1. Origin and Subdivisions.
Dhuri.[1]—A caste belonging exclusively to Chhattīsgarh, which numbered 3000 persons in 1911. Dhuri is an honorific abbreviation from Dhuriya as Bāni from Bania. The special occupation of the caste is rice-parching, and they are an offshoot from Kahārs, though in Chhattīsgarh the Dhuris now consider the Kahārs as a subcaste of their own. In Bengal the Dhuriyas are a subcaste of the Kāndus or Bharbhūnjas. Sir H. Risley states that “the Dhurias rank lowest of all the subcastes of Kāndus, owing either to their having taken up the comparatively menial profession of palanquin-bearing, or to their being a branch of the Kahār caste who went in for grain-parching and thus came to be associated with the Kāndus.”[2] The caste have immigrated to Chhattīsgarh from the United Provinces. In Kawardha they believe that the Rāja of that State brought them back with him on his return from a pilgrimage. In Bilāspur and Raipur they say they came from Badhār, a pargana in the Mīrzāpur District, adjoining Rewah. Badhār is mentioned in one of the Rājim inscriptions, and is a place remembered by other castes of Chhattīsgarh as their ancestral home. The Dhuris of Chhattīsgarh relate their origin as follows: Mahādeo went once to the jungle and the damp earth stuck to his feet. He scraped it off and made it into a man, and asked him what caste he would like to belong to. The man said he would leave it to Mahādeo, who decided that he should be called Dhuri from dhūr, dust. The man then asked Mahādeo to assign him an occupation, and Mahādeo said that as he was made from dust, which is pounded earth, his work should be to prepare cheora or pounded rice, and added as a special distinction that all castes including Brāhmans should eat the pounded rice prepared by him. All castes do eat cheora because it is not boiled with water. The Dhuris have two subcastes, a higher and a lower, but they are known by different names in different tracts. In Kawardha they are called Rāj Dhuri and Cheorākūta, the Rāj Dhuris being the descendants of personal servants in the Rāja’s family and ranking above the Cheorākūtas or rice-pounders. In Bilāspur they are called Badhāria and Khawās, and in Raipur Badhāria and Desha. The Khawās and Desha subcastes do menial household service and rank below the Badhārias, who are perhaps later immigrants and refuse to engage in this occupation. The names of their exogamous sections are nearly all territorial, as Naugahia from Naogaon in Bilāspur District, Agoria from Agori, a pargana in Mīrzāpur District, Kāshi or Benāres, and a number of other names derived from villages in Bilāspur. But the caste do not strictly enforce the rule forbidding marriage within the gotra or section, and are content with avoiding three generations both on the father’s and mother’s side. They have probably been driven to modify the rule on account of the paucity of their numbers and the difficulty of arranging marriages. For the same reason perhaps they look with indulgence on the practice, as a rule strictly prohibited, of marriage with a woman of another caste of lower social rank, and will admit the children of such a marriage into the caste, though not the woman herself.