Volume 2 / Part 2 — Bania, Agarwāla

In the Central Provinces, like other Bania subcastes, they are divided into the Bīsa and Dasa or twenty and ten subdivisions, which marry among themselves. The Bīsa rank higher than the Dasa, the latter being considered to have some flaw in their pedigree, such as descent from a remarried widow. The Dasas are sometimes said to be the descendants of the maidservants who accompanied the seventeen Nāga or snake princesses on their marriages to the sons of Rāja Agar Sen. A third division has now come into existence in the Central Provinces, known as the Pacha or fives; these are apparently of still more doubtful origin than the Dasas. The divisions tend to be endogamous, but if a man of the Bīsa or Dasa cannot obtain a wife from his own group he will sometimes marry in a lower group.

In Nimār some Agarwālas worship Goba Pīr, the god of the sweepers. He is represented by a pole some 30 feet long on which are hung a cloth and cocoanuts. The sweepers carry this through the city almost daily during the month of Shrāwan (July), and people offer cocoanuts, tying them on to the pole. Some Agarwālas offer vermilion to the god in token of worship, and a few invite it to the compounds of their houses and keep it there all night for the same purpose. When a feast is given in the caste the Agarwālas do not take their own brass vessels according to the usual practice, but the host gives them little earthen pots to drink from which are afterwards broken, and leaf-plates for their food. The Agarwālas will take food cooked without water (pakki) from Oswāl, Maheshri and Khandelwāl Banias. The Agarwālas of the Central Provinces hold some substantial estates in Chhattīsgarh; these were obtained at the first settlements during 1860–70, when considerable depression existed, and many of the village headmen were unwilling to accept the revenue assessed on their villages. The more enterprising Banias stepped in and took them, and have profited enormously owing to the increase in the value of land. Akbar’s great minister, Todar Mal, who first introduced an assessment of the land-revenue based on the measurement and survey of the land, is said to have been an Agarwāla.