1. Origin and traditions.
Chasa,[1] Tasa (also called Alia in the Sonpur and Patna States).—The chief cultivating caste of Orissa. In 1901 more than 21,000 Chasas were enumerated in Sambalpur and the adjoining Feudatory States, but nearly all these passed in 1905 to Bengal. The Chasas are said[2] by Sir H. Risley to be for the most part of non-Aryan descent, the loose organisation of the caste system among the Uriyas making it possible on the one hand for outsiders to be admitted into the caste, and on the other for wealthy Chasas who gave up ploughing with their own hands and assumed the respectable title of Mahanti to raise themselves to membership among the lower classes of Kāyasths. This passage indicates that the term Mahanti is or was a broader one than Karan or Uriya Kāyasth, and was applied to educated persons of other castes who apparently aspired to admission among the Karans, in the same manner as leading members of the warlike and landholding castes lay claim to rank as Rājpūts. For this reason probably the Uriya Kāyasths prefer the name of Karan to that of Mahanti, and the Uriya saying, ‘He who has no caste is called a Mahanti,’ supports this view. The word Chasa has the generic meaning of ‘a cultivator,’ and the Chasas may in Sambalpur be merely an occupational group recruited from other castes. This theory is supported by the names of their subdivisions, three of which, Kolta, Khandait and Ud or Orh are the names of distinct castes, while the fourth, Benatia, is found as a subdivision of several other castes.