Tribes and Castes
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DbananJayarao Gadgll Library 111n~ In~ 1I111.mlll~~ ~III ~llllB GIPE-PUNE-008069 ;~. ~~~ .9 I MACMILLAN AND ..CO., Ln.t'tnD LONDON· BOMBAY. CALCUnA MADRAS' MELBOURNE THE MACMILLA~ COMPANY NEW YOR~ • BOSt't>N • CHICAGO DAL~A~ • SAl FRANCISCO TIlE MACMILLAri.oCO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO -1 .- l 'I, i I; ,I \ ~ . f ) i ! I I I T~~j' 'J'~.:-.;'$ .. ~, v.~): ~~ .U'.1~J.~:~ St'.alt- 1· tonol){1I) ".' ti~H ~:''';'''; ~'J ,.m !nell £'''pl'.I'h If/h.f {~- .. -"---/h' _.. 40 .-~ 6r1- ,- .~- --&-,- -----. .. -i;jv DIVISlONS or,- CENTR,AL PROVIXn;:;: Jubbulp',re llivi,ioll . Nammr Division N'erbud<l:t Division Chbat,\'isgarh 'j)lV!~· j I i i I ' • '" I .,~~~~:·,~i~:=-~-~;'-·;' ~~;iJl ~~t';~', _._- _ .. ./ 60 ./ A B I A N l ,Y o F \-- B N"i~Il/:~~~~-"..a!'4d-.....,...:) i B E .N, G A L .i 'I i SEA L""I· I 'I""'<"~i'r I \ lJr--i----------!-- -- _L_ I ~ , I Lru~~ ! I, ~ by the Government 0 n la lli 8 - CJ Native States and Territories ~ _____~ -, -~ Rmtway$ tlWfJ - -- - 7~ l I ..., 68 __~ ___72 -= ......_~ ........ ~~ ............ ~~~ T'h.. Eaw:burgh. G..og.l.'fr1:'bicaI Whtut.e THE TRIBES AND CASTES OF THE CENTRAL PROVINCES OF INDIA BY R. V. RUSSELL OF THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE SUPERINTENDENT OF ETHNOGRAPHY. CENTRAL PROVINCE'> ASSISTED BY RAJ BAHADUR HIRA LAL EXTRA ASSISTANT COMMISSlONER PUBLISHED UNDER THE ORDERS OF THE CENTRAL PRO VINCES ADlIfINISTRATION IN FOUR VOLUMES VOL. I MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 19r6 COPYRIGHT ¥.13Y '00&5 PREFACE THIS book is the result of the arrangement made by the Government o( India,... on the suggestion of the late Sir Herbert Risley, for the preparation of an ethnological account dealing with the inhabitants of each of the principal Provinces of India. The work for the Central Provinces was entrusted to the author, and its preparation, undertaken l:n addition to ordinary official duties, has been spread over 0.' number of years. The prescribed plan was that a separate .. \ccount should be written of each of the principal tribes and colStes, according to the method adopted in Sir Herbert Ri.sley·s Tribes and Castes of Bengal This was considered tc? be desirable as the book is intended primarily as a ~ork (",f reference for the officers of Government, who may desire t.O know something of the customs of the people among w hom their work lies. It has the disadvantage of involving a large amount of repetition of the same or very similar st;atements about different castes, and the result is likely th.erefore to be somewhat distasteful to the ordinary reader. 0,'1 the other' hand, there is no doubt that this ~ethod of tre.'ltment, if conscientiously followed out, will produce more e>,-haustive results than a general account. Similar works for some other Provinces have already appeared. as Mr. \V. CnJoke's Castes and Tnou of tl" Nortn-1Ves/ertl Provinces mill OudN. Mr. Edgar Thurston's Castes and Tribes.of v vi PREFACE Southern ltzdia, and Mr. Ananta Kris:ma Iyer's volumes Cu Cochin, while- a Glossary for the Punjab by Mr. H. A. Rose has been partly published. The articles on Religions and Sects were not in the original scheme of the 'work, but have been subsequently added as being necessary to render it complete- ethnological account of the population. In sever instances the adherents of the religion or sect are found or in very small numbers in the Province, and the articles ha been compiled from standard works. In the preparation of the book much use has necessariJ .y been made of the standard ethnological accounts of otL ~r parts of India, especially Colonel-Tod's Annals and A ,,_ tiquities of Riijasthiin, Mr. J. D. Forbes' Rasmiila or Anne lis of Gujariit, Colonel Dalton's Ethnology of Bengal, I )r, Buchanan's Eastern India, Sir Denzil Ibbetson's Pun.; ;ao Census Report for 188 I, Sir John Malcolm's ltfemoir 'f)f Central India, Sir Edward Gait's Bengal and India Cm .r14S Reports and article on Caste in Dr. Hastings' Encyclopr ·Jia of Religion and Ethics, Colonel (Sir William) Slet. •.. a~'!i Report on tke Badhaks and Riimiiseeiina or Vocabulary of' tlu Thugs, Mr. Kennedy's Criminal Classes of the Bombay Plrisi.. dency, Major Gunthorpe's Cn'minal Tn'bes of Bombay, B erii,. , \ and tke Central Provinces, the books of Mr. Crooke and Sir H. Risley already mentioned, and the mass of va1ulable ethnological material contained in the Bombay GaZ(!ltter (Sir J. Campbell), especially the admirable volume~. on Hindus of Gujanlt by Mr. Bhlmbhai Kirpariim, and j'tlrsti and Muhammadans of Gujariit by Khan Babadur Faz'lullah Lutfullah Faridi, and Mr. Kharsed~i Nasarvanji Seervai. l.'., and Khan Bahadur Bamanji Behramji Patel. Other Indian ethnological works from which I have made, quotatiOIJS are Dr. Wilson's Indian Caste (Times Press and Messrs. :black- PREFACE vii wood), Bishop weStcott's Kabir and the Kabirpanth (Baptist Mission Press, Cawnpore), Mr. Rajendra La} Mitra's Indo Aryans (Newman & Co., Calcutta), The Jaillas by Dr. J. G. Huhler and Mr. J. Burgess, Dr. J. N. Bhattacharya's Hindu Castes and Sects (Thacker, Spink & Co., Calcutta), Professor Oma.i's MJ!stics, Ascetics and Saints of India, Cults, Customs and Superstitions of India, and Brahmans,. Theists and .ifuslims of India (T. Fisher Unwin), Mr. V. A. Smith's Early HistoY)1- of India (Clarendon Press), the Rev. T. P. Hughes' Dictionary of Islam (W. H. Allen & Co., and Heffer & Sons, Cambridge), Mr. L. D. Barnett's Antlquities of India, M. Andre Chevrillon's Romantic India, Mr. V. Ball's Jungle Life in India, Mr. W. Crooke's Popular Religzon a1ld Folklore of Northern India, and Thz'ngs Indian, Captain For~th's Highlands of Central India (Messrs. Chapman & Hall). Messrs. Yule and Burnell's Hobson-Jobson (Mr. Crooke's edition), Professor Hopkins' Religions of India, the Rev. >Zt. M; Gordon's Indian Folk-Tales (Elliot & Stock), Messrs. ';:,ewell and Dikshit's Indian Calendar, Mr. Brennand's Hindu Astronomy, and th~ late Rev. Father P. Dehon's mono graph on the Oraons in the Memoirs of.the Asiatic Society of BInga!. Ethnological works on the people of the Central Provinces are not numerous; among those from which assistance has been obtained are Sir C. Grant's Central Provinces Gazetteer of 187 I, Rev. Stephen Hislop's Notes on the Aboriginal Tribes of the Central Provinces, Colonel Bloomfiel(i's Notes un Ilu Baigas, Sir Charles Elliott's Hoshangabad Settlement Report, Sir Reginald Craddock's Nagpur Settlement Report, Colonel Ward's Mandla Settlement Report, Colonel Lucie Smith's Chanda Settlement Report, Mr. G. W. Gayer's Lectnres• on Criminal Tribes, Mr. C. W. Montgomerie's PREFACE Chhindwiira Settlement Report, Mr. C. E. Low's Biiliigluit District Gazetteer, Mr. E. J. Kitts' Beriir Census Report of 1881, and the Central Provinces Census Reports of Mr. T. Drysdale, Sir Benjamin Robertson and.Mr. J. T. Marten. The author is indebted to Sir J. G. Frazer for his kind permission to make quotations from The Goldm Bough and Totemism 'and Exogamy (Macmillan), in which the best examples of almost all branches of primitive custom are to be found; to Dr. Edward Westermarck for similar permis sion in respect of The History of Human Marn'age, and The Origin a1zd Development of the Moral Ideas (Macmillan); to Messrs. A. & C. Black in respect of the late Professor Robertson Smith's Religion of the Semites; to Messrs. Heinemann for those from M. Salomon Reinach's OrpMus; and to Messrs. Hachette et Cie and 'Messrs. Parker of Oxf~rd for those from La Cite Antiqu~ of. M. Fustel de Coulanges. Much assistance has also been obtained from Sir E. B. Tylor's Early History of Mankind !nd Prt'mttlve Culture, Lord A vebury's The Origin of Civilisation, Mr. E. Sidney Hartland's Primitive Paternity, and M. Salomon Reinach's Cultes, Mythes et Religions. The labours of these eminent authors have made it possible for the student to obtain a pm.ctical knowledge of the ethnology of the world by the perusal of a small number of books; and if any of the ideas put forward in these volumes should ultimately be so fortunate as to obtain acceptance, it is to the above books that I am principally indebted for having been able to • formulate them. Other works from which help has been obtained are M. Emile Senart's Les Castes dans l'Inde, Professor W. E. Hearn's The Aryan Household, and Dr. Pl.. H. Keane's The World's Peoples. Sir George Grierson's great work, The Linguistic Survey of India, has now given PREFACE ix l'l accurate classification of the non-Aryan tribes according t() their languages and has further thrown a considerable J'-,~l('e of light on the vexed question of their origin. I h,. \I' received f:-om Mr. W. Crooke of the Indian Civil ~'t n ice (retired) much kind help and advice during the final "L',;C~ of the preparation of this work. As will be seen from the articles, resOlt has constantly been made to his Tribes "1'/ (astes for filling up gaps in the local information. r~ ai Bahadur Hira Lal was my assistant for several :> '"'U" in the takbg of the census of 190 I and the prepara ti,'ll d the Central Provinces District Gazetteers; he has ~h\ a)" given the most loyal and unselfish aid. has personally col kded a large part of the original information contained 111 t'1e book, and spent l!1uch time in collating the results.