1. General notice of the caste, and its social position
Māli, Marār, Marāl.[1]—The functional caste of vegetable and flower-gardeners. The terms Māli and Marār appear to be used indifferently for the same caste, the former being more common in the west of the Province and the latter in the eastern Satpūra Districts and the Chhattīsgarh plain. In the Nerbudda valley and on the Vindhyan plateau the place of both Māli and Marār is taken by the Kāchhi of Upper India.[2] Marār appears to be a Marāthi name, the original term, as pointed out by Mr. Hira Lāl, being Malāl, or one who grows garden-crops in a field; but the caste is often called Māli in the Marātha country and Marār in the Hindi Districts. The word Māli is derived from the Sanskrit māla, a garland. In 1911 the Mālis numbered nearly 360,000 persons in the present area of the Central Provinces, and 200,000 in Berār. A German writer remarks of the caste[3] that: “It cannot be considered to be a very ancient one. Generally speaking, it may be said that flowers have scarcely a place in the Veda. Wreaths of flowers, of course, are used as decorations, but the separate flowers and their beauty are not yet appreciated. That lesson was first learned later by the Hindus when surrounded by another flora. Amongst the Homeric Greeks, too, in spite of their extensive gardening and different flowers, not a trace of horticulture is yet to be found.” It seems probable that the first Mālis were not included among the regular cultivators of the village but were a lower group permitted to take up the small waste plots of land adjoining the inhabited area and fertilised by its drainage, and the sandy stretches in the beds of rivers, on which they were able to raise the flowers required for offerings and such vegetables as were known. They still hold a lower rank than the ordinary cultivator. Sir D. Ibbetson writes[4] of the gardening castes: “The group now to be discussed very generally hold an inferior position among the agricultural community and seldom if ever occupy the position of the dominant tribe in any considerable tract of country. The cultivation of vegetables is looked upon as degrading by the agricultural classes, why I know not, unless it be that night-soil is generally used for their fertilisation; and a Rājpūt would say: ‘What! Do you take me for an Arāin?’ if anything was proposed which he considered derogatory.” But since most Mālis in the Central Provinces strenuously object to using night-soil as a manure the explanation that this practice has caused them to rank below the agricultural castes does not seem sufficient. And if the use of night-soil were the real circumstance which determined their social position, it seems certain that Brāhmans would not take water from their hands as they do. Elsewhere Sir D. Ibbetson remarks:[5] “The Mālis and Sainis, like all vegetable growers, occupy a very inferior position among the agricultural castes; but of the two the Sainis are probably the higher, as they more often own land or even whole villages, and are less generally mere market-gardeners than are the Mālis.” Here is given what may perhaps be the true reason for the status of the Māli caste as a whole. Again Sir C. Elliot wrote in the Hoshangābād Settlement Report: “Garden crops are considered as a kind of fancy agriculture and the true cultivator, the Kisān, looks on them with contempt as little peddling matters; what stirs his ambition is a fine large wheat-field eighty or a hundred acres in extent, as flat as a billiard-table and as black as a Gond.” Similarly Mr. Low[6] states that in Bālāghāt the Panwārs, the principal agricultural caste, look down on the Marārs as growers of petty crops like sama and kutki. In Wardha the Dāngris, a small caste of melon and vegetable growers, are an offshoot of the Kunbis; and they will take food from the Kunbis, though these will not accept it from them, their social status being thus distinctly lower than that of the parent caste. Again the Kohlis of Bhandāra, who grow sugarcane with irrigation, are probably derived from an aboriginal tribe, the Kols, and, though they possess a number of villages, rank lower than the regular cultivating castes. It is also worth noting that they do not admit tenant-right in their villages among their own caste, and allot the sugarcane plots among the cultivators at pleasure.[7] In Nimār the Mālis rank below the Kunbis and Gūjars, the good agricultural castes, and it is said that they grow the crops which the cultivators proper do not care to grow. The Kāchhis, the gardening caste of the northern Districts, have a very low status, markedly inferior to that of the Lodhis and Kurmis and little if any better than the menial Dhīmars. Similarly, as will be seen later, the Marārs themselves have customs pointing clearly to a non-Aryan origin. The Bhoyars of Betūl, who grow sugarcane, are probably of mixed origin from Rājpūt fathers and mothers of the indigenous tribes; they eat fowls and are much addicted to liquor and rank below the cultivating castes. The explanation seems to be that the gardening castes are not considered as landholders, and have not therefore the position which attaches to the holding of land among all early agricultural peoples, and which in India consisted in the status of a constituent member of the village community. So far as ceremonial purity goes there is no difference between the Mālis and the cultivating castes, as Brāhmans will take water from both. It may be surmised that this privilege has been given to the Mālis because they grow the flowers required for offerings to the gods, and sometimes officiate as village priests and temple servants; and their occupation, though not on a level with regular agriculture, is still respectable. But the fact that Brāhmans will take water from them does not place the Mālis on an equality with the cultivating castes, any more than it does the Nais (barbers) and Dhīmars (watermen), the condemned menial servants of the cultivators, from whom Brāhmans will also take water from motives of convenience.