1. General notice and legend of origin.
Kāyasth,[1] Kaith, Lāla.—The caste of writers and village accountants. The Kāyasths numbered 34,000 persons in 1911 and were found over the whole Province, but they are most numerous in the Saugor, Damoh, Jubbulpore and Narsinghpur Districts. In the Marātha country their place is to some extent taken by the Prabhus, the Marātha writer caste, and also by the Vidūrs. No probable derivation of the name Kāyasth appears to have been suggested. The earliest reference to Kāyasths appears in an inscription in Mālwa dated A.D. 738–739. The inscription is of a Maurya king, and the term Kāyasth is used there as a proper noun to mean a writer. Another dated A.D. 987 is written by a Kāyasth named Kānchana. An inscription on the Delhi Siwālik pillar dated A.D. 1164 is stated to have been written by a Kāyasth named Sispati, the son of Māhava, by the king’s command. The inscription adds that the Kāyasth was of Gauda (Bengal) descent, and the term Kāyasth is here used in the sense of a member of the Kāyasth caste and not simply meaning a writer as in the Mālwa inscription.[2] From the above account it seems possible that the caste was of comparatively late origin. According to their own legend the first progenitor of the Kāyasths was Chitragupta, who was created by Brahma from his own body and given to Yama the king of the dead, to record the good and evil actions of all beings, and produce the result when they arrived in the kingdom of the dead. Chitragupta was called Kāyastha, from kaya stha, existing in or incorporate in the body, because he was in the body of Brahma. Chitragupta was born of a dark complexion, and having a pen and ink-pot in his hand. He married two wives, the elder being the granddaughter of the sun, who bore him four sons, while the younger was the daughter of a Brāhman Rishi, and by her he had eight sons. These sons were married to princesses of the Nāga or snake race; the Nāgas are supposed to have been the early nomad invaders from Central Asia, or Scythians. The twelve sons were entrusted with the government of different parts of India and the twelve subcastes of Kāyasths are named after these localities.