2. Internal structure
The caste have a number of subdivisions, nearly all of which are of the territorial class and indicate the various localities from which it has been recruited in these Provinces. The most important subcastes are the Audhia from Ajodhia or Oudh; the Purānia or old settlers; the Bundelkhandi from Bundelkhand; the Mālwi from Mālwa; the Lād from Lāt, the old name for the southern portion of Gujarāt; and the Mair, who appear to have been the first immigrants from Upper India and are named after Mair, the original ancestor, who melted down the golden demon. Other small groups are the Pātkars, so called because they allow pāt or widow-marriage, though, as a matter of fact, it is permitted by the great majority of the caste; the Pāndhare or ‘White Sunārs’; and the Ahīr Sunārs, whose ancestors must presumably have belonged to the caste whose name they bear. The caste have also numerous bainks or exogamous septs, which differ entirely from the long lists given for Bengal and the United Provinces, and show, as Mr. Crooke remarks, the extreme fertility with which sections of this kind spring up. In the Central Provinces the names are of a titular or territorial nature. Examples of the former kind, that is, a title or nickname supposed to have been borne by the sept’s founder, are: Dantele, one who has projecting teeth; Kāle, black; Munde, bald; Kolhīmāre, a killer of jackals; and Ladaiya, a jackal or a quarrelsome person. Among the territorial names are Narwaria from Narwar; Bhilsainyān from Bhilsa; Kanaujia from Kanauj; Dillīwāl from Delhi; Kālpiwāl from Kālpi. Besides the bainks or septs by which marriage is regulated, they have adopted the Brāhmanical eponymous gotra-names as Kashyap, Garg, Sāndilya, and so on. These are employed on ceremonial occasions as when a gift is made for the purpose of obtaining religious merit, and the gotra- name of the owner is recorded, but they do not influence marriage. The use of them is a harmless vanity analogous to the assumption of distinguished surnames by people who were not born to them.
3. Marriage and other customs
Marriage is forbidden within the sept. In some localities persons descended from a common ancestor may not intermarry for five generations, but in others a brother’s daughter may be wedded to a sister’s son. A man is forbidden to marry two sisters while both are alive, and after his wife’s death he may espouse her younger sister, but not her elder one. Girls are usually wedded at a tender age, but some Sunārs have hitherto had a rule that neither a girl nor a boy should be married until they had had smallpox, the idea being that there can be no satisfactory basis for a contract of marriage while either party is still exposed to such a danger to life and personal appearance; just as it might be considered more prudent not to buy a young dog until it had had distemper. But with the spread of vaccination the Sunārs are giving up this custom. The marriage ceremony follows the Hindustāni or Marātha ritual according to locality.[4] In Betūl the mother of the bride ties the mother of the bridegroom to a pole with the ropes used for tethering buffaloes and beats her with a piece of twisted cloth, until the bridegroom’s mother gives her a present of money or cloth and is released. The ceremony may be designed to express the annoyance of the bride’s mother at being deprived of her daughter. Polygamy is permitted, but people will not give their daughter to a married man if they can find a bachelor husband for her. Well-to-do Sunārs who desire increased social distinction prohibit the marriage of widows, but the caste generally allow it.
4. Religion
The caste venerate the ordinary Hindu deities, and many of them have sects and return themselves as Vaishnavas, Saivas or Sāktas. In some places they are said to make a daily offering to their melting-furnace so that it may bring them in a profit. When a child has been born they make a sacrifice of a goat to Dūlha Deo, the marriage-god, on the following Dasahra festival, and the body of this must be eaten by the family only, no outsider being allowed to participate. In Hoshangābād it is stated that on the night before the Dasahra festival all the Sunārs assemble beside a river and hold a feast. Each of them is then believed to take an oath that he will not during the coming year disclose the amount of the alloy which a fellow-craftsman may mix with the precious metals. Any Sunār who violates this agreement is put out of caste. On the 15th day of Jeth (May) the village Sunār stops work for five days and worships his implements after washing them. He draws pictures of the goddess Devi on a piece of paper and goes round the village to affix them to the doors of his clients, receiving in return a small present.
The caste usually burn their dead and take the ashes to the Nerbudda or Ganges; those living to the south of the Nerbudda always stop at this river, because they think that if they crossed it to go to the Ganges, the Nerbudda would be offended at their not considering it good enough. If a man meets with a violent death and his body is lost, they construct a small image of him and burn this with all the proper ceremonies. Mourning is observed for ten or thirteen days, and the shrāddh ceremony is performed on the anniversary of a death, while the usual oblations are offered to the ancestors during the fortnight of Pitr Paksh in Kunwār (September).
5. Social position
The more ambitious members of the caste abjure all flesh and liquor, and wear the sacred thread. These will not take cooked food even from a Brāhman. Others do not observe these restrictions. Brāhmans will usually take water from Sunārs, especially from those who wear the sacred thread. Owing to their association with the sacred metal gold, and the fact that they generally live in towns or large villages, and many of their members are well-to-do, the Sunārs occupy a fairly high position, ranking equal with, or above the cultivating castes. But, as already stated, the goldsmith was a village menial in the Marātha villages, and Sir D. Ibbetson thinks that the Jat really considers the Sunār to be distinctly inferior to himself.