Volume 3 / Part 3 — Jādam

Infant-marriage is favoured in the caste, and polygamy is also prevalent. This is often the case among the agricultural castes, where a man will marry several wives in order to obtain their assistance in his cultivation, a wife being a more industrious and reliable worker than a hired servant. No penalty is, however, imposed for allowing a girl to reach adolescence before marriage, and this not infrequently happens. If a girl becomes with child through a man of the caste she is united to him by a simple rite known as gunda, in which she merely gives him a ring or throws a garland of flowers over his neck. A caste feast is also exacted, and the couple are then considered to be married. The remarriage of widows is permitted, but it is known by the opprobrious name of Kukar-gauna or ‘dog-marriage,’ signifying that it is held to be little or no better than a simple illicit connection. Divorce is also somewhat common in the caste, notwithstanding that the person who occupies the position of co-respondent must repay to the husband the expenses incurred by him on the marriage ceremony. Some women are known to have had ten or twelve husbands.

The Jādams are proprietors, tenants and labourers, and are reckoned to be efficient cultivators; they plough with their own hands and allow their women to work in the fields. They will also eat food cooked with water in the field, which is against the practice of the higher castes. They eat flesh, including that of the wild pig, and fish, but abstain from liquor, and will take food cooked with water only from Jijhotia or Sanādhya Brāhmans who are their family priests. A Brāhman will take water from the hands of a Jādam in a metal, but not in an earthen, vessel. Boys are invested with the sacred thread at the time of their wedding, a common practice among the higher agricultural castes, and one pointing to the hypothesis suggested in the article on Gurao that the investiture with the sacred thread was in its origin a rite of puberty. The women wear a peculiar dress know as sawang, consisting of a small skirt of about six feet of cloth and a long body-cloth wrapped round the waist and over the shoulders. They also have larger spangles on the forehead than other women. The women of the caste are emancipated to an unusual degree, and it is stated that they commonly accompany their husbands to market for shopping, to prevent them from being cheated. Dr. Hunter describes the Jādam as a brave soldier, but a bad agriculturist; but in the Central Provinces his courage is rated less highly, and a proverb quoted about him is: ‘Patta khatka, Jādam satka,’ or ‘The Jādam trembles at the rustle of a leaf.’