Note 50 — Introductory Essay on Caste

Several Rājput clans, as the Panwārs of the Wainganga Valley, the Rāghuvansis, the Jādums derived from the Yādava clan, and the Daharias of Chhattīsgarh, have formed distinct castes, marrying among themselves. A proper Rājpūt should not marry in his own clan. These groups have probably in the past taken wives from the surrounding population, and they can no longer be held to belong to the Rājpūt caste proper, but rank as ordinary agricultural castes. Other agricultural castes have probably been formed through mixed descent from Rājpūts and the indigenous races. The Agharias of Sambalpur say they are sprung from a clan of Rājpūts near Agra, who refused to bend their heads before the king of Delhi. He summoned all the Agharias to appear before him, and fixed a sword across the door at the height of a man’s neck. As the Agharias would not bend their heads they were as a natural consequence all decapitated as they passed through the door. Only one escaped, who had bribed a Chamār to go instead of him. He and his village fled from Agra and came to Chhattīsgarh, where they founded the Agharia caste. And, in memory of this, when an Agharia makes a libation to his ancestors, he first pours a little water on the ground in honour of the dead Chamār. Such stories may be purely imaginary, or may contain some substratum of truth, as that the ancestors of the caste were Rājpūts, who took wives from Chamārs and other low castes. The Kīrārs are another caste with more or less mixed descent from Rājpūts. They are also called Dhākar, and this means one of illegitimate birth. The Bhilālas are a caste formed of the offspring of mixed alliances between Rājpūts and Bhīls. In many cases in Nimār Rājpūt immigrants appear to have married the daughters of Bhīl chieftains and landholders, and succeeded to their estates. Thus the Bhilālas include a number of landed proprietors, and the caste ranks as a good agricultural caste, from whom Brāhmans will take water. Among the other indigenous tribes, several of which have in the Central Provinces retained the possession of large areas of land and great estates in the wilder forest tracts, a subcaste has been formed of the landholding members of the tribe. Such are the Rāj-Gonds among the Gonds, the Binjhāls among Baigas, and the Tawar subtribe of the Kawar tribe of Bilāspur, to which all the zamīndārs50 belong. These last now claim to be Tomara Rājpūts, on the basis of the similarity of the name. These groups rank with the good agricultural castes, and Brāhmans sometimes consent to take water from them. The Dāngis of Saugor appear to be the descendants of a set of freebooters in the Vindhyan hills, much like the Gūjars in northern India. The legend of their origin is given in Sir B. Robertson’s Census Report of 1891: “The chief of Garhpahra or old Saugor detained the palanquins of twenty-two married women and kept them as his wives. The issue of the illicit intercourse were named Dāngis, and there are thus twenty-two subdivisions of these people. There are also three other subdivisions who claim descent from pure Rājpūts, and who will take daughters in marriage from the remaining twenty-two, but will not give their daughters to them.” Thus the Dāngis appear to have been a mixed group, recruiting their band from all classes of the population, with some Rajpūts as leaders. The name probably means hillman, from dāng, a hill. Khet men bāmi, gaon men Dāngi or ‘A Dāngi in the village is like the hole of a snake in one’s field,’ is a proverb showing the estimation in which they were formerly held. They obtained estates in Saugor and a Dāngi dynasty formerly governed part of the District, and they are now highly respectable cultivators. The Mīnas or Deswālis belonged to the predatory Mīna tribe of Rājputāna, but a section of them have obtained possession of the land in Hoshangābād and rank as a good agricultural caste. The Lodhas of the United Provinces are placed lowest among the agricultural castes by Mr. Nesfield, who describes them as little better than a forest tribe. The name is perhaps derived from the bark of the lodh tree, which was collected by the Lodhas of northern India and sold for use as a dyeing agent. In the Central Provinces the name has been changed to Lodhi, and they are said to have been brought into the District by a Rāja of the Gond-Rājpūt dynasty of Mandla in the seventeenth century, and given large grants of waste land in the interior in order that they might clear it of forest. They have thus become landholders, and rank with the higher agricultural castes. They are addressed as Thākur, a title applied to Rājpūts, and Lodhi landowners usually wear the sacred thread.