Chapter 3

It cannot necessarily be assumed that all the above traditions relate to the Abhira tribe proper, of which the modern Ahir caste are scarcely more than the nominal representatives. Nevertheless, it may fairly be concluded from them that the Abhiras were widely spread over India and dominated considerable tracts of country. They are held to have entered India about the same time as the Sakas, who settled in Gujarat, among other places, and, as seen above, the earliest records of the Abhiras show them in Nasik and Kathiawar, and afterwards widely spread in Khandesh, that is, in the close neighbourhood of the Sakas. It has been suggested in the article on Rajput that the Yadava and other lunar clans of Rajputs may be the representatives of the Sakas and other nomad tribes who invaded India shortly before and after the Christian era. The god Krishna is held to have been the leader of the Yadavas, and to have founded with them the sacred city of Dwarka in Gujarat. The modern Ahirs have a subdivision called Jaduvansi or Yaduvansi, that is, of the race of the Yadavas, and they hold that Krishna was of the Ahir tribe. Since the Abhiras were also settled in Gujarat it is possible that they may have been connected with the Yadavas, and that this may be the foundation for their claim that Krishna was of their tribe. The Dyashraya-Kavya of Hemachandra speaks of a Chordasama prince reigning near Junagarh as an Abhira and a Yadava. But this is no doubt very conjectural, and the simple fact that Krishna was a herdsman would be a sufficient reason for the Ahirs to claim connection with him. It is pointed out that the names of Abhira chieftains given in the early inscriptions are derived from the god Siva, and this would not have been the case if they had at that epoch derived their origin from Krishna, an incarnation of Vishnu. "If the Abhiras had really been the descendants of the cowherds (Gopas) whose hero was Krishna, the name of the rival god Siva would never have formed components of the names of the Abhiras, whom we find mentioned in inscriptions. Hence the conclusion may safely be drawn that the Abhiras were by no means connected with Krishna and his cowherds even as late as about A.D. 300, to which date the first of the two inscriptions mentioned above is to be assigned. Precisely the same conclusion is pointed to by the contents of the Harivansha and Bhagwat Purana. The upbringing of Krishna among the cowherds and his flirtations with the milkmaids are again and again mentioned in these works, but the word Abhira does not occur even once in this connection. The only words we find used are Gopa, Gopi and Vraja. This is indeed remarkable. For the descriptions of the removal of Krishna as an infant to Nanda, the cowherd's hut, of his childhood passed in playing with the cowherd boys, and of his youth spent in amorous sports with the milkmaids are set forth at great length, but the word Abhira is not once met with. From this only one conclusion is possible, that is, that the Abhiras did not originally represent the Gopas of Krishna. The word Abhira occurs for the first time in connection with the Krishna legend about A.D. 550, from which it follows that the Abhiras came to be identified with the Gopas shortly before that date." [23]

This argument is interesting as showing that Abhira was not originally an occupational term for a herdsman, nor a caste name, but belonged to an immigrant tribe. Owing apparently to the fact that the Abhiras, like the Gujars, devoted themselves to a pastoral mode of life in India, whereas the previous Aryan immigrants had settled down to cultivation, they gave their name to the great occupational caste of herdsmen which was subsequently developed, and of which they may originally have constituted the nucleus. The Gujars, who came to India at a later period, form a parallel case; although the Gujar caste, which is derived from them, is far less important than the Ahir, the Gujars have also been the parents of several Rajput clans. The reason why the early Mathura legends of Krishna make no mention of the Ahirs may be that the deity Krishna is probably compounded of at least two if not more distinct personalities. One is the hero chief of the Yadavas, who fought in the battle of the Pandavas and Kauravas, migrated to Gujarat and was killed there. As he was chief of the Yadavas this Krishna must stand for the actual or mythical personality of some leader of the immigrant nomad tribes. The other Krishna, the boy cowherd, who grazed cattle and sported with the milkmaids of Brindaban, may very probably be some hero of the indigenous non-Aryan tribes, who, then as now, lived in the forests and were shepherds and herdsmen. His lowly birth from a labouring cowherd, and the fact that his name means black and he is represented in sculpture as being of a dark colour, lend support to this view. The cult of Krishna, Mr. Crooke points out, was comparatively late, and probably connected with the development of the worship of the cow after the decay of Buddhism. This latter Krishna, who is worshipped with his mother as a child-god, was especially attractive to women, both actual and prospective mothers. It is quite probable therefore that as his worship became very popular in Hindustan in connection with that of the cow, he was given a more illustrious origin by identification with the Yadava hero, whose first home was apparently in Gujarat. In this connection it may also be noted that the episodes connected with Krishna in the Mahabharata have been considered late interpolations.

5. The modern Ahirs an occupational caste.

But though the Ahir caste takes its name and is perhaps partly descended from the Abhira tribe, there is no doubt that it is now and has been for centuries a purely occupational caste, largely recruited from the indigenous tribes. Thus in Bengal Colonel Dalton remarks that the features of the Mathuravasi Goalas are high, sharp and delicate, and they are of light-brown complexion. Those of the Magadha subcaste, on the other hand, are undefined and coarse. They are dark-complexioned, and have large hands and feet. "Seeing the latter standing in a group with some Singhbhum Kols, there is no distinguishing one from the other. There has doubtless been much mixture of blood." [24] Similarly in the Central Provinces the Ahirs are largely recruited from the Gonds and other tribes. In Chanda the Gowaris are admittedly descended from the unions of Gonds and Ahirs, and one of their subcastes, the Gond-Gowaris, are often classed as Gonds. Again, the Kaonra Ahirs of Mandla are descended from the unions of Ahirs either with the Gonds or Kawars, and many of them are probably pure Gonds. They have Gond sept-names and eat pork. Members of one of their subdivisions, the Gond-Kaonra, will take water from Gonds, and rank below the other Kaonras, from whom they will accept food and water. As cattle have to go into the thick jungles to graze in the hot weather, the graziers attending them become intimate with the forest tribes who live there, and these latter are also often employed to graze the cattle, and are perhaps after a time admitted to the Ahir caste. Many Ahirs in Mandla are scarcely considered to be Hindus, living as they do in Gond villages in sole company with the Gonds.

6. Subcastes.

The principal subcastes of the Ahirs in northern India are the Jaduvansi, Nandvansi and Gowalvansi. The Jaduvansi claimed to be descended from the Yadavas, who now form the Yadu and Jadon-Bhatti clans of Rajputs. The probability of a historical connection between the Abhiras and Yadavas has already been noticed. The Nandvansi consider their first ancestor to have been Nand, the cowherd, the foster-father of Krishna; while the name of the Gowalvansi is simply Goala or Gauli, a milkman, a common synonym for the caste. The Kaonra Ahirs of Mandla and the Kamarias of Jubbulpore are considered to belong to the Nandvansi group. Other subcastes in the northern Districts are the Jijhotia, who, like the Jijhotia Brahmans, take their name from Jajhoti, the classical term for Bundelkhand; the Bharotia; and the Narwaria from Narwar. The Rawats of Chhattisgarh are divided into the Jhadia, Kosaria and Kanaujia groups. Of these the Jhadia or 'jungly,' and Kosaria from Kosala, the ancient name of the Chhattisgarh country, are the oldest settlers, while the Kanaujia are largely employed as personal servants in Chhattisgarh, and all castes will take water from their hands. The superior class of them, however, refuse to clean household cooking vessels, and are hence known as Thethwar, or exact or pure, as distinguished from the other Rawats, who will perform this somewhat derogatory work.

7. The Dauwa or wet-nurse Ahirs. Fosterage.

The Dauwa or wet-nurse Ahirs are descended from the illegitimate offspring of Bundela Rajput fathers by Ahir mothers who were employed in this capacity in their families. An Ahir woman kept by a Bundela was known as Pardwarin, or one coming from another house. This is not considered a disgraceful origin; though the Dauwa Ahirs are not recognised by the Ahirs proper, they form a separate section of the caste, and Brahmans will take water from them. The children of such mothers stood in the relation of foster-brothers to the Rajputs, whom their mothers had nursed. The giving of milk, in accordance with the common primitive belief in the virtue attaching to an action in itself, was held to constitute a relation of quasi-maternity between the nurse and infant, and hence of fraternity between her own children and her foster-children. The former were called Dhai-bhais or foster-brothers by the Rajputs; they were often given permanent grants of land and employed on confidential missions, as for the arrangement of marriages. The minister of a Raja of Karauli was his Dauwa or foster-father, the husband of his nurse. Similarly, Colonel Tod says that the Dhai-bhai or foster-brother of the Raja of Boondi, commandant of the fortress of Tanagarh, was, like all his class, devotion personified. [25] A parallel instance of the tie of foster-kinship occurs in the case of the foster-brothers of Conachar or Hector in _The Fair Maid of Perth_. Thus the position of foster-brother of a Rajput was an honourable one, even though the child might be illegitimate. Ahir women were often employed as wet-nurses, because domestic service was a profession in which they commonly engaged. Owing to the comparatively humble origin of a large proportion of them they did not object to menial service, while the purity of their caste made it possible to use them for the supply of water and food. In Bengal the Uriya Ahirs were a common class of servants in European houses.

The Gaolis or milkmen appear to form a distinct branch of the caste with subcastes of their own. Among them are the Nandvans, common to the Ahirs, the Malwi from Malwa and the Raghuvansi, called after the Rajput clan of that name. The Ranyas take their designation from _ran_, forest, like the Jhadia Rawats.

8. Exogamy.

The caste have exogamous sections, which are of the usual low-caste type, with titular or totemistic names. Those of the Chhattisgarhi Rawats are generally named after animals. A curious name among the Mahakul Ahirs is Mathankata, or one who bit his mother's nipples. The marriage of persons belonging to the same section and of first cousins is prohibited. A man may marry his wife's younger sister while his wife is living, but not her elder sister. The practice of exchanging girls between families is permissible.

9. Marriage customs.

As a rule, girls may be married before or after puberty, but the Golkars of Chanda insist on infant marriage, and fine the parents if an unmarried girl becomes adolescent. On the other hand, the Kaonra Ahirs of Mandla make a practice of not getting a girl married till the signs of puberty have appeared. It is said that in Mandla if an unmarried girl becomes pregnant by a man of the caste the _panchayat_ give her to him and fine him Rs. 20 or 30, which they appropriate themselves, giving nothing to the father. If an Ahir girl is seduced by an outsider, she is made over to him, and a fine of Rs. 40 or 50 is exacted from him if possible. This is paid to the girl's father, who has to spend it on a penalty feast to the caste. Generally, sexual offences within the community are leniently regarded. The wedding ceremony is of the type prevalent in the locality. The proposal comes from the boy's family, and a price is usually given for the bride. The Kaonra Ahirs of Mandla and the Jharia and Kosaria Rawats of Chhattisgarh employ a Brahman only to write the _lagun_ or paper fixing the date of the wedding, and the ceremony is conducted by the _sawasins_ or relatives of the parties. In Chhattisgarh the bridegroom is dressed as a girl to be taken to the wedding. In Betul the weddings of most Gaolis are held in Magh (January), and that of the Ranya subcaste in the bright fortnight of Kartik (October). At the ceremony the bride is made to stand on a small stone roller; the bridegroom then takes hold of the roller facing the bride and goes round in a circle seven times, turning the roller with him. Widow remarriage is permitted, and a widow is often expected to marry the younger brother of her deceased husband. If a bachelor wishes to marry a widow he first goes through the ceremony with a dagger or an earthen vessel. Divorce is freely permitted. In Hoshangabad a strip is torn off the clothes worn by husband and wife as a sign of their divorce. This is presumably in contrast to the knotting of the clothes of the couple together at a wedding.

10. Birth customs.

Among the Rawats of Chhattisgarh, when a child is shortly to be born the midwife dips her hand in oil and presses it on the wall, and it is supposed that she can tell by the way in which the oil trickles down whether the child will be a boy or a girl. If a woman is weak and ill during her pregnancy it is thought that a boy will be born, but if she is strong and healthy, a girl. A woman in advanced pregnancy is given whatever she desires to eat, and on one occasion especially delicate kinds of food are served to her, this rite being known as Sidhori. The explanation of the custom is that if the mother does not get the food she desires during pregnancy the child will long for it all through life. If delivery is delayed, a line of men and boys is sometimes made from the door of the house to a well, and a vessel is then passed from hand to hand from the house, filled with water, and back again. Thus the water, having acquired the quality of speed during its rapid transit, will communicate this to the woman and cause her quick delivery. Or they take some of the clay left unmoulded on the potter's wheel and give it her to drink in water; the explanation of this is exactly similar, the earth having acquired the quality of swiftness by the rapid transit on the wheel. If three boys or three girls have been born to a woman, they think that the fourth should be of the same sex, in order to make up two pairs. A boy or girl born after three of the opposite sex is called Titra or Titri, and is considered very unlucky. To avert this misfortune they cover the child with a basket, kindle a fire of grass all round it, and smash a brass pot on the floor. Then they say that the baby is the fifth and not the fourth child, and the evil is thus removed. When one woman gives birth to a male and another to a female child in the same quarter of a village on the same day and they are attended by the same midwife, it is thought that the boy child will fall ill from the contagion of the girl child communicated through the midwife. To avoid this, on the following Sunday the child's maternal uncle makes a banghy, which is carried across the shoulders like a large pair of scales, and weighs the child in it against cowdung. He then takes the banghy and deposits it at cross-roads outside the village. The father cannot see either the child or its mother till after the Chathi or sixth-day ceremony of purification, when the mother is bathed and dressed in clean clothes, the males of the family are shaved, all their clothes are washed, and the house is whitewashed; the child is also named on this day. The mother cannot go out of doors until after the Barhi or twelfth-day ceremony. If a child is born at an unlucky astrological period its ears are pierced in the fifth month after birth as a means of protection.

11. Funeral rites. Bringing back the soul.

The dead are either buried or burnt. When a man is dying they put basil leaves and boiled rice and milk in his mouth, and a little piece of gold, or if they have not got gold they put a rupee in his mouth and take it out again. For ten days after a death, food in a leaf-cup and a lamp are set out in the house-yard every evening, and every morning water and a tooth-stick. On the tenth day they are taken away and consigned to a river. In Chhattisgarh on the third day after death the soul is brought back. The women put a lamp on a red earthen pot and go to a tank or stream at night. The fish are attracted towards the light, and one of them is caught and put in the pot, which is then filled with water. It is brought home and set beside a small heap of flour, and the elders sit round it. The son of the deceased or other near relative anoints himself with turmeric and picks up a stone. This is washed with the water from the pot, and placed on the floor, and a sacrifice of a cock or hen is made to it according as the deceased was a man or a woman. The stone is then enshrined in the house as a family god, and the sacrifice of a fowl is repeated annually. It is supposed apparently that the dead man's spirit is brought back to the house in the fish, and then transferred to the stone by washing this with the water.

12. Religion. Krishna and other deified cowherds.

The Ahirs have a special relation to the Hindu religion, owing to their association with the sacred cow, which is itself revered as a goddess. When religion gets to the anthropomorphic stage the cowherd, who partakes of the cow's sanctity, may be deified as its representative. This was probably the case with Krishna, one of the most popular gods of Hinduism, who was a cowherd, and, as he is represented as being of a dark colour, may even have been held to be of the indigenous races. Though, according to the legend, he was really of royal birth, Krishna was brought up by Nand, a herdsman of Gokul, and Jasoda or Dasoda his wife, and in the popular belief these are his parents, as they probably were in the original story. The substitution of Krishna, born as a prince, for Jasoda's daughter, in order to protect him from destruction by the evil king Kansa of Mathura, is perhaps a later gloss, devised when his herdsman parentage was considered too obscure for the divine hero. Krishna's childhood in Jasoda's house with his miraculous feats of strength and his amorous sports with Radha and the other milkmaids of Brindawan, are among the most favourite Hindu legends. Govind and Gopal, the protector or guardian of cows, are names of Krishna and the commonest names of Hindus, as are also his other epithets, Murlidhar and Bansidhar, the flute-player; for Krishna and Balaram, like Greek and Roman shepherds, were accustomed to divert themselves with song, to the accompaniment of the same instrument. The child Krishna is also very popular, and his birthday, the Janam-Ashtami on the 8th of dark Bhadon (August), is a great festival. On this day potsful of curds are sprinkled over the assembled worshippers. Krishna, however, is not the solitary instance of the divine cowherd, but has several companions, humble indeed compared to him, but perhaps owing their apotheosis to the same reasons. Bhilat, a popular local godling of the Nerbudda Valley, was the son of an Ahir or Gaoli woman; she was childless and prayed to Parvati for a child, and the goddess caused her votary to have one by her own husband, the god Mahadeo. Bhilat was stolen away from his home by Mahadeo in the disguise of a beggar, and grew up to be a great hero and made many conquests; but finally he returned and lived with his herdsman parents, who were no doubt his real ones. He performed numerous miracles, and his devotees are still possessed by his spirit. Singaji is another godling who was a Gaoli by caste in Indore. He became a disciple of a holy Gokulastha Gosain or ascetic, and consequently a great observer of the Janam-Ashtami or Krishna's birthday. [26] On one occasion Singaji was late for prayers on this day, and the _guru_ was very angry, and said to him, 'Don't show your face to me again until you are dead.' Singaji went home and told the other children he was going to die. Then he went and buried himself alive. The occurrence was noised abroad and came to the ears of the _guru_, who was much distressed, and proceeded to offer his condolences to Singaji's family. But on the way he saw Singaji, who had been miraculously raised from the dead on account of his virtuous act of obedience, grazing his buffaloes as before. After asking for milk, which Singaji drew from a male buffalo calf, the _guru_ was able to inform the bereaved parents of their son's joyful reappearance and his miraculous powers; of these Singaji gave further subsequent demonstration, and since his death, said to have occurred 350 years ago, is widely venerated. The Gaolis pray to him for the protection of their cattle from disease, and make thank-offerings of butter if these prayers are fulfilled. Other pilgrims to Singaji's shrine offer unripe mangoes and sugar, and an annual fair is held at it, when it is said that for seven days no cows, flies or ants are to be seen in the place. In the Betul district there is a village godling called Dait, represented by a stone under a tree. He is the spirit of any Ahir who in his lifetime was credited in the locality with having the powers of an exorcist. In Mandla and other Districts when any buffalo herdsman dies at a very advanced age the people make a platform for him within the village and call it Mahashi Deo or the buffalo god. Similarly, when an old cattle herdsman dies they do the same, and call it Balki Deo or the bullock god. Here we have a clear instance of the process of substituting the spirit of the herdsman for the cow or buffalo as an object of worship. The occupation of the Ahir also lends itself to religious imaginations. He stays in the forest or waste grass-land, frequently alone from morning till night, watching his herds; and the credulous and uneducated minds of the more emotional may easily hear the voices of spirits, or in a half-sleeping condition during the heat and stillness of the long day may think that visions have appeared to them. Thus they come to believe themselves selected for communication with the unseen deities or spirits, and on occasions of strong religious excitement work themselves into a frenzy and are held to be possessed by a spirit or god.

13. Caste deities.