List of Paragraphs

1. Structure of the caste

Nai, Nao, Mhāli, Hajjām, Bhanāri, Mangala.[1]—The occupational caste of barbers. The name is said to be derived from the Sanskrit nāpita according to some a corruption of snāpitri, one who bathes. In Bundelkhand he is also known as Khawās, which was a title for the attendant on a grandee; and Birtiya, or ‘He that gets his maintenance (vritti) from his constituents.’[2] Mhāli is the Marāthi name for the caste, Bhandāri the Uriya name and Mangala the Telugu name. The caste numbered nearly 190,000 persons in the Central Provinces in 1911, being distributed over all Districts. Various legends of the usual type are related of its origin, but, as Sir. H. Risley observes, it is no doubt wholly of a functional character. The subcastes in the Central Provinces entirely bear out this view, as they are very numerous and principally of the territorial type: Telange of the Telugu country, Marāthe, Pardeshi or northerners, Jhāria or those of the forest country of the Wainganga Valley, Bandhaiya or those of Bāndhogarh, Barāde of Berār, Bundelkhandi, Mārwāri, Mathuria from Mathura, Gadhwarīa from Garha near Jubbulpore, Lānjia from Lānji in Bālāghāt, Mālwi from Mālwa, Nimāri from Nimār, Deccane, Gujarāti, and so on. Twenty-six divisions in all are given. The exogamous groups are also of different types, some of them being named after Brāhman saints, as Gautam, Kashyap, Kosil, Sandil and Bhāradwāj; others after Rājpūt clans as Sūrajvansi, Jāduvansi, Solanki and Panwār; while others are titular or totemistic, as Nāik, leader; Seth, banker; Rāwat, chief; Nāgesh, cobra; Bāgh, a tiger; Bhādrawa, a fish.

2. Marriage and other customs

The exogamous groups are known as khero or kul, and marriage between members of the same group is prohibited. Girls are usually wedded between the ages of eight and twelve and boys between fifteen and twenty. A girl who goes wrong before marriage is finally expelled from the caste. The wedding ceremony follows the ritual prevalent in the locality as described in the articles on Kurmi and Kunbi. At an ordinary wedding the expenses on the girl’s side amount to about Rs. 150, and on the boy’s to Rs. 200. The remarriage of widows is permitted. In the northern Districts the widow may wed the younger brother of her deceased husband, but in the Marātha country she may not be married to any of his relatives. Divorce may be effected at the instance of the husband before the caste committee, and a divorced woman is at liberty to marry again. The Nais worship all the ordinary Hindu deities. On the Dasahra and Diwāli festivals they wash and revere their implements, the razor, scissors and nail-pruners. They pay regard to omens. It is unpropitious to sneeze or hear the report of a gun when about to commence any business; and when a man is starting on a journey, if a cat, a squirrel, a hare or a snake should cross the road in front of him he will give it up and return home. The bodies of the dead are usually burnt. In Chhattīsgarh the poor throw the corpses of their dead into the Mahānadi, and the bodies of children dying under one year of age were until recently buried in the courtyard of the house. The period of mourning for adults is ten days and for children three days. The chief mourner must take only one meal a day, which he cooks himself until the ceremony of the tenth day is performed.

3. Occupation

“The barber’s trade,” Mr. Crooke states,[3] “is undoubtedly of great antiquity. In the Veda we read, ‘Sharpen us like the razor in the hands of the barber’; and again, ‘Driven by the wind, Agni shaves the hair of the earth like the barber shaving a beard.’” In early times they must have enjoyed considerable dignity; Upali the barber was the first propounder of the law of the Buddhist church. The village barber’s leather bag contains a small mirror (ārsi), a pair of iron pincers (chimta), a leather strap, a comb (kanghi), a piece of cloth about a yard square and some oil in a phial. He shaves the faces, heads and armpits of his customers, and cuts the nails of both their hands and feet. He uses cold water in summer and hot in winter, but no soap, though this has now been introduced in towns. For the poorer cultivators he does a rapid scrape, and this process is called ‘asūdhal’ or a ‘tearful shave,’ because the person undergoing it is often constrained to weep. The barber acquires the knowledge of his art by practice on the more obliging of his customers, hence the proverb, ‘The barber’s son learns his trade on the heads of fools.’ The village barber is usually paid by a contribution of grain from the cultivators, calculated in some cases according to the number of ploughs of land possessed by each, in others according to the number of adult males in the family. In Saugor he receives 20 lbs. of grain annually for each adult male or 22½ lbs. per plough of land, besides presents of a basket of grain at seed-time and a sheaf at harvest. Cultivators are usually shaved about once a fortnight. In towns the barber’s fee may vary from a pice to two annas for a shave, which is, as has been seen, a much more protracted operation with a Hindu than with a European. It is said that Berār is now so rich that even ordinary cultivators can afford to pay the barber two annas (2d.) for a single shave, or the same price as in the suburbs of London.

4. Other services

After he has shaved a client the barber pinches and rubs his arms, presses his fingers together and cracks the joints of each finger, this last action being perhaps meant to avert evil spirits. He also does massage, a very favourite method of treatment in India, and also inexpensive as compared with Europe. For one rupee a month in towns the barber will come and rub a man’s legs five or ten minutes every day. Cultivators have their legs rubbed in the sowing season, when the labour is intensely hard owing to the necessity of sowing all the land in a short period. If a man is well-to-do he may have his whole head and body rubbed with scented oil. Landowners have often a barber as a family servant, the office descending from father to son. Such a man will light his master’s chilam (pipe-bowl) or huqqa (water-pipe), clean and light lamps, prepare his bed, tell his master stories to send him to sleep, act as escort for the women of the family when they go on a journey and arrange matches for the children. The barber’s wife attends on women in child-birth after the days of pollution are over, and rubs oil on the bodies of her clients, pares their nails and paints their feet with red dye at marriages and on other festival occasions.