22. Their virtues.
The Banjāras, however, are far from being wholly criminal, and the number who have adopted an honest mode of livelihood is continually on the increase. Some allowance must be made for their having been deprived of their former calling by the cessation of the continual wars which distracted India under native rule, and the extension of roads and railways which has rendered their mode of transport by pack-bullocks almost entirely obsolete. At one time practically all the grain exported from Chhattīsgarh was carried by them. In 1881 Mr. Kitts noted that the number of Banjāras convicted in the Berār criminal courts was lower in proportion to the strength of the caste than that of Muhammadans, Brāhmans, Koshtis or Sunars,[61] though the offences committed by them were usually more heinous. Colonel Mackenzie had quite a favourable opinion of them: “A Banjāra who can read and write is unknown. But their memories, from cultivation, are marvellous and very retentive. They carry in their heads, without slip or mistake, the most varied and complicated transactions and the share of each in such, striking a debtor and creditor account as accurately as the best-kept ledger, while their history and songs are all learnt by heart and transmitted orally from generation to generation. On the whole, and taken rightly in their clannish nature, their virtues preponderate over their vices. In the main they are truthful and very brave, be it in war or the chase, and once gained over are faithful and devoted adherents. With the pride of high descent and with the right that might gives in unsettled and troublous times, these Banjāras habitually lord it over and contemn the settled inhabitants of the plains. And now not having foreseen their own fate, or at least not timely having read the warnings given by a yearly diminishing occupation, which slowly has taken their bread away, it is a bitter pill for them to sink into the ryot class or, oftener still, under stern necessity to become the ryot’s servant. But they are settling to their fate, and the time must come when all their peculiar distinctive marks and traditions will be forgotten.”
[1] This article is based principally on a Monograph on the Banjāra Clan, by Mr. N. F. Cumberlege of the Berār Police, believed to have been first written in 1869 and reprinted in 1882; notes on the Banjāras written by Colonel Mackenzie and printed in the Berār Census Report (1881) and the Pioneer newspaper (communicated by Mrs. Horsburgh); Major Gunthorpe’s Criminal Tribes; papers by Mr. M. E. Khare, Extra-Assistant Commissioner, Chānda; Mr. Nārāyan Rao, Tahr., Betūl; Mr. Mukund Rao, Manager, Pachmarhi Estate; and information on the caste collected in Yeotmāl and Nimār.
[2] Mr. Crooke’s Tribes and Castes, art. Banjāra, para. 1.
[3] Berār Census Report (1881), p. 150.
[4] Ibidem, para. 2, quoting Dowson’s Elliot, v. 100.
[5] Khan Bahadur Fazalullah Lutfullah Farīdi in the Bombay Gazetteer (Muhammadans of Gujarat, p. 86) quoting from General Briggs (Transactions Bombay Literary Society, vol. i. 183) says that “as carriers of grain for Muhammadan armies the Banjāras have figured in history from the days of Muhammad Tughlak (A.D. 1340) to those of Aurāngzeb.”
[6] Sir H. M. Elliot’s Supplemental Glossary.
[7] Monograph on the Banjāra Clan, p. 8.
[8] Hindus of Gujarāt, p. 214 et seq.
[9] Rājasthān, i. 602.
[10] Ibidem, ii. 570, 573.
[11] This custom does not necessarily indicate a special connection between the Banjāras and Chārans, as it is common to several castes in Rājputāna; but it indicates that the Banjāras came from Rājputāna. Banjāra men also frequently wear the hair long, down to the neck, which is another custom of Rājputāna.
[12] Jungle Life in India, p. 517.
[13] Berār Census Report (1881), p. 152.
[14] Bombay Gazetteer, Hindus of Gujarāt.
[15] Letter on the Marāthas (1798), p. 67, India Office Tracts.
[16] Army of the Indian Mughals, p. 192.
[17] Monograph, p. 14, and Berār Census Report (1881) (Kitts), p. 151.
[18] These are held to have been descendants of the Bhīka Rāthor referred to by Colonel Mackenzie above.
[19] See note 3, p. 168.
[20] General Briggs quoted by Mr. Farīdi in Bombay Gazetteer, Muhammadans of Gujarāt, p. 86.
[21] A. Wellesley (1800), quoted in Mr. Crooke’s edition of Hobson-Jobson, art. Brinjarry.
[22] Cumberlege, loc. cit.
[23] Cumberlege, pp. 28, 29.
[24] Elliot’s Races, quoted by Mr. Crooke, ibidem.
[25] Cumberlege, pp. 4, 5.
[26] Cumberlege, l.c.
[27] This custom is noticed in the article on Khairwār.
[28] Cumberlege, p. 18.
[29] Mr. Hīra Lāl suggests that this custom may have something to do with the phrase Athāra jāt ke gāyi, or ‘She has gone to the eighteen castes,’ used of a woman who has been turned out of the community. This phrase seems, however, to be a euphemism, eighteen castes being a term of indefinite multitude for any or no caste. The number eighteen may be selected from the same unknown association which causes the goat to be cut into eighteen pieces.
[30] Ethnographic Notes in Southern India, p. 344, quoting from Moor’s Narrative of Little’s Detachment.
[31] Cumberlege, p. 35.
[32] Berār Census Report, 1881.
[33] Cumberlege, p. 21.
[34] The following instance is taken from Mr. Balfour’s article, ‘Migratory Tribes of Central India,’ in J. A. S. B., new series, vol. xiii., quoted in Mr. Crooke’s Tribes and Castes.
[35] From the Sanskrit Hātya-ādhya, meaning ‘That which it is most sinful to slay’ (Balfour).
[36] Monograph, p. 12.
[37] Asiatic Studies, i. p. 118 (ed. 1899).
[38] Cumberlege, p. 23 et seq. The description of witchcraft is wholly reproduced from his Monograph.
[39] His motive being the fine inflicted on the witch’s family.
[40] The fruit of Buchanania latifolia.
[41] Ethnographic Notes in Southern India, p. 507, quoting from the Rev. J. Cain, Ind. Ant. viii. (1879).
[42] Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, p. 70.
[43] Monograph, p. 19.
[44] The Patwas are weavers of silk thread and the Nunias are masons and navvies.
[45] An impure caste of weavers, ranking with the Mahārs.
[46] Semecarpus Anacardium.
[47] Malcolm, Memoir of Central India, ii. p. 296.
[48] Cumberlege, p. 16.
[49] Small double shells which are still used to a slight extent as a currency in backward tracts. This would seem an impossibly cumbrous method of carrying money about nowadays, but I have been informed by a comparatively young official that in his father’s time, change for a rupee could not be had in Chhattīsgarh outside the two principal towns. As the cowries were a form of currency they were probably held sacred, and hence sewn on to clothes as a charm, just as gold and silver are used for ornaments.
[50] Jungle Life in India, p. 516.
[51] Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable contains the following notice of horns as an article of dress: “Mr. Buckingham says of a Tyrian lady, ‘She wore on her head a hollow silver horn rearing itself up obliquely from the forehead. It was some four inches in diameter at the root and pointed at the extremity. This peculiarity reminded me forcibly of the expression of the Psalmist: “Lift not up your horn on high; speak not with a stiff neck. All the horns of the wicked also will I cut off, but the horns of the righteous shall be exalted” (Ps. lxxv. 5, 10).’ Bruce found in Abyssinia the silver horns of warriors and distinguished men. In the reign of Henry V. the horned headgear was introduced into England and from the effigy of Beatrice, Countess of Arundel, at Arundel Church, who is represented with the horns outspread to a great extent, we may infer that the length of the head-horn, like the length of the shoe-point in the reign of Henry VI., etc., marked the degree of rank. To cut off such horns would be to degrade; and to exalt and extend such horns would be to add honour and dignity to the wearer.” Webb (Heritage of Dress, p. 117) writes: “Mr. Elworthy in a paper to the British Association at Ipswich in 1865 considered the crown to be a development from horns of honour. He maintained that the symbols found in the head of the god Serapis were the elements from which were formed the composite head-dress called the crown into which horns entered to a very great extent.” This seems a doubtful speculation, but still it may be quite possible that the idea of distinguishing by a crown the leader of the tribe was originally taken from the antlers of the leader of the herd. The helmets of the Vikings were also, I believe, decorated with horns.
[52] Monograph, p. 40.
[53] Melia indica.
[54] Author of the Nimār Settlement Report.
[55] Sesamum.
[56] Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, p. 21.
[57] Report on the Badhak or Bāgri Dacoits, p. 310.
[58] Colonel Mackenzie’s notes.
[59] Mr. W. F. Sinclair, C.S., in Ind. Ant. iii. p. 184 (1874).
[60] Notes on Criminal Tribes frequenting Bombay, Berār and the Central Provinces (Bombay, 1882).
[61] Berār Census Report (1881), p. 151.