The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 3
Tekst6. The success of the Kāyasths and their present position
It may be hoped that the leading members of the Kāyasth caste will not take offence, because in the discussion of the origin of their caste, one of the most interesting problems of Indian ethnology, it has been necessary to put forward a hypothesis other than that which they hold themselves. It would be as unreasonable for a Kāyasth to feel aggrieved at the suggestion that centuries ago their ancestors were to some extent the offspring of mixed unions as for an Englishman to be insulted by the statement that the English are of mixed descent from Saxons, Danes and Normans. If the Kāyasths formerly had a comparatively humble status in Hindu society, then it is the more creditable to the whole community that they should have succeeded in raising themselves by their native industry and ability without adventitious advantages to the high position in which by general admission the caste now stands. At present the Kāyasths are certainly the highest caste after Brāhman, Rājpūt and Bania, and probably in Hindustān, Bengal and the Central Provinces they may be accounted as practically equal to Rājpūts and Banias. Of the Bengal Kāyasths Dr. Bhattachārya wrote:455 “They generally prove equal to any position in which they are placed. They have been successful not only as clerks but in the very highest executive and judicial offices that have yet been thrown open to the natives of this country. The names of the Kāyastha judges, Dwārka Nāth Mitra, Ramesh Chandra Mitra and Chandra Mādhava Ghose are well known and respected by all. In the executive services the Kāyasths have attained the same kind of success. One of them, Mr. R. C. Dutt, is now the Commissioner of one of the most important divisions of Bengal. Another, named Kālika Dās Datta, has been for several years employed as Prime Minister of the Kuch Bihār State, giving signal proofs of his ability as an administrator by the success with which he has been managing the affairs of the principality in his charge.” In the Central Provinces, too, Kāyasth gentlemen hold the most important positions in the administrative, judicial and public works departments, as well as being strongly represented in the Provincial and subordinate executive services. And in many Districts Kāyasths form the backbone of the ministerial staff of the public offices, a class whose patient laboriousness and devotion to duty, with only the most remote prospects of advancement to encourage them to persevere, deserve high commendation.
7. Subcastes
The northern India Kāyasths are divided into the following twelve subcastes, which are mainly of a territorial character:
(a) Srivāstab.
(b) Saksena.
(c) Bhatnāgar.
(d) Ambastha or Amisht.
(e) Ashthāna or Aithāna.
(f) Bālmīk or Vālmīki.
(g) Māthur.
(h) Kulsreshtha.
(i) Sūryadhwaja.
(k) Karan.
(l) Gaur.
(m) Nigum.
(a) The Srivāstab subcaste take their name from the old town of Sravāsti, now Sahet-Mahet, in the north of the United Provinces. They are by far the most numerous subcaste both there and here. In these Provinces nearly all the Kāyasths are Srivāstabs except a few Saksenas. They are divided into two sections, Khare and Dūsre, which correspond to the Bīsa and Dasa groups of the Banias. The Khare are those of pure descent, and the Dūsre the offspring of remarried widows or other irregular alliances.
(b) The Saksena are named from the old town of Sankisa, in the Farukhābād District. They also have the Khare and Dūsre groups, and a third section called Kharua, which is said to mean pure, and is perhaps the most aristocratic. A number of Saksena Kāyasths are resident in Seoni District, where their ancestors were settled by Bakht Buland, the Gond Rāja of Deogarh in Chhīndwāra. These constituted hitherto a separate endogamous group, marrying among themselves, but since the opening of the railway negotiations have been initiated with the Saksenas of northern India, with the result that intermarriage is to be resumed between the two sections.
(c) The Bhatnāgar take their name from the old town of Bhātner, near Bikaner. They are divided into the Vaishya or Kadīm, of pure descent, and the Gaur, who are apparently the offspring of intermarriage with the Gaur subcaste.
(d) Ambastha or Amisht. These are said to have settled on the Girnār hill, and to take their name from their worship of the goddess Ambāji or Amba Devi. Mr. Crooke suggests that they may be connected with the old Ambastha caste who were noted for their skill in medicine. The practice of surgery is the occupation of some Kāyasths.456 It is also supposed that the names may come from the Ameth pargana of Oudh. The Ambastha Kāyasths are chiefly found in south Bihār, where they are numerous and influential.457
(e) Ashthāna or Aithāna. This is an Oudh subcaste. They have two groups, the Pūrabi or eastern, who are found in Jaunpur and its neighbourhood, and the Pachhauri or western, who live in or about Lucknow.
(f) Bālmīk or Vālmīki. These are a subcaste of western India. Bālmīk or Vālmīk was the traditional author of the Rāmāyana, but they do not trace their descent from him. The name may have some territorial meaning. The Vālmīki are divided into three endogamous groups according as they live in Bombay, Cutch or Surat.
(g) The Māthur subcaste are named after Mathura or Muttra. They are also split into the local groups Dihlawi of Delhi, Katchi of Cutch and Lachauli of Jodhpur.
(h) The Kulsreshtha or ‘well-born’ Kāyasths belong chiefly to the districts of Agra and Etah. They are divided into the Bārakhhera, or those of twelve villages, and the Chha Khera of six villages.
(i) The Sūryadhwaja subcaste belong to Ballia, Ghāzi-pur and Bijnor. Their origin is obscure. They profess excessive purity, and call themselves Sakadwīpi or Scythian Brāhmans.
(k) The Karan subcaste belong to Bihār, and have two local divisions, the Gayawāle from Gāya, and the Tirhūtia from Tirhūt.
(l) The Gaur Kāyasths, like the Gaur Brāhmans and Rājpūts, apparently take their name from Gaur or Lakhnauti, the old kingdom of Bengal. They have the Khare and Dūsre subdivisions, and also three local groups named after Bengal, Delhi and Budaun.
(m) The Nigum subcaste, whose name is apparently the same as that of the Nikumbh Rājpūts, are divided into two endogamous groups, the Kadīm or old, and the Unāya, or those coming from Unao. Sometimes the Unāya are considered as a separate thirteenth subcaste of mixed descent.
8. Exogamy
Educated Kāyasths now follow the standard rule of exogamy, which prohibits marriage between persons within five degrees of affinity on the female side and seven on the male. That is, persons having a common grandparent on the female side cannot intermarry, while for those related through males the prohibition extends a generation further back. This is believed to be the meaning of the rule but it is not quite clear. In Damoh the Srivāstab Kāyasths still retain exogamous sections which are all named after places in the United Provinces, as Hamīrpur ki baink (section), Lucknowbar, Kāshi ki Pānde (a wise man of Benāres), Partābpūria, Cawnpore-bar, Sultānpuria and so on. They say that the ancestors of these sections were families who came from the above places in northern India, and settled in Damoh; here they came to be known by the places from which they had immigrated, and so founded new exogamous sections. A man cannot marry in his own section, or that of his mother or grandmother. In the Central Provinces a man may marry two sisters, but in northern India this is prohibited.
9. Marriage customs
Marriage may be infant or adult, and, as in many places husbands are difficult to find, girls occasionally remain unmarried till nearly twenty, and may also be mated to boys younger than themselves. In northern India a substantial bridegroom-price is paid, which increases for a well-educated boy, but this custom is not so well established in the Central Provinces. However, in Damoh it is said that a sum of Rs. 200 is paid to the bridegroom’s family. The marriage ceremony is performed according to the proper ritual for the highest or Brahma form of marriage recognised by Manu with Vedic texts. When the bridegroom arrives at the bride’s house he is given sherbet to drink. It is said that he then stands on a pestle, and the bride’s mother throws wheat-flour balls to the four points of the compass, and shows the bridegroom a miniature plough, a grinding pestle, a churning-staff and an arrow, and pulls his nose. The bridegroom’s struggles to prevent his mother-in-law pulling his nose are the cause of much merriment, while the two parties afterwards have a fight for the footstool on which he stands.458 An image of a cow in flour is then brought, and the bridegroom pierces its nostrils with a little stick of gold. Kāyasths do not pierce the nostrils of bullocks themselves, but these rites perhaps recall their dependence on agriculture in their capacity of village accountants.
After the wedding the bridegroom’s father takes various kinds of fruit, as almonds, dates and raisins, and fills the bride’s lap with them four times, finally adding a cocoanut and a rupee. This is a ceremony to induce fertility, and the cocoanut perhaps represents a child.
10. Marriage songs
The following are some specimens of songs sung at weddings. The first is about Rāma’s departure from Ajodhia when he went to the forests:
Now Hari (Rāma) has driven his chariot forth to the jungle.
His father and mother are weeping.
Kaushilya459 stood up and said, ‘Now, whom shall I call my diamond and my ruby?’
Dasrath went to the tower of his palace to see his son;
As Rāma’s chariot set forth under the shade of the trees, he wished that he might die.
Bharat ran after his brother with naked feet.
He said, ‘Oh brother, you are going to the forest, to whom do you give the kingdom of Oudh?’
Rāma said, ‘When fourteen years have passed away I shall come back from the jungles. Till then I give the kingdom to you.’
The following is a love dialogue:
Make a beautiful garden for me to see my king.
In that garden what flowers shall I set?
Lemons, oranges, pomegranates, figs.
In that garden what music shall there be?
A tambourine, a fiddle, a guitar and a dancing girl.
In that garden what attendants shall there be?
A writer, a supervisor, a secretary for writing letters.460
The next is a love-song by a woman:
How has your countenance changed, my lord?
Why speak you not to your slave?
If I were a deer in the forest and you a famous warrior, would you not shoot me with your gun?
If I were a fish in the water and you the son of a fisherman, would you not catch me with your drag-net?
If I were a cuckoo in the garden and you the gardener’s son, would you not trap me with your liming-stick?
The last is a dialogue between Rādha and Krishna. Rādha with her maidens was bathing in the river when Krishna stole all their clothes and climbed up a tree with them. Girdhāri is a name of Krishna:
R. You and I cannot be friends, Girdhāri; I am wearing a silk-embroidered cloth and you a black blanket.
You are the son of old Nānd, the shepherd, and I am a princess of Mathura.
You have taken my clothes and climbed up a kadamb tree. I am naked in the river.
K. I will not give you your clothes till you come out of the water.
R. If I come out of the water the people will laugh and clap at me.
All my companions seeing your beauty say, ‘You have vanquished us; we are overcome.’
11. Social rules
Polygamy is permitted but is seldom resorted to, except for the sake of offspring. Neither widow-marriage nor divorce are recognised, and either a girl or married woman is expelled from the caste if detected in a liaison. A man may keep a woman of another caste if he does not eat from her hand nor permit her to eat in the chauk or purified place where he and his family take their meals. The practice of keeping women was formerly common but has now been largely suppressed. Women of all castes were kept except Brāhmans and Kāyasths. Illegitimate children were known as Dogle or Surāit and called Kāyasths, ranking as an inferior group of the caste. And it is not unlikely that in the past the descendants of such irregular unions have been admitted to the Dūsre or lower branch of the different subcastes.
12. Birth customs
During the seventh month of a woman’s pregnancy a dinner is given to the caste-fellows and songs are sung. After this occasion the woman must not go outside her own village, nor can she go to draw water from a well or to bathe in a tank. She can only go into the street or to another house in her own village.
On the sixth day after a birth a dinner is given to the caste and songs are sung. The women bring small silver coins or rupees and place them in the mother’s lap. The occasion of the first appearance of the signs of maturity in a girl is not observed at all if she is in her father’s house. But if she has gone to her father-in-law’s house, she is dressed in new clothes, her hair after being washed is tied up, and she is seated in the chauk or purified space, while the women come and sing songs.
13. Religion
The Kāyasths venerate the ordinary Hindu deities. They worship Chitragupta, their divine ancestor, at weddings and at the Holi and Diwāli festivals. Twice a year they venerate the pen and ink, the implements of their profession, to which they owe their great success. The patwāris in Hoshangābād formerly received small fees, known as diwāt pūja, from the cultivators for worshipping the ink-bottle on their behalf, presumably owing to the idea that, if neglected, it might make a malicious mistake in the record of their rights.
14. Social customs
The dead are burnt, and the proper offerings are made on the anniversaries, according to the prescribed Hindu ritual. Kāyasth names usually end in Prasād, Singh, Baksh, Sewak, and Lāla in the Central Provinces. Lāla, which is a term of endearment, is often employed as a synonym for the caste. Dāda or uncle is a respectful term of address for Kāyasths. Two names are usually given to a boy, one for ceremonial and the other for ordinary use.
The Kāyasths will take food cooked with water from Brāhmans, and that cooked without water (pakki) from Rājpūts and Banias. Some Hindustāni Brāhmans, as well as Khatris and certain classes of Banias, will take pakki food from Kāyasths. Kāyasths of different subcastes will sometimes also take it from each other. They will give the huqqa with the reed in to members of their own subcaste, and without the reed to any Kāyasth. The caste eat the flesh of goats, sheep, fish, and birds. They were formerly somewhat notorious for drinking freely, but a great reform has been effected in this respect by the community itself through the agency of their caste conference, and many are now total abstainers.
15. Occupation
The occupations of the Kāyasths have been treated in discussing the origin of the caste. They set the greatest store by their profession of writing and say that the son of a Kāyasth should be either literate or dead. The following is the definition of a Lekhak or writer, a term said to be used for the Kāyasths in Purānic literature:
“In all courts of justice he who is acquainted with the languages of all countries and conversant with all the Shāstras, who can arrange his letters in writing in even and parallel lines, who is possessed of presence of mind, who knows the art of how and what to speak in order to carry out an object in view, who is well versed in all the Shāstras, who can express much thought in short and pithy sentences, who is apt to understand the mind of one when one begins to speak, who knows the different divisions of countries and of time,461 who is not a slave to his passions, and who is faithful to the king deserves the name and rank of a Lekhak or writer.”462
Kewat
1. General notice
Kewat, Khewat, Kaibartta.463—A caste of fishermen, boatmen, grain-parchers, and cultivators, chiefly found in the Chhattīsgarh Districts of Drūg, Raipur, and Bilāspur. They numbered 170,000 persons in 1911. The Kewats or Kaibarttas, as they are called in Bengal, are the modern representatives of the Kaivartas, a caste mentioned in Hindu classical literature. Sir H. Risley explains the origin of the name as follows:464 “Concerning the origin of the name Kaibartta there has been considerable difference of opinion. Some derive it from ka, water, and vartta, livelihood; but Lassen says that the use of ka in this sense is extremely unusual in early Sanskrit, and that the true derivation is Kivarta, a corruption of Kimvarta, meaning a person following a low or degrading occupation. This, he adds, would be in keeping with the pedigree assigned to the caste in Manu, where the Kaivarta, also known as Mārgava or Dāsa, is said to have been begotten by a Nishāda father and an Ayogavi mother, and to subsist by his labour in boats. On the other hand, the Brāhma-Vaivarta Purāna gives the Kaibartta a Kshatriya father and a Vaishya mother, a far more distinguished parentage; for the Ayogavi having been born from a Sūdra father and a Vaishya mother is classed as pratiloma, begotten against the hair, or in the inverse order of the precedence of the castes.” The Kewats are a mixed caste. Mr. Crooke says that they merge on one side into the Mallāhs and on the other into the Binds. In the Central Provinces their two principal subdivisions are the Laria and Uriya, or the residents of the Chhattīsgarh and Sambalpur plains respectively. The Larias are further split up into the Larias proper, the Kosbonwas, who grow kosa or tasar silk cocoons, and the Binjhwārs and Dhuris (grain-parchers). The Binjhwārs are a Hinduised group of the Baiga tribe, and in Bhandāra they have become a separate Hindu caste, dropping the first letter of the name, and being known as Injhwār. The Binjhwār Kewats are a group of the same nature. The Dhuris are grain-parchers, and there is a separate Dhuri caste; but as grain-parching is also a traditional occupation of the Kewats, the Dhuris may be an offshoot from them. The Kewats are so closely connected with the Dhīmars that it is difficult to make any distinction; in Chhattīsgarh it is said that the Dhīmars will not act as ferrymen, while the Kewats will not grow or sell singāra or water-nut. The Dhīmars worship their fishing-nets on the Akti day, which the Kewats will not do. Both the Kewats and Dhīmars are almost certainly derived from the primitive tribes. The Kewats say that formerly the Hindus would not take water from them; but on one occasion during his exile Rāma came to them and asked them to ferry him across a river; before doing so they washed his feet and drank the water, and since that time the Hindus have considered them pure and take water from their hands. This story has no doubt been invented to explain the fact that Brāhmans will take water from the non-Aryan Kewats, the custom having in reality been adopted as a convenience on account of their employment as palanquin-bearers and indoor servants. But in Saugor, where they are not employed as servants, and also grow san-hemp, their position is distinctly lower and no high caste will take water from them.
2. Exogamous divisions and marriage
The caste have also a number of exogamous groups, generally named after plants or animals, or bearing some nickname given to the reputed founder. Instances of the first class are Tūma, a gourd, Karsāyal, a deer, Bhalwa, a bear, Ghughu, an owl, and so on. Members of such a sept abstain from injuring the animal after which the sept is named or eating its flesh; those of the Tūma sept worship a gourd with offerings of milk and a cocoanut at the Holi festival. Instances of titular names are Garhtod, one who destroyed a fort, Jhagarha quarrelsome, Dehri priest, Kāla black, and so on. One sept is named Rāwat, its founder having probably belonged to the grazier caste. Members of this sept must not visit the temple of Mahādeo at Rājim during the annual fair, but give no explanation of the prohibition. Others are the Ahira, also from the Ahīr (herdsman) caste; the Rautele, which is the name of a subdivision of Kols and other tribes; and the Sonwāni or ‘gold water’ sept, which is often found among the primitive tribes. In some localities these three have now developed into separate subcastes, marrying among themselves; and if any of their members become Kabīrpanthis, the others refuse to eat and intermarry with them. The marriage of members of the same sept is prohibited, and also the union of first cousins. Girls are generally married under ten years of age, but if a suitable husband cannot be found for a daughter, the parents will make her over to any member of the caste who offers himself on condition that he bears the expenses of the marriage. In Sambalpur she is married to a flower. Sir H. Risley notes465 the curious fact that in Bihār it is deemed less material that the bridegroom should be older than the bride than that he should be taller. “This point is of the first importance, and is ascertained by actual measurement. If the boy shorter than the girl, or if his height is exactly the same as hers, it is believed that the union of the two would bring ill-luck, and the match is at once broken off.” The marriage is celebrated in the customary manner by walking round the sacred pole, after which the bridegroom marks the forehead of the bride seven times with vermilion, parts her hair with a comb, and then draws her cloth over her head. The last act signifies that the bride has become a married woman, as a girl never covers her head. In Bengal466 a drop of blood is drawn from the fingers of the bride and bridegroom and mixed with rice, and each eats the rice containing the blood of the other. The anointing with vermilion is probably a substitute for this. Widow-remarriage and divorce are permitted. In Sambalpur a girl who is left a widow under ten years of age is remarried with full rites as a virgin.