4. The Deswālis of the Central Provinces
As already stated, the Deswālis of the Central Provinces have abandoned the wild life of their ancestors and settled down as respectable cultivators. Only a few particulars about them need be recorded. Girls are usually married before they are twelve years old and boys at sixteen to twenty. A sum of Rs. 24 is commonly paid for the bride, and a higher amount up to Rs. 71 may be given, but this is the maximum, and if the father of the girl takes more he will be fined by the caste and made to refund the balance. A triangle with some wooden models of birds is placed on the marriage-shed and the bridegroom strikes at these with a stick; formerly he fired a gun at them to indicate that he was a hunter by profession. A Brāhman is employed to celebrate the marriage. A widow is usually taken by her late husband’s younger brother, but if there be none the elder brother may marry her, contrary to the general rule among Hindus. The object is to keep the woman in the family, as wives are costly. If she is unwilling to marry her brother-in-law, however, no compulsion is exercised and she may wed another man. Divorce is allowed, and in Rājputāna is very simply effected. If tempers do not assimilate or other causes prompt them to part, the husband tears a shred from his turban which he gives to his wife, and with this simple bill of divorce, placing two jars of water on her head, she takes whatever path she pleases, and the first man who chooses to ease her of her load becomes her future lord. ‘Jehur nikāla,’ ‘Took the jar and went forth,’ is a common saying among the mountaineers of Merwara.[12]
The dead are cremated, the corpse of a man being wrapped in a white and that of a woman in a coloured cloth. They have no shrāddh ceremony, but mourn for the dead only on the last day of Kārtik (October), when they offer water and burn incense. Deswālis employ the Parsai or village Brāhman to officiate at their ceremonies, but owing to their mixed origin they rank below the cultivating castes, and Brāhmans will not take water from them. In Jaipur, however, Major Powlett says, their position is higher. They are, as already seen, the trusted guards of the palace and treasury, and Rājpūts will accept food and water from their hands. This concession is no doubt due to the familiarity induced by living together for a long period, and parallel instances of it can be given, as that of the Panwārs and Gonds in the Central Provinces. The Deswālis eat flesh and drink liquor, but abstain from fowls and pork. When they are invited to a feast they do not take their own brass vessels with them, but drink out of earthen pots supplied by the host, having the liquor poured on to their hands held to the mouth to avoid actual contact with the vessel. This is a Mārwāri custom and the Jāts also have it. Before the commencement of the feast the guests wait until food has been given to as many beggars as like to attend. In Saugor the food served consists only of rice and pulse without vegetables or other dishes. It is said that a Mīna will not eat salt in the house of another man, because he considers that to do so would establish the bond of Nimak-khai or salt-eating between them, and he would be debarred for ever from robbing that man or breaking into his house. The guests need not sit down together as among other Hindus, but may take their food in batches; so that the necessity of awaiting the arrival of every guest before commencing the feast is avoided. The Deswālis will not kill a black-buck nor eat the flesh of one, but they assign no reason for this and do not now worship the animal. The rule is probably, however, a totemistic survival. The men may be known by their manly gait and harsh tone of voice, as well as by a peculiar method of tying the turban; the women have a special ornament called rākhdi on the forehead and do not wear spangles or toe-rings. They are said also to despise ornaments of the baser metals as brass and pewter. They are tattooed with dots on the face to set off the fair-coloured skin by contrast, in the same manner as patches were carried on the face in Europe in the eighteenth century. A tattoo dot on a fair face is likened by a Hindu poet to a bee sitting on a half-opened mango.
[1] Elliott’s Hoshangābād Settlement Report, p. 63.
[2] Cunningham’s Archaeological Survey Reports, xx. p. 24.
[3] Ibidem.
[4] General Cunningham’s enumeration of the pāls is as follows: Five Jādon clans—Chhirkilta, Dalāt, Dermot, Nai, Pundelot; five Tuar clans—Balot, Darwār, Kalesa, Lundāvat, Rattāwat; one Kachhwāha clan—Dingāl; one Bargjūar clan—Singāl. Besides these there is one miscellaneous or half-blood clan, Palakra, making up the common total of 12½ clans.
[5] Ibbetson’s Punjab Census Report, para. 582. Sir D. Ibbetson considered it doubtful, however, whether the expression referred to the Mīna caste.
[6] Major Powlett, Gazetteer of Alwar.
[7] Asiatic Studies, vol. i. p. 162.
[8] Quoted in Dowson’s Elliott’s History of India, iii. p. 103.
[9] Dowson’s Elliott, iv. pp. 60, 75, 283, quoted in Crooke’s Tribes and Castes.
[10] Census Report (1881), para. 582.
[11] Tribes and Castes of the N.W.P. art. Meo.
[12] Rājasthān, i. p. 589.