Note 5 — Bania

Colonel Tod gives a catalogue of the eighty-four mercantile tribes, whom he states to be chiefly of Rājpūt descent.5 In this list the Agarwāl, Oswāl, Srimāl, Khandelwāl, Palliwāl and Lād subcastes occur; while the Dhākar and Dhūsar subcastes may be represented by the names Dhākarwāl and Dusora in the lists. The other names given by Tod appear to be mainly small territorial groups of Rājputāna. Elsewhere, after speaking of the claims of certain towns in Rājputāna to be centres of trade, Colonel Tod remarks: “These pretensions we may the more readily admit, when we recollect that nine-tenths of the bankers and commercial men of India are natives of Mārudesh,6 and these chiefly of the Jain faith. The Oswāls, so termed from the town of Osi, near the Luni, estimate one hundred thousand families whose occupation is commerce. All these claim a Rājpūt descent, a fact entirely unknown to the European inquirer into the peculiarities of Hindu manners.”7