Note 47 — Introductory Essay on Caste

In this division the Kurmis and Kunbis are the typical agricultural castes of Hindustān or the plains of northern India, and the Bombay or Marātha Deccan. Both are very numerous and appear to be purely occupational bodies. The name Kurmi perhaps signifies a cultivator or worker. Kunbi may mean a householder. In both castes, groups of diverse origin seem to have been amalgamated owing to their common calling. Thus the Kunbis include a subcaste derived from the Banjāra (carriers), another from the Dhangars or shepherds, and a third from the Mānas, a primitive tribe. In Bombay it is considered that the majority of the Kunbi caste are sprung from the non-Aryan or indigenous tribes, and this may be the reason why Marātha Brāhmans do not take water from them. But they have now become one caste with a status equal to that of the other good cultivating castes. In many tracts of Berār and elsewhere practically all the cultivators of the village belong to the Kunbi caste, and there is every reason to suppose that this was once the general rule and that the Kunbis or ‘householders’ are simply the cultivators of the Marātha country who lived in village communities. Similarly Sir H. Risley considered that some Kurmis of Bihār were of the Aryan type, while others of Chota Nāgpur are derived from the indigenous tribes. The Chasas are the cultivating caste of Orissa and are a similar occupational group. The word Chasa has the generic meaning of a cultivator, and the caste are said by Sir H. Risley to be for the most part of non-Aryan origin, the loose organisation of the caste system among the Uriyas making it possible on the one hand for outsiders to be admitted into the caste, and on the other for wealthy Chasas, who gave up ploughing with their own hands and assumed the respectable title of Mahanti, to raise themselves to membership among the lower classes of Kāyasths. The Koltas are another Uriya caste, probably an offshoot of the Chasas, whose name may be derived from the kulthi47 pulse, a favourite crop in that locality.