The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 1

87. The king

When the community reached the national or agricultural stage some central executive authority became necessary for its preservation. This authority usually fell into the hands of the priest who performed the sacrifice, and he became a king. Since the priest killed the sacrificial animal in which the common life of the community was held to be centred, it was thought that the life passed to him and centred in his person. For the idea of the extinction of life was not properly understood, and the life of a human being or animal might pass by contact, according to primitive ideas, to the person or even the weapon which killed it, just as it could pass by assimilation to those who ate the flesh. In most of the city-states of Greece and Italy the primary function of the kings was the performance of the communal or national sacrifices. Through this act they obtained political power as representing the common life of the people, and its performance was sometimes left to them after their political power had been taken away.²¹⁸ After the expulsion of the kings from Rome the duty of performing the city sacrifices devolved on the consuls. In India also the kings performed sacrifices. When a king desired to be paramount over his neighbours he sent a horse to march through their territories. If it passed through them without being captured they became subordinate to the king who owned the horse. Finally the horse was sacrificed at the Ashva-medha, the king paramount making the sacrifice, while the other kings performed subordinate parts at it.²¹⁹ Similarly the Rāja of Nāgpur killed the sacrificial buffalo at the Dasahra festival. But the common life of the people was sometimes conveyed from the domestic animal to the king by other methods than the performance of a sacrifice. The king of Unyoro in Africa might never eat vegetable food but must subsist on milk and beef. Mutton he might not touch, though he could drink beer after partaking of meat. A sacred herd was kept for the king’s use, and nine cows, neither more nor less, were daily brought to the royal enclosure to be milked for his majesty. The boy who brought the cows from the pasture to the royal enclosure must be a member of a particular clan and under the age of puberty, and was subject to other restrictions. The milk for the king was drawn into a sacred pot which neither the milkman nor anybody else might touch. The king drank the milk, sitting on a sacred stool, three times a day, and any which was left over must be drunk by the boy who brought the cows from pasture. Numerous other rules and restrictions are detailed by Sir J.G. Frazer, and it may be suggested that their object was to ensure that the life of the domestic animal and with it the life of the people should be conveyed pure and undefiled to the king through the milk. The kings of Unyoro had to take their own lives while their bodily vigour was still unimpaired. When the period for his death arrived the king asked his wife for a cup of poison and drank it. “The public announcement of the death was made by the chief milkman. Taking a pot of the sacred milk in his hands he mounted the house-top and cried, ‘Who will drink the milk?’ With these words he dashed the pot on the roof; it rolled off and falling to the ground was broken in pieces. That was the signal for war to the death between the princes who aspired to the throne. They fought till only one was left alive. He was the king.”²²⁰ After completing the above account, of which only the principal points have been stated, Sir J.G. Frazer remarks: “The rule which obliged the kings of Unyoro to kill themselves or be killed before their strength of mind and body began to fail through disease or age is only a particular example of a custom which appears to have prevailed widely among barbarous tribes in Africa and to some extent elsewhere. Apparently this curious practice rests on a belief that the welfare of the people is sympathetically bound up with the welfare of their king, and that to suffer him to fall into bodily or mental decay would be to involve the whole kingdom in ruin.”²²¹ Other instances connecting the life of the king with the ox or other domestic animal are given in Totemism and Exogamy and The Golden Bough²²² Among the Hereros the body of a dead chief was wrapped up in the hide of an ox before being buried.²²³ In the Vedic horse-sacrifice in India the horse was stifled in robes. The chief queen approached him; a cloak having been thrown over them both, she performed a repulsively obscene act symbolising the transmission to her of his fructifying powers.²²⁴ In other cases the king was identified with the corn-spirit, and in this manner he also, it may be suggested, represented the common life of the people.

The belief that the king was the incarnation of the common life of the people led to the most absurd restrictions on his liberty and conduct, a few instances of which from the large collection in The Golden Bough have been quoted in the article on Nai. Thus in an old account of the daily life of the Mikado it is stated: “In ancient times he was obliged to sit on the throne for some hours every morning, with the imperial crown on his head, but to sit altogether like a statue, without stirring either hands or feet, head or eyes, nor indeed any part of his body, because, by this means, it was thought that he could preserve peace and tranquillity in his empire; for if, unfortunately, he turned himself on one side or the other, or if he looked a good while towards any part of his dominions, it was apprehended that war, famine, fire or some great misfortune was near at hand to desolate the country.”²²⁵ Here it would appear that by sitting absolutely immobile the king conferred the quality of tranquillity on the common life of his people incarnate in his person; but by looking too long in any one direction he would cause a severe disturbance of the common life in the part to which he looked. And when the Israelites were fighting with the Amalekites, so long as Moses held up his hands the Israelites prevailed; but when his hands hung down they gave way before the enemy. Here apparently the common life was held to be centred in Moses, and when he held his arms up it was vigorous, but declined as he let them down. Similarly it was often thought that the king should be killed as soon as his bodily strength showed signs of waning, so that the common life might be renewed and saved from a similar decay. Even the appearance of grey hair or the loss of a tooth were sometimes considered sufficient reasons for putting the king to death in Africa.²²⁶ Another view was that any one who killed the king was entitled to succeed him, because the life of the king, and with it the common life of the people, passed to the slayer, just as it had previously passed from the domestic animal to the priest-king who sacrificed it. One or two instances of succession by killing the king are given in the article on Bhīl. Sometimes the view was that the king should be sacrificed annually, or at other intervals, like the corn-spirit or domestic animal, for the renewal of the common life. And this practice, as shown by Sir J.G. Frazer, tended to result in the substitution of a victim, usually a criminal or slave, who was identified with the king by being given royal honours for a short time before his death. Sometimes the king’s son or daughter was offered as a substitute for him, and such a sacrifice was occasionally made in time of peril, apparently as a means of strengthening or preserving the common life. When Chitor, the home of the Sesodia clan of Rājpūts, was besieged by the Muhammadans, the tradition is that the goddess of their house appeared and demanded the sacrifice of twelve chiefs as a condition of its preservation. Eleven of the chiefs sons were in turn crowned as king, and each ruled for three days, while on the fourth he sallied out and fell in battle. Lastly, the Rāna offered himself in order that his favourite son, Ajeysi, might be spared and might perpetuate the clan. In reality the chief and his sons seem to have devoted themselves in the hope that the sacrifice of the king might bring strength and victory to the clan. The sacrifice of Iphigenia and possibly of Jephthah’s daughter appear to be parallel instances. The story of Alcestis may be an instance of the substitution of the king’s wife. The position of the king in early society and the peculiar practices and beliefs attaching to it were brought to notice and fully illustrated by Sir J.G. Frazer. The argument as to the clan and the veneration of the domestic animal follows that outlined by the late Professor Robertson Smith in The Religion of the Semites.

88. Other instances of the common meal as a sacrificial rite

Some other instances of the communal eating of grain or other food as a sacramental rite and bond of union have been given in the articles. Thus at a Kabīrpanthi Chauka or religious service the priest breaks a cocoanut on a stone, and the flesh is cut up and distributed to the worshippers with betel-leaf and sugar. Each receives it on his knees, taking the greatest care that none falls on the ground. The cocoanut is commonly regarded by the Hindus as a substituted offering for a human head. The betel-leaves which are distributed have been specially consecrated by the head priest of the sect, and are held to represent the body of Kabīr.²²⁷

Similarly, Guru Govind Singh instituted a prasād or communion among the Sikhs, in which cakes of flour, butter and sugar are made and consecrated with certain ceremonies while the communicants sit round in prayer, and are then distributed equally to all the faithful present, to whatever caste they may belong. At a Guru-Māta or great council of the Sikhs, which was held at any great crisis in the affairs of the state, these cakes were laid before the Sikh scriptures and then eaten by all present, who swore on the scriptures to forget their internal dissensions and be united. Among the Rājpūts the test of legitimacy of a member of the chief’s family was held to depend on whether he had eaten of the chief’s food. The rice cooked at the temple of Jagannāth in Orissa may be eaten there by all castes together, and, when partaken of by two men together, is held to establish a bond of indissoluble friendship between them.

Members of several low castes of mixed origin will only take food with their relatives, and not with other families of the caste with whom they intermarry.²²⁸ The Chaukhutia Bhunjias will not eat food cooked by other members of the same community, and will not take it from their own daughters after the latter are married. At a feast among the Dewars uncooked food is distributed to the guests, who cook it for themselves; parents will not accept cooked food either from married sons or daughters, and each family with its children forms a separate commensal group. Thus the taking of food together is a more important and sacred tie than intermarriage. In most Hindu castes a man is not put out of caste for committing adultery with a woman of low caste, but for taking cooked food from her hands; though it is assumed that if he lives with her openly he must necessarily have accepted cooked food from her. Opium and alcoholic liquor or wine, being venerated on account of their intoxicating qualities, were sometimes regarded as substitutes for the sacrificial food and partaken of sacramentally.²²⁹

89. Funeral feasts

An important class of communal meals remaining for discussion consists in the funeral feasts. The funeral feast seems a peculiar and unseasonable observance, but several circumstances point to the conclusion that it was originally held in the dead man’s own interest. He or his spirit was indeed held to participate in the feast, and it seems to have been further thought that unless he did so and ate the sacred food, his soul would not proceed to the heaven or god, but would wander about as an unquiet spirit or meet with some other fate. Many of the lower Hindu castes, such as the Kohlis and Bishnois, take food after a funeral, seated by the side of the grave. This custom is now considered somewhat derogatory, perhaps in consequence of a truer realisation of the fact of death. At a Baiga funeral the mourners take one white and one black fowl to a stream and kill and eat them there, setting aside a portion for the dead man. The Gonds also take their food and drink liquor at the grave. The Lohārs think that the spirit of the dead man returns to join in the funeral feast. Among the Telugu Koshtis the funeral party go to the grave on the fifth day, and after the priest has worshipped the image of Vishnu on the grave, the whole party take their food there. After a Panka funeral the mourners bathe and then break a cocoanut over the grave and distribute it among themselves. On the tenth day they go again and break a cocoanut, and each man buries a little piece of it in the earth over the grave. Among the Tameras, at the feast with which mourning is concluded, a leaf-plate containing a portion for the deceased is placed outside the house with a pot of water and a burning lamp to guide his spirit to the food. On the third day after death the Kolhātis sometimes bring back the skull of a corpse and, placing it on the bed, offer to it powder, dates and betel-leaves, and after a feast lasting for three days it is again buried. It is said that the members of the Lingāyat sect formerly set up the corpse in their midst at the funeral feast and sat round it, taking their food, but the custom is not known to exist at present. Among the Bangalas, an African negro tribe, at a great funeral feast lasting for three days in honour of the chief’s son, the corpse was present at the festivities tied in a chair.²³⁰

90. The Hindu deities and the sacrificial meal

Thus there seems reason to suppose that the caste-tie of the Hindus is the same as that which united the members of the city-states of Greece and Italy, that is the eating of a sacramental food together. Among the Vedic Aryans that country only was considered pure and fit for sacrifice in which the Aryan gods had taken up their residence.²³¹ Hindustān was made a pure country in which Aryans could offer sacrifices by the fact that Agni, the sacrificial god of fire, spread himself over it. But the gods have changed. The old Vedic deities Indra, the rain-god, Varuna, the heaven-god, the Marūts or winds, and Soma, the divine liquor, have fallen into neglect. These were the principal forces which controlled the existence of a nomad pastoral people, dependent on rain to make the grass grow for their herds, and guiding their course by the sun and stars. The Soma or liquor apparently had a warming, exhilarating effect in the cold climate of the Central Asian steppes, and was therefore venerated. Since in the hot plains of India abstinence from alcoholic liquor has become a principal religious tenet of high-caste Hindus, Soma is naturally no more heard of. Agni, the fire-god, was also one of the greatest deities to the nomads of the cold uplands, as the preserver of life against cold. But in India, except as represented by the hearth, for cooking, little regard is paid to him, since fires are not required for warmth. New gods have arisen in Hinduism. The sun was an important Vedic deity, both as Mitra and under other names. Vishnu as the sun, or the spirit of whom the sun is the visible embodiment, has become the most important deity in his capacity of the universal giver and preserver of life. He is also widely venerated in his anthropomorphic forms of Rāma, the hero-prince of Ajodhia and leader of the Aryan expedition to Ceylon, and Krishna, the divine cowherd, perhaps some fabled hero sprung from the indigenous tribes. Siva is the mountain-god of the Himalayas and a moon-deity, and in his character of god of destruction the lightning and cobra are associated with him. But he is really worshipped in his beneficent form of the phallic emblem as the agent of life, and the bull, the fertiliser of the soil and provider of food. Devi, the earth, is the great mother goddess. Sprung from her are Hanumān, the monkey-god, and Ganpati, the elephant-god, and in one of her forms, as the terrible goddess Kāli, she is perhaps the deified tiger.²³² Lachmi, the goddess of wealth, and held to have been evolved from the cow, is the consort of Vishnu. It was thus not the god to whom the sacrifice was offered, but the sacrifice itself that was the essential thing, and participation in the common eating of the sacrifice constituted the bond of union. In early times a sacrifice was the occasion for every important gathering or festivity, as is shown both in Indian history and legend. And the caste feasts above described seem to be the continuation and modern form of the ancient sacrifice.

Pilgrims carrying Ganges water

91. Development of the occupational caste from the tribe

The Roman population, as already seen, consisted of a set of clans or gentes. The clans were collected in tribal groups such as the curia, but it does not appear that these latter were endogamous. The rite which constituted a Roman citizen was participation in the Suovetaurilia, the communal sacrifice of the domestic animals, the pig, the ram, and the bull. Since all the Roman citizens at first lived in a comparatively small area, they were all able to be present at the sacrifice. The other states of Greece and Italy had an analogous constitution, as stated by M. Fustel de Coulanges. It may be supposed that the Aryans were similarly divided into clans and tribes. The word visha, the substantive root of Vaishya, originally meant a clan.²³³ But as pointed out by M. Senart, they did not form city-states in India, but settled in villages over a large area of country. Their method of government was by small states under kings, and probably they had a kind of national constitution, of which the king was the centre and embodiment. But these states gradually lost their individuality, and were merged in large empires, where the king could no longer be the centre of the state or of the common life of his people, nor perform a sacrifice at which they could all be present, as the Roman kings did. This religious idea of nationality, based on participation in a common sacrifice, was the only one which existed in early times. Thus apparently the Aryans retained their tribal constitution instead of expanding it into a national one, and the members of clans within a certain local area gathered for a communal sacrifice. But there was a great class, that of the Sūdras or indigenous inhabitants, who could not join in the sacrifices at all. And between the Sūdras and the Vaishyas or main body of the Aryans there gradually grew up another mixed class, which also could not properly participate in them. The priests and rulers, Brāhmans and Kshatriyas, tended to form exclusive bodies, and in this manner a classification by occupation gradually grew up, the distinction being marked by participation in separate sacrificial feasts. The cause which ultimately broke down the religious distinctions of the Roman and Greek states was the development of a feeling of nationality. In the common struggle for the preservation of the city the prejudices of the patricians weakened, and after a long internal conflict, the plebeians were admitted to full rights of citizenship. The plebeians were employed as infantry in the Roman armies, while the patricians rode, and the increased importance of infantry in war was one great cause of the improvement in the position of the plebeians.²³⁴ In India, in the absence of any national feeling, and with the growth of a large and powerful priestly order, religious barriers and prejudices became accentuated rather than weakened. The class distinctions grew more rigid, and gradually, as the original racial line of cleavage was fused by intermarriage and the production of groups of varying status, these came to arrange themselves on a basis of occupation. This is the inevitable and necessary rule in all societies whose activities and mode of life are at all complicated. Racial distinctions cannot be preserved unless in the most exceptional cases, where they are accentuated by the difference of colour, and such a moral and social gulf as that which exists between the whites and negroes in North America. In primitive society there is no such mental cleavage to render the idea of fusion abhorrent to the superior race; the bar is religious, and while it places the inferior race in a despised and abject position, there is no prohibition of illicit unions nor any such moral feeling or principle as would tend to restrict them. The ideas of the responsibilities and duties of parentage in connection with heredity, or the science of eugenics, are entirely modern, and have no place at all in ancient society. As racial and religious distinctions fade away, and social progress takes place, a fresh set of divisions by wealth and occupation grows up. But though this happened also in the Greek and Italian cities, the old religious divisions were not transferred to the new occupational groups, but fell slowly into abeyance, and the latter assumed the simply social character which they have in modern communities. The main reason for the obliteration of religious barriers, as already stated, was the growth of the idea of nationality and the public interest. But in India the feeling of nationality never arose. The Hindu states and empires had no national basis, since at the period in question the only way in which the idea of nationality could be conceived, was by participation of the citizens in a common sacrifice, and this participation is only possible to persons living in a small local area. Hence Hindu society developed on its own lines independently of the form of government to which it was subject, and in the new grouping by occupation the old communal sacrifices were preserved and adapted to the fresh divisions. The result was the growth of the system of occupational castes which still exists. But since the basis of society was the participation of each social group in a communal meal, the group could not be extended to take in persons of the same occupation over a large area, and as a result the widely ramified system of subcastes came into existence. The subcaste or commensal group was the direct evolutionary product of the pre-existing tribe. Its size was limited by the fact that its members had to meet at the periodical sacrificial feasts, by which their unity and the tie which bound them together was cemented and renewed. As already seen, when members of a subcaste migrated to a fresh local area, and were cut off from communication with those remaining behind, they tended as a rule to form a fresh endogamous and commensal group. Since the tie between the members of the subcaste was participation in a sacrificial meal of grain cooked with water, and as this food was held to be sacred, the members of the subcaste came to refuse to eat it except with those who could join in the communal feast; and as the idea gradually gained acceptance, that a legitimate child must be the offspring of a father and mother both belonging to the commensal group, the practice of endogamy within the subcaste became a rule.