Volume 3 / Part 3 — Khojāh

The Khojāhs retain some Hindu customs. Boys have their ears bored and a lock of hair is left on a child’s head to be shaved and offered at some shrine. Circumcision and the wearing of a beard are optional. They do not have mosques, but meet to pray at a lodge called the Jama’at Khāna. They repeat the names of their Pīrs or saints on a rosary made of 101 beads of clay from Karbala, the scene of the death of Hasan and Husain. At their marriages, deaths and on every new-moon day, contributions are levied which are sent to His Highness the Aga Khān. “A remarkable feature at a Khojāh’s death,” Mr. Farīdi states, “is the samarchhanta or Holy Drop. The Jama’at officer asks the dying Khojāh whether he wishes for the Holy Drop, and if the latter agrees he must bequeath Rs. 5 to Rs. 500 to the Jama’at. The officer dilutes a cake of Karbala clay in water and moistens the lips of the dying man with it, sprinkling the remainder over his face, neck and chest. The touch of the Holy Drop is believed to save the departing soul from the temptation of the Arch-Fiend, and to remove the death-agony as completely as among the Sunnis does the recital at a death-bed of the chapter of the Korān known as the Sūrah-i-Yā-sīn. If the dead man is old and grey-haired the hair after death is dyed with henna. A garland of cakes of Karbala clay is tied round the neck of the corpse. If the body is to be buried locally two small circular patches of silk cloth cut from the covering of Husain’s tomb, called chashmah or spectacles, are laid over the eyes. Those Khojāhs who can afford it have their bodies placed in air-tight coffins and transported to the field of Karbala in Persia to be buried there. The bodies are taken by steamer to Bāghdād, and thence by camel to Karbala.

“The Khojāhs are keen and enterprising traders, and are great travellers by land and sea, visiting and settling in distant countries for purposes of trade. They have business connections with Ceylon, Burma, Singapore, China and Japan, and with ports of the Persian Gulf, Arabia and East Africa. Khojāh boys go as apprentices in foreign Khojāh firms on salaries of Rs. 200 to Rs. 2000 a year with board and lodging.”