmised that the Sonjharas were an offshoot of the Gonds, and this appears to be demonstrated by the fact that the names of their exogamous septs are identical with Gond names as Marābi, Tekām, Netām, Dhurwa and Madao. The Sonjharas of Bilāspur say that their ancestors were Gonds who dwelt at Lānji in Bālāghāt. The caste relate the tradition that they were condemned by Mahādeo to perpetual poverty because their first ancestor stole a little gold from Pārvatis crown when it fell into the river Jamuna (in Chota Nāgpur) and he was sent to fetch it out. The metal which is found in the river sands they hold to be the remains of a shower of gold which fell for two and a half days while the Banāphar heroes Alha and Udal were fighting their great battle with Prithvi Rāj, king of Delhi. The caste is partly occupational, and recruited from different sources. This is shown by the fact that in Chānda members of different septs will not eat together, though they are obliged to intermarry. In Sambalpur the Behra, Pātar, Nāik and Padhān septs eat together and intermarry. Two other septs, the Kanar and Peltrai who eat fowls and drink liquor, occupy a lower position, and members of the first four will not take food from them nor give daughters to them in marriage, though they will take daughters from these lower groups for their sons. Here they have three subcastes, the Laria or residents of Chhattīsgarh, the Uriya belonging to the Uriya country, and the Bhuinhār, who may be an offshoot from the Bhuiya tribe.

2. Totemism

They have one recorded instance of totemism, which is of some interest. Members of the sept named after a tree called kausa revere the tree and explain it by saying that their ancestor, when flying from some danger, sought protection from this tree, which thereupon opened and enfolded him in its trunk. No member of the sept will touch the tree without first bathing, and on auspicious occasions, such as births and weddings, they will dig up a little earth from the roots of the tree and taking this home worship it in the house. If any member of the sept finds that he has cut off a branch or other part of this tree unwittingly he will take and consign it to a stream, observing ceremonies of mourning. Women of the Nāg or cobra sept will not mention the name of this snake aloud, just as they refrain from speaking the names of male relatives.

3. Marriage

Marriage within the sept is forbidden, and they permit the intermarriage of the children of a brother and sister, but not of those of two sisters, though their husbands may be of different septs. Marriage is usually adult except in Sambalpur, where a girl must be provided with a husband before reaching maturity in accordance with the general rule among the Uriya castes. In Chhindwāra it is said that the Sonjharas revere the crocodile and that the presence of this animal is essential at their weddings. They do not, however, kill and eat it at a sacrificial feast as the Singrore Dhīmars are reported to do, but catch and keep it alive, and when the ceremony is concluded take it back again and deposit it in a river. After a girl has been married neither her father nor any of her own near relatives will ever take food again in the house of her husband’s family, saying that they would rather starve. Each married couple also becomes a separate commensal group and will not eat with the parents of either of them. This is a common custom among low castes of mixed origin where every man is doubtful of his neighbour’s parentage. Divorce and the remarriage of widows are permitted, and a woman may be divorced merely on the ground of incompetence in household management or because she does not please her husband’s parents.

4. Customs at birth

At child-birth they make a little separate hut for the mother near the river where they are encamped, and she remains in it for two days and a half. During this time her husband does no work; he stays a few paces distant from his wife’s hut and prepares her food but does not go to the hut or touch her, and he kindles a fire between them. During the first two days the woman gets three handfuls of rice boiled thin in water, and on the third day she receives nothing until the evening, when the Sendia or head of the sept takes a little cowdung, gold and silver in his hand, and pouring water over this gives her of it to drink as many times as the number of gods worshipped by her family up to seven. Then she is pure. On this day the father sacrifices a chicken and gives a meal with liquor to the caste and names the child, calling it after one of his ancestors who is dead. Then an old woman beats on a brass plate and calls out the name which has been given in a loud voice to the whole camp so that they may all know the child’s name. In Bilāspur the Sonjharas observe the custom of the Couvade, and for six days after the birth of a child the husband lies prone in his house, while the wife gets up and goes to work, coming home to give suck to the child when necessary. The man takes no food for three days and on the fourth is given ginger and raw sugar, thus undergoing the ordinary treatment of a woman after childbirth. This is supposed by them to be a sort of compensation for the labours sustained by the woman in bearing the child. The custom obtains among some other primitive races, but is now rapidly being abandoned by the Sonjharas.

5. Funeral rites

The bodies of the old are cremated as a special honour, and those of other persons are buried. No one other than a member of the dead man’s family may touch his corpse under a penalty of five rupees. A relative will remove the body and bury it with the feet pointing to the river or burn it by the water’s edge. They mourn a child for one day and an adult for four days, and at the end the mourner is shaved and provides liquor for the community. If there be no relative, since no other man can touch the corpse, they fire the hut over it and burn it as it is lying or bury hut and body under a high mound of sand.

6. Religion

Their principal deities are Dūlha Deo, the boy bridegroom, Nira his servant, and Kauria a form of Devi. Nira lives under an ūmar633 tree and he and Dūlha Deo his master are worshipped every third year in the month of Māgh (January). Kauria is also worshipped once in three years on a Sunday in the month of Māgh with an offering of a cocoanut, and in her honour they never sit on a cot nor sleep on a stool because they think that the goddess has her seat on these articles. The real reason, however, is probably that the Sonjharas consider the use of such furniture an indication of a settled life and permanent residence, and therefore abjure it as being wanderers. Some analogous customs have been recorded of the Banjāras. They also revere the spirit of one of their female ancestors who became a Sati. They sacrifice a goat to the genius loci or spirit haunting the spot where they decide to start work; and they will leave it for fear of angering this spirit, which is said to appear in the form of a tiger, should they make a particularly good find.634 They never keep dogs, and it is said that they are defiled by the touch of a dog and will throw away their food if one comes near them during their meal. The same rule applies to a cat, and they will throw away an earthen vessel touched by either of these animals. On the Diwālī day they wash their implements, and setting them up near the huts worship them with offerings of a cocoanut and vermilion.

7. Social customs

Their rule is always to camp outside a village at a distance of not less than a mile. In the rains they make huts with a roof of bamboos sloping from a central ridge and walls of matting. The huts are built in one line and do not touch each other, at least a cubit’s distance being left between each. Each hut has one door facing the east. As a rule they avoid the water of village wells and tanks, though it is not absolutely forbidden. Each man digs a shallow well in the sand behind his hut and drinks the water from it, and no man may drink the water of his neighbour’s well; if he should do so or if any water from his well gets into his neighbour’s, the latter is abandoned and a fresh one made. If the ground is too swampy for wells they collect the water in their wooden washing-tray and fill their vessels from it. In the cold weather they make little leaf-huts on the sand or simply camp out in the open, but they must never sleep under a tree. When living in the open each family makes two fires and sleeps together between them. Some of them have their stomachs burned and blackened from sleeping too near the fire. The Sonjharas will not take cooked food from the hands of any other caste, but their social status is very low, about equivalent to that of the parent Gond tribe. They have no fear of wild animals, not even the children. Perhaps they think that as fellow-denizens of the jungle these animals are kin to them and will not injure them.

8. Occupation

The traditional occupation of the caste is to wash gold from the sandy beds of streams, while they formerly also washed for diamonds at Hirākud on the Mahānadi near Sambalpur and at Wairāgarh in Chanda. The industry is decaying, and in 1901 only a quarter of the total number of Sonjharas were still employed In it. Some have become cultivators and fishermen, while others earn their livelihood by sweeping up the refuse dirt of the workshops of goldsmiths and brass-workers; they wash out the particles of metal from this and sell it back to the Sunārs. The Mahānadi and Jonk rivers in Sambalpur, the Banjar In Mandla, the Son and other rivers in Bālāghāt, and the Wainganga and the eastern streams of Chānda contain minute particles of gold. The washers earn a miserable and uncertain livelihood, and indeed appear not to desire anything beyond a bare subsistence. In Bhandāra635 it is said that they avoid any spot where they have previously been lucky, while in Chānda they have a superstition that a person making a good find of gold will be childless, and hence many dread the search.636 When they set out to look for gold they wash three small trayfuls at three places about five cubits apart. If they find no appreciable quantity of gold they go on for one or two hundred yards and wash three more trayfuls, and proceed thus until they find a profitable place where they will halt for two or three days. A spot637 in the dry river-bed is usually selected at the outside of a bend, where the finer sediment is likely to be found; after removing the stones and pebbles from above, the sand below is washed several times in circular wooden cradles, shaped like the top of an umbrella, of diminishing sizes, until all the clay is removed and fine particles of sand mixed with gold are visible. A large wooden spoon is used to stir up the sediment, which is washed and rubbed by hand to separate the gold more completely from the sand, and a blackish residue is left, containing particles of gold and mercury coloured black with oxide of iron. Mercury is used to pick up the gold with which it forms an amalgam. This is evaporated in a clay cupel called a ghariya by which the mercury is got rid of and the gold left behind.

Sudh

Sudh, 638 Sudha, Sudho, Suda.—A cultivating caste in the Uriya country. Since the transfer of Sambalpur to Bengal only a few Sudhs remain in the Central Provinces. They are divided into four subcastes—the Bada or high Sudhs, the Dehri or worshippers, the Kabāt-konia or those holding the corners of the gate, and the Butka. These last are the most primitive and think that Rairākhol is their first home. They relate that they were born of the Pāndava hero Bhīmsen and the female demon Hedembiki, and were originally occupied in supplying leaves for the funeral ceremonies of the Pāndava brothers, from which business they obtained their name of Butka or ‘one who brings leaves.’ They are practically a forest tribe and carry on shifting cultivation like the Khonds. According to their own story the ancestors of the Butka Sudhs once ruled In Rairākhol and reclaimed the land from the forest, that is so far as it has been reclaimed. The following story connects them with the ruling family of Rairākhol. In former times there was constant war between Bāmra and Rairākhol, and on one occasion the whole of the Rairākhol royal family was destroyed with the exception of one boy who was hidden by a Butka Sudh woman. She placed him in a cradle supported on four uprights, and when the Bāmra Rāja’s soldiers came to seek for him the Sudhs swore, “If we have kept him either in heaven or earth may our god destroy us.” The Bāmra people were satisfied with this reply and the child was saved, and on coming to manhood he won back his kingdom. He received the name of Janāmani or ‘Jewel among men,’ which the family still bear. In consequence of this incident, the Butka Sudhs are considered by the Rairākhol house as relations on their mother’s side; they have several villages allotted to them and perform sacrifices for the ruling family. In some of these villages nobody may sleep on a cot or sit on a high chair, so as to be between heaven and earth in the position in which the child was saved. The Bada Sudhs are the most numerous subdivision and have generally adopted Hindu customs, so that the higher castes will take water from their hands. They neither drink liquor nor eat fowls, but the other subcastes do both. The Sudhs have totemistic gotras as Bhallūka (bear), Bāgh (tiger), Ullūka (owl), and others. They also have bargas or family names as Thākur (lord), Dānaik, Amāyat and Bīshi. The Thākur clan say that they used to hold the Baud kings in their lap for their coronation, and the Dānaik used to tie the king’s turban. The Bīshi were so named because of their skill in arms, and the Amāyat collected materials for the worship of the Pānch Khanda or five swords. The bargas are much more numerous than the totemistic septs, and marriage either within the barga or within the sept is forbidden. Girls must be married before adolescence; and in the absence of a suitable husband, the girl is married to an old man who divorces her immediately afterwards, and she may then take a second husband at any time by the form for widow-remarriage. A betrothal is sealed by tying an areca-nut in a knot made from the clothes of a relative of each party and pounding it seven times with a pestle. After the marriage a silver ring is placed in a pot of water, over the mouth of which a leaf-plate is bound. The bridegroom pierces the leaf-plate with a knife, and the bride then thrusts her hand through the hole, picks out the ring and puts it on. The couple then go inside the house and sit down to a meal. The bridegroom, after eating part of his food, throws the leavings on to the bride’s plate. She stops eating in displeasure, whereupon the bridegroom promises her some ornaments, and she relents and eats his leavings. It is customary for a Hindu wife to eat the leavings of food of her husband as a mark of her veneration for him. Divorce and the remarriage of widows are permitted. The Sudhs worship the Pānch Khanda or five swords, and in the Central Provinces they say that these are a representation of the five Pāndava brothers, in whose service their first ancestors were engaged. Their tutelary goddess is Khambeshwari, represented by a wooden peg (khamba). She dwells in the wilds of the Baud State and is supposed to fulfil all the desires of the Sudhs. Liquor, goats, buffaloes, vermilion and swallow-wort flowers are offered to her, the last two being in representation of blood. The Dehri Sudhs worship a goddess called Kandrāpat who dwells always on the summits of hills. It is believed that whenever worship is concluded the roar of her tiger is heard, and the worshippers then leave the place and allow the tiger to come and take the offerings. The goddess would therefore appear to be the deified tiger. The Bada Sudhs rank with the cultivating castes of Sambalpur, but the other three subcastes have a lower position.

Sunār

1. General notice of the caste

Sunār,639 Sonār, Soni, Hon-Potdār, Sarāf.—The occupational caste of goldsmiths and silversmiths. The name is derived from the Sanskrit Suvarna kār, a worker in gold. In 1911 the Sunārs numbered 96,000 persons in the Central Provinces and 30,000 in Berār. They live all over the Province and are most numerous in the large towns. The caste appears to be a functional one of comparatively recent formation, and there is nothing on record as to its origin, except a collection of Brāhmanical legends of the usual type. The most interesting of these as related by Sir H. Risley is as follows:640

“In the beginning of time, when the goddess Devi was busy with the construction of mankind, a giant called Sonwa-Daitya, whose body consisted entirely of gold, devoured her creations as fast as she made them. To baffle this monster the goddess created a goldsmith, furnished him with the tools of his art, and instructed him how to proceed. When the giant proposed to eat him, the goldsmith suggested to him that if his body were polished his appearance would be vastly improved, and asked to be allowed to undertake the job. With the characteristic stupidity of his tribe the giant fell into the trap, and having had one finger polished was so pleased with the result that he agreed to be polished all over. For this purpose, like Aetes in the Greek legend of Medea, he had to be melted down, and the goldsmith, who was to get the body as his perquisite, giving the head only to Devi, took care not to put him together again. The goldsmith, however, overreached himself. Not content with his legitimate earnings, he must needs steal a part of the head, and being detected in this by Devi, he and his descendants were condemned to be for ever poor.” The Sunārs also have a story that they are the descendants of one of two Rājpūt brothers, who were saved as boys by a Sāraswat Brāhman from the wrath of Parasurāma when he was destroying the Kshatriyas. The descendants of the other brother were the Khatris. This is the same story as is told by the Khatris of their own origin, but they do not acknowledge the connection with Sunārs, nor can the Sunārs allege that Sāraswat Brāhmans eat with them as they do with Khatris. In Gujarāt they have a similar legend connecting them with Banias. In Bombay they also claim to be Brāhmans, and in the Central Provinces a caste of goldsmiths akin to the Sunārs call themselves Vishwa Brāhmans. On the other hand, before and during the time of the Peshwas, Sunārs were not allowed to wear the sacred thread, and they were forbidden to hold their marriages in public, as it was considered unlucky to see a Sunār bridegroom. Sunār bridegrooms were not allowed to see the state umbrella or to ride in a palanquin, and had to be married at night and in secluded places, being subject to restrictions and annoyances from which even Mahārs were free.641 Their raison d’être may possibly be found in the fact that the Brāhmans, all-powerful in the Poona state, were jealous of the pretensions of the Sunārs, and devised these rules as a means of suppressing them. It may be suggested that the Sunārs, being workers at an important urban industry, profitable in itself and sanctified by its association with the sacred metal gold, aspired to rank above the other artisans, and put forward the pretensions already mentioned, because they felt that their position was not commensurate with their deserts. But the Sunār is included in Grant-Duff’s list of the twenty-four village menials of a Marātha village, and consequently he would in past times have ranked below the cultivators, from whom he must have accepted the annual presents of grain.

2. Internal structure

The caste have a number of subdivisions, nearly all of which are of the territorial class and indicate the various localities from which it has been recruited in these Provinces. The most important subcastes are the Audhia from Ajodhia or Oudh; the Purānia or old settlers; the Bundelkhandi from Bundelkhand; the Mālwi from Mālwa; the Lād from Lāt, the old name for the southern portion of Gujarāt; and the Mair, who appear to have been the first immigrants from Upper India and are named after Mair, the original ancestor, who melted down the golden demon. Other small groups are the Pātkars, so called because they allow pāt or widow-marriage, though, as a matter of fact, it is permitted by the great majority of the caste; the Pāndhare or ‘White Sunārs’; and the Ahīr Sunārs, whose ancestors must presumably have belonged to the caste whose name they bear. The caste have also numerous bainks or exogamous septs, which differ entirely from the long lists given for Bengal and the United Provinces, and show, as Mr. Crooke remarks, the extreme fertility with which sections of this kind spring up. In the Central Provinces the names are of a titular or territorial nature. Examples of the former kind, that is, a title or nickname supposed to have been borne by the sept’s founder, are: Dantele, one who has projecting teeth; Kāle, black; Munde, bald; Kolhīmāre, a killer of jackals; and Ladaiya, a jackal or a quarrelsome person. Among the territorial names are Narwaria from Narwar; Bhilsainyān from Bhilsa; Kanaujia from Kanauj; Dillīwāl from Delhi; Kālpiwāl from Kālpi. Besides the bainks or septs by which marriage is regulated, they have adopted the Brāhmanical eponymous gotra-names as Kashyap, Garg, Sāndilya, and so on. These are employed on ceremonial occasions as when a gift is made for the purpose of obtaining religious merit, and the gotra- name of the owner is recorded, but they do not influence marriage. The use of them is a harmless vanity analogous to the assumption of distinguished surnames by people who were not born to them.