Note 20 — KĀYASTH

Finally in the English administration the Kāyasths at first monopolised the ministerial service. In the United Provinces, Bengal and Bihār, it is stated that the number of Kāyasths may perhaps even now exceed that of all other castes taken together.20 And in Gujarāt the Kāyasths have lost in recent years the monopoly they once enjoyed as Government clerks.21 The Mathura Kāyasths of Gujarāt are said to be declining in prosperity on account of the present keen competition for Government service,22 of which it would thus appear they formerly had as large a share as they desired. The Prabhus, the writer-caste of western India corresponding to the Kāyasths, were from the time of the earliest European settlements much trusted by English merchants, and when the British first became supreme in Gujarāt they had almost a monopoly of the Government service as English writers. To such an extent was this the case that the word Prabhu or Purvu was the general term for a clerk who could write English, whether he was a Brāhman, Sunār, Prabhu, Portuguese or of English descent.23 Similarly the word Cranny was a name applied to a clerk writing English, and thence vulgarly applied in general to the East Indians or half-caste class from among whom English copyists were afterwards chiefly recruited. The original is the Hindi karāni, kirāni, which Wilson derives from the Sanskrit karan, a doer. Karana is also the name of the Orissa writer-caste, who are writers and accountants. It is probable that the name is derived from this caste, that is the Uriya Kāyasths, who may have been chiefly employed as clerks before any considerable Eurasian community had come into existence. Writers’ Buildings at Calcutta were recently still known to the natives as Karāni ki Barīk, and this supports the derivation from the Karans or Uriya Kāyasths, the case thus being an exact parallel to that of the Prabhus in Bombay.24