1. Origin and traditions.
Kirār[1] or Kirād.—A cultivating caste found in the Narsinghpur, Hoshangābād, Betūl, Seoni, Chhindwāra and Nāgpur Districts. They numbered 48,000 persons in 1911. The Kirārs claim to be Dhākar or bastard Rājpūts, and in 1891 more than half of them returned themselves under this designation. About a thousand persons who were returned as Dhākar Rājpūts from Hoshangābād in 1901 are probably Kirārs. The caste say that they immigrated from Gwālior, and this statement seems to be correct, as about 66,000 of them are found in that State. They claim to have left Gwālior as early as Samvat 1525 or A.D. 1468, when Alru and Dalru, the leaders of the migration into the Central Provinces, abandoned their native village, Doderi Kheda in Gwālior, and settled in Chāndon, a village in the Sohāgpur tahsīl of Hoshangābād. But according to the story related to Mr. (Sir Charles) Elliott, the migration took place in A.D. 1650 or at the beginning of Aurāngzeb’s reign.[2] He quotes the names of the leaders as Alrāwat and Dalrāwat, and says that the migration took place from the Dholpur country, but this is probably a mistake, as none of the caste are now found in Dholpur. Elliott stated that he could find no traces of any cultivating caste having settled in Hoshangābād as far back as Akbar’s time, though Sir W. Sleeman was of opinion that the first great migration into the Nerbudda valley took place in that reign. The truth is probably that the valley began to be regularly colonised by Hindus during the years that Aurāngzeb spent at Burhānpur and in the Deccan, and the immigration of the Kirārs may most reasonably be attributed to this period. The Kirārs, Gūjars, and Rāghuvansis apparently entered the Central Provinces together, and the fact that they still smoke from the same huqqa and take water from each other’s drinking vessels may be a reminiscence of this bond of fellowship. All these castes claim, and probably with truth, to be degraded Rājpūts. The Kirārs’ version is that they took to widow-marriage and were consequently degraded. According to another story they were driven from their native place by a Muhammadan invasion. Mr. J. D. Cunningham says that the word Kirār in Central India literally means dalesmen or foresters, but during the lapse of centuries has become the name of a caste.[3] Another derivation is from Kirār, a corn-chandler, an occupation which they may originally have followed in combination with agriculture. In the Punjab the name Kirār appears to be given to all the western or Punjabi traders as distinct from a Bania of Hindustān, and is so used even in the Kāngra hills, but the Arora, who is the trader par excellence of the south-west of the Punjab, is the person to whom the term is most commonly applied.[4] As a curiosity of folk-etymology it may be stated that some derive the caste-name from the fact that a holy sage’s wife, who was about to be delivered of a child, was being pursued by a Rākshas or demon, and fell over the steep bank (karār) of a river and was thereupon delivered. The child was consequently called Karār and became the ancestor of the Kirār caste. The name may in fact be derived from the habit which the Kirārs have in some localities of cultivating on the banks of rivers, like the Kīrs, who are probably a branch of the same caste.