Note 1 — Injhwār

Jādam.1—A branch of the well-known Yādu or Yādava sept of Rājpūts which has now developed into a caste in the Nerbudda valley. Colonel Tod describes the Yādu as the most illustrious of all the tribes of India, this name having been borne by the descendants of Buddha, progenitor of the Lunar race. The Yādavas were the herdsmen of Mathura, and Krishna was born in this tribe. His son was Bhārat, from whom the classical name of Bhāratavārsha for India is held to be derived. It is related that when Krishna was about to ascend to heaven, he reflected that the Yādavas had multiplied exceedingly and would probably cause trouble to the world after he had left it. So he decided to reduce their numbers, and one day he persuaded one of his companions to dress up as a pregnant woman in jest, and they took him to the hermitage of the saint Durvāsa and asked the saint to what the woman would give birth. Durvāsa, who was of a very irascible temper, divined that he was being trifled with, and replied that a rice-pestle would be born by which the Yādavas would be destroyed. On the return of the party they found to their astonishment that a pestle had actually, as it were, been born from the man. So they were alarmed at the words of the saint and tried to destroy the pestle by rubbing it on a stone. But as the sawdust of the pestle fell on the ground there sprang up from it the shoots of the Gondla or Elephant grass, which grows taller than the head of a man on horseback. And some time afterwards a quarrel arose among the Yādavas, and they tore up the stalks of this grass and slew each other with it. Only one woman escaped, whose son was afterwards the King of Mathura and the ancestor of the existing tribe. Another body, however, with whom was Krishna, fled to Gujarāt, and on the coast there built the great temple of Dwārka, in the place known as Jagat Khant, or the World’s End. The story has some resemblance to that of the sowing of the dragon’s teeth by Cadmus at Thebes. The principal branches of the Yādavas are the Yāduvansi chiefs of Karauli, in Rājputāna, and the Bhatti chiefs of Jaisalmer. The Jādams of Hoshangābād say that they immigrated from Karauli State about 700 years ago, having come to the country on a foray for plunder and afterwards settled here. They have now developed into a caste, marrying among themselves. In Hoshangābād the caste has two subdivisions, the Kachhotia who belong principally to the Sohāgpur tahsīl, and the Adhodias who live in Seoni and Harda. These two groups are endogamous and do not marry with each other. The Kachhotia are the offspring of irregular unions and are looked down upon by the others. They say that they have fifty-two exogamous groups or sections, but this number is used locally as an expression of indefinite magnitude. All the sections appear to be named after villages where their ancestors once lived, but the preference for totemism has led some of the groups to connect their names with natural objects. Thus the designation of the Semaria section may be held to be derived from a village of that name, both on account of its form, and because the other known section-names are taken from villages. But the Semaria Jādams have adopted the semar or cotton-tree as their totem and pay reverence to this.2