Note 11 — Banjāra

In the above passage the community described by Colonel Tod were Chārans, but he identified them with Banjāras, using the name alternatively. He mentions their large herds of pack-bullocks, for the management of which the Chārans, who were graziers as well as bards, would naturally be adapted; the name given to the camp, tānda, is that generally used by the Banjāras; the women wore ivory bangles, which the Banjāra women wear.11 In commenting on the way in which the women threw their scarves over him, making him a prisoner, Colonel Tod remarks: “This community had enjoyed for five hundred years the privilege of making prisoner any Rāna of Mewār who may pass through Murlāh, and keeping him in bondage until he gives them a got or entertainment. The patriarch (of the village) told me that I was in jeopardy as the Rāna’s representative, but not knowing how I might have relished the joke had it been carried to its conclusion, they let me escape.” Mr. Ball notes a similar custom of the Banjāra women far away in the Bastar State of the Central Provinces:12 “Today I passed through another Banjāra hamlet, from whence the women and girls all hurried out in pursuit, and a brazen-faced powerful-looking lass seized the bridle of my horse as he was being led by the sais in the rear. The sais and chaprāsi were both Muhammadans, and the forward conduct of these females perplexed them not a little, and the former was fast losing his temper at being thus assaulted by a woman.” Colonel Mackenzie in his account of the Banjāra caste remarks:13 “It is certain that the Chārans, whoever they were, first rose to the demand which the great armies of northern India, contending in exhausted countries far from their basis of supply, created, viz. the want of a fearless and reliable transport service.... The start which the Chārans then acquired they retain among Banjāras to this day, though in very much diminished splendour and position. As they themselves relate, they were originally five brethren, Rāthor, Turi, Panwār, Chauhān and Jādon. But fortune particularly smiled on Bhīka Rāthor, as his four sons, Mersi, Multāsi, Dheda and Khāmdār, great names among the Chārans, rose immediately to eminence as commissariat transporters in the north. And not only under the Delhi Emperors, but under the Satāra, subsequently the Poona Rāj, and the Subāhship of the Nizām, did several of their descendants rise to consideration and power.” It thus seems a reasonable hypothesis that the nucleus of the Banjāra caste was constituted by the Chārans or bards of Rājputāna. Mr. Bhimbhai Kirparām14 also identifies the Chārans and Banjāras, but I have not been able to find the exact passage. The following notice15 by Colonel Tone is of interest in this connection: