Occasionally subcastes may be formed from differences of religious belief or sectarian practice. In northern India even such leading Hindu castes as Rājpūts and Jāts have large Muhammadan branches, who as a rule do not intermarry with Hindus. The ordinary Hindu sects seldom, however, operate as a bar to marriage, Hinduism being tolerant of all forms of religious belief. Those Chamārs of Chhattīsgarh who have embraced the doctrines of the Satnāmi reforming sect form a separate endogamous subcaste, and sometimes the members of the Kabīrpanthi sect within a caste marry among themselves.
Statistics of the subcastes are not available, but their numbers are very extensive in proportion to the population, and even in the same subcaste the members living within a comparatively small local area often marry among themselves and attend exclusively at their own caste feasts, though in the case of educated and well-to-do Hindus the construction of railways has modified this rule and connections are kept up between distant groups of relatives. Clearly therefore differences of occupation or social status are not primarily responsible for the subcastes, because in the majority of cases no such differences really exist. I think the real reason for their multiplication was the necessity that the members of a subcaste should attend at the caste feasts on the occasion of marriages, deaths and readmission of offenders, these feasts being of the nature of a sacrificial or religious meal. The grounds for this view will be given subsequently.
48. Exogamous groups.
The caste or subcaste forms the outer circle within which a man must marry. Inside it are a set of further subdivisions which prohibit the marriage of persons related through males. These are called exogamous groups or clans, and their name among the higher castes is gotra. The theory is that all persons belonging to the same gotra are descended from the same male ancestor, and so related. The relationship in the gotra now only goes by the father’s side; when a woman marries she is taken into the clan of her husband and her children belong to it. Marriage is not allowed within the clan and in the course of a few generations the marriage of persons related through males or agnates is prohibited within a very wide circle. But on the mother’s side the gotra does not serve as a bar to marriage and the union of first cousins would be possible, other than the children of two brothers. According to Hindu law, intermarriage is prohibited within four degrees between persons related through females. But generally the children of first cousins are allowed to marry, when related partly through females. And several castes allow the intermarriage of first cousins, that of a brother’s daughter to a sister’s son and in a less degree of a brother’s son to a sister’s daughter being specially favoured. One or two Madras castes allow a man to marry his niece, and the small Dhoba caste of Mandla permit the union of children of the same mother but different fathers.
Sir Herbert Risley classed the names of exogamous divisions as eponymous, territorial or local, titular and totemistic. In the body of this work the word clan is usually applied only to the large exogamous groups of the Rājpūts and one or two other military castes. The small local or titular groups of ordinary Hindu castes are called ‘section,’ and the totemic groups of the primitive tribes ‘sept.’ But perhaps it is simpler to use the word ‘clan’ throughout according to the practice of Sir J.G. Frazer. The vernacular designations of the clans or sections are gotra, which originally meant a stall or cow-pen; khero, a village; dih, a village site; baink, a title; mul or mur, literally a root, hence an origin; and kul or kuri, a family. The sections called eponymous are named after Rishis or saints mentioned in the Vedas and other scriptures and are found among the Brāhmans and a few of the higher castes, such as Vasishta, Garga, Bhāradwāj, Vishvamitra, Kashyap and so on. A few Rājpūt clans are named after kings or heroes, as the Rāghuvansis from king Rāghu of Ajodhia and the Tilokchandi Bais from a famous king of that name. The titular class of names comprise names of offices supposed to have been held by the founder of the clan, or titles and names referring to a personal defect or quality, and nicknames. Instances of the former are Kotwār (village watchman), Chaudhri, Meher or Māhto (caste headman), Bhagat (saint), Thākuria and Rawat (lord or prince), Vaidya (physician); and of titular names and nicknames: Kuldip (lamp of the family), Mohjaria (one with a burnt mouth), Jāchak (beggar), Garkata (cut-throat), Bhātpagar (one serving on a pittance of boiled rice), Kangāli (poor), Chīkat (dirty), Petdukh (stomach-ache), Ghunnere (worm-eater) and so on. A special class of names are those of offices held at the caste feasts; thus the clans of the Chitrakathi caste are the Atak or Mānkari, who furnish the headman of the caste panchāyat or committee; the Bhojin who serve the food at marriages and other ceremonies; the Kākra who arrange for the lighting; the Gothārya who keep the provisions, and the Ghorerao (ghora, a horse) who have the duty of looking after the horses and bullock-carts of the caste-men who assemble. Similarly the five principal clans of the small Turi caste are named after the five sons of Singhbonga or the sun: the eldest son was called Mailuar and his descendants are the leaders or headmen of the caste; the descendants of the second son, Chardhagia, purify and readmit offenders to caste intercourse; those of the third son, Suremār, conduct the ceremonial shaving of such offenders, and those of the fourth son bring water for the ceremony and are called Tirkuār. The youngest brother, Hasdagia, is said to have committed some caste offence, and the four other brothers took the parts which are still played by their descendants in his ceremony of purification. In many cases exogamous clans are named after other castes or subcastes. Many low castes have adopted the names of the Rājpūt clans, either from simple vanity as people may take an aristocratic surname, or because they were in the service of Rājpūts, and have adopted the names of their masters or are partly descended from them. Other names of castes found among exogamous groups probably indicate that an ancestor belonging to that caste was taken into the one in which the group is found. The Bhaina tribe have clans named after the Dhobi, Ahīr, Gond, Māli and Panka castes. The members of such clans pay respect to any man belonging to the caste after which they are named and avoid picking a quarrel with him; they also worship the family gods of the caste.
Territorial names are very common, and are taken from that of some town or village in which the ancestor of the clan or the members of the clan themselves resided.[90] The names are frequently distorted, and it seems probable that the majority of the large number of clan names for which no meaning can be discovered were those of villages. These unknown names are probably more numerous than the total of all those classes of names to which a meaning can be assigned.
49. Totemistic clans.
The last class of exogamous divisions are those called totemistic, when the clan is named after a plant or animal or other natural object. These are almost universal among the non-Aryan or primitive tribes, but occur also in most Hindu castes, including some of the highest. The commonest totem names are those of the prominent animals, including several which are held sacred by the Hindus, as bāgh or nāhar, the tiger; bachās, the calf; morkuria, the peacock; kachhwāha or limuān, the tortoise; nāgas, the cobra; hasti, the elephant; bandar, the monkey; bhainsa, the buffalo; richharia, the bear; kuliha, the jackal; kukura, the dog; karsayāl, the deer; heran, the black-buck, and so on. The utmost variety of names is found, and numerous trees, as well as rice, kodon and other crops, salt, sandalwood, cucumber, pepper, and some household implements, such as the pestle and rolling-slab, serve as names of clans. Names which may be held to have a totemistic origin occur even in the highest castes. Thus among the names of eponymous Rishis or saints, Bhāradwāj means a lark, Kaushik may be from the kūsha grass, Agastya from the agasti flower, Kashyap from kachhap, a tortoise; Taittiri from tītar, a partridge, and so on. Similarly the origin of other Rishis is attributed to animals, as Rishishringa to an antelope, Mandavya to a frog, and Kanāda to an owl.[91] An inferior Rājpūt clan, Meshbansi, signifies descendants of the sheep, while the name of the Baghel clan is derived from the tiger (bāgh), that of the Kachhwāha clan perhaps from kachhap, a tortoise, of the Haihaivansi from the horse, of the Nāgvansi from the cobra, and of the Tomara clan from tomar, a club. The Karan or writer caste of Orissa, similarly, have clans derived from the cobra, tortoise and calf, and most of the cultivating and other middle castes have clans with totemistic names. The usual characteristics of totemism, in its later and more common form at any rate, are that members of a clan regard themselves as related to, or descended from, the animal or tree from which the clan takes its name, and abstain from killing or eating it. This was perhaps not the original relation of the clan to its clan totem in the hunting stage, but it is the one commonly found in India, where the settled agricultural stage has long been reached. The Bhaina tribe have among their totems the cobra, tiger, leopard, vulture, hawk, monkey, wild dog, quail, black ant, and so on. Members of a clan will not injure the animal after which it is named, and if they see the corpse of the animal or hear of its death they throw away an earthen cooking-pot, and bathe and shave themselves as for one of the family. At a wedding the bride’s father makes an image in clay of the bird or animal of the groom’s sept and places it beside the marriage-post. The bridegroom worships the image, lighting a sacrificial fire before it, and offers to it the vermilion which he afterwards smears on the forehead of the bride. Women are often tattooed with representations of their totem animal, and men swear by it as their most sacred oath. A similar respect is paid to the inanimate objects after which certain septs are named. Thus members of the Gawad or cowdung clan will not burn cowdung cakes for fuel; and those of the Mircha clan do not use chillies. One clan is named after the sun, and when an eclipse occurs they perform the same formal rites of mourning as others do on the death of their totem animal. The Bāghani clan of Majhwārs, named after the tiger, think that a tiger will not attack any member of their clan unless he has committed an offence entailing temporary excommunication from caste. Until this offence has been expiated his relationship with the tiger as head of the clan is in abeyance, and the tiger will eat him as he would any other stranger. If a tiger meets a member of the clan who is free from sin, he will run away. Members of the Khoba or peg clan will not make a peg nor drive one into the ground. Those of the Dūmar or fig-tree clan say that their first ancestor was born under this tree. They consider the tree to be sacred and never eat its fruit, and worship it once a year. Sometimes the members of the clan do not revere the object after which it is named but some other important animal or plant. Thus the Markām clan of Gonds, named after the mango-tree, venerate the tortoise and do not kill it. The Kathotia clan of Kols is named after kathota, a bowl, but they revere the tiger. Bāgheshwar Deo, the tiger-god, resides on a little platform in their verandas. They may not join in a tiger-beat nor sit up for a tiger over a kill. In the latter case they think that the tiger would not come and would be deprived of his food, and all the members of their family would get ill. The Katharia clan take their name from kathri, a mattress. A member of this sept must never have a mattress in his house, nor wear clothes sewn in crosspieces as mattresses are sewn. The name of the Mudia or Mudmudia clan is said to mean shaven head, but they apparently revere the white kumhra or gourd, perhaps because it has some resemblance to a shaven head. They give a white gourd to a woman on the day after she has borne a child, and her family then do not eat this vegetable for three years. The Kumraya sept revere the brown kumhra or gourd. They grow this vegetable on the thatch of their house-roof and from the time of planting it till the fruits have been plucked they do not touch it, though of course they afterwards eat the fruits. The Bhuwar sept are named after bhu or bhumi, the earth. They must always sleep on the earth and not on cots. The Nūn (salt) and Dhān (rice) clans of Oraons cannot dispense with eating their totems or titular ancestors. But the Dhān Oraons content themselves with refusing to consume the scum which thickens on the surface of the boiled rice, and the Nūn sept will not lick a plate in which salt and water have been mixed. At the weddings of the Vulture clan of the small Bhona caste one member of the clan kills a small chicken by biting off the head and then eats it in imitation of a vulture. Definite instances of the sacrificial eating of the totem animal have not been found, but it is said that the tiger and snake clans of the Bhatra tribe formerly ate their totems at a sacrificial meal. The Gonds also worship the cobra as a household god, and once a year they eat the flesh of the snake and think that by doing so they will be immune from snake-bite throughout the year. On the festival of Nāg-Panchmi the Mahārs make an image of a snake with flour and sugar and eat it. It is reported that the Singrore Dhīmars who work on rivers and tanks must eat the flesh of a crocodile at their weddings, while the Sonjharas who wash the sands of rivers for gold should catch a live crocodile for the occasion of the wedding and afterwards put it back into the river. These latter customs may probably have fallen into abeyance owing to the difficulty of catching a crocodile, and in any case the animals are tribal gods rather than totems.
50. Terms of relationship.
Exogamy and totemism are found not only in India, but are the characteristics of primitive social groups over the greater part of the world. Totemism establishes a relation of kinship between persons belonging to one clan who are not related by blood, and exogamy prescribes that the persons held to be so related shall not intermarry. Further, when terms of relationship come into existence it is found that they are applied not to members of one family, but to all the persons of the clan who might have stood in each particular relationship to the person addressing them. Thus a man will address as mother not only his own mother, but all the women of his clan who might have stood to him in the relation of mother. Similarly he will address all the old men and women as grandfather or grandmother or aunt, and the boys and girls of his own generation as brother and sister, and so on. With the development of the recognition of the consanguineous family, the use of terms of relationship tends to be restricted to persons who have actual kinship; thus a boy will address only his father’s brothers as father, and his cousins as brothers and sisters; but sufficient traces of the older system of clan kinship remain to attest its former existence. But it seems also clear that some, at least, of the terms of relationship were first used between persons really related; thus the word for mother must have been taught by mothers to their own babies beginning to speak, as it is a paramount necessity for a small child to have a name by which to call its mother when it is wholly dependent on her; if the period of infancy is got over without the use of this term of address there is no reason why it should be introduced in later life, when in the primitive clan the child quickly ceased to be dependent on its mother or to retain any strong affection for her. Similarly, as shown by Sir J.G. Frazer in Totemism and Exogamy, there is often a special name for the mother’s brother when other uncles or aunts are addressed simply as father or mother. This name must therefore have been brought into existence to distinguish the mother’s brother at the time when, under the system of female descent, he stood in the relation of a protector and parent to the child. Where the names for grandfather and grandmother are a form of duplication of those for father and mother as in English, they would appear to imply a definite recognition of the idea of family descent. The majority of the special names for other relatives, such as fraternal and maternal uncles and aunts, must also have been devised to designate those relatives in particular, and hence there is a probability that the terms for father and brother and sister, which on a priori grounds may be considered doubtful, were also first applied to real or putative fathers and brothers and sisters. But, as already seen, under the classificatory system of relationship these same terms are addressed to members of the same clan who might by age and sex have stood in such a relationship to the person addressing them, but are not actually akin to him at all. And hence it seems a valid and necessary conclusion that at the time when the family terms of relationship came into existence, the clan sentiment of kinship was stronger than the family sentiment; that is, a boy was taught or made to feel that all the women of the clan of about the same age as his mother were as nearly akin to him as his own mother, and that he should regard them all in the same relation. And similarly he looked on all the men of the clan of an age enabling them to be his fathers in the same light as his own father, and all the children of or about his own age as his brothers and sisters. The above seems a necessary conclusion from the existence of the classificatory system of relationship, which is very widely spread among savages, and if admitted, it follows that the sentiment of kinship within the clan was already established when the family terms of relationship were devised, and therefore that the clan was prior to the family as a social unit. This conclusion is fortified by the rule of exogamy which prohibits marriage between persons of the same clan between whom no blood-relationship can be traced, and therefore shows that some kind of kinship was believed to exist between them, independent of and stronger than the link of consanguinity. Further, Mr. Hartland shows in Primitive Paternity[92] that during the period of female descent when physical paternity has been recognised, but the father and mother belong to different clans, the children, being of the mother’s clan, will avenge a blood-feud of their clan upon their own father; and this custom seems to show clearly that the sentiment of clan-kinship was prior to and stronger than that of family kinship.