Part 22

Jangam, Jangama.--A Sivite order of wandering religious mendicants. The Jangams are the priests or gurus of the Sivite sect of Lingayats. They numbered 3500 persons in the Central Provinces and Berar in 1911, and frequent the Maratha country. The Jangam is said to be so called because he wears a movable emblem of Siva (jana gama, to come and go) in contradistinction to the Sthawar or fixed emblems found in temples. The Jangams discard many of the modern phases of Hinduism. They reject the poems in honour of Vishnu, Rama and Krishna, such as the Bhagavad Gita and Ramayana; they also deny the authority of Brahmans, the efficacy of pilgrimage and self-mortification, and the restrictions of caste; while they revere principally the Vedas and the teaching of the great Sivite reformer Shankar Acharya. [177] Like other religious orders, the Jangams have now become a caste, and are divided into two groups of celibate and married members. The Gharbaris (married members) celebrate their weddings in the usual Maratha fashion, except that they perform no hom or fire sacrifice. They permit the remarriage of widows. The Jangams wear ochre-coloured or badami clothes and long necklaces of seeds called rudraksha [178] beads, which resemble a nutmeg in size, in colour and nearly in shape; they besmear their forehead, arms and various other parts of the body with cowdung ashes. They wear the lingam or phallic sign of Siva either about the neck or loins in a little casket of gold, silver, copper or brass. As the lingam is supposed to represent the god and to be eternal, they are buried and not burnt after death, because the lingam must be buried with them and must not be destroyed in the fire. If any Jangam loses the lingam he or she must not eat or drink until it has been replaced by the guru or spiritual preceptor. It must be worshipped thrice a day, and ashes and bel [179] leaves are offered to it, besides food when the owner is about to partake of this himself. The Jangams worship no deity other than Siva or Mahadeo, and their great festival is the Shivratri. Some of them make pilgrimages to Pachmarhi, to the Mahadeo hills. Most of them subsist by begging and singing songs in praise of Mahadeo. Grant-Duff gives the Jangam as one of the twenty-four village servants in a Maratha village, perhaps as the priest of the local shrine of Siva, or as the caste priest of the Lingayats, who are numerous in some Districts of Bombay. He carries a wallet over the shoulder and a conch-shell and bell in the hand. On approaching the door of a house he rings his bell to bring out the occupant, and having received alms proceeds on his way, blowing his conch-shell, which is supposed to be a propitious act for the alms-giver, and to ensure his safe passage to heaven. The wallet is meant to hold the grain given to him, and on returning home he never empties it completely, but leaves a little grain in it as its own share. The Jangams are strict vegetarians, and take food only from the hands of Lingayats. They bless their food before eating it and always finish it completely, and afterwards wash the dish with water and drink down the water. When a child is born, the priest is sent for and his feet are washed with water in a brass tray. The water is then rubbed over the bodies of those present, and a few drops sprinkled on the walls of the house as a ceremony of purification. The priest's great toes are then washed in a cup of water, and he dips the lingam he wears into this, and then sips a few drops of the water, each person present doing the same. This is called karuna or sanctification. He then dips a new lingam into the holy water, and ties it round the child's neck for a minute or two, afterwards handing it to the mother to be kept till the child is old enough to wear it. The dead are buried in a sitting posture, the lingam being placed in the palm of the hand. On the third day a clay image of Mahadeo is carried to the grave, and food and flowers are offered to it, as well as any intoxicants to which the deceased person may have been addicted. The following notice of the Jangams more than a century ago may be quoted from the Abbé Dubois, though the custom described does not, so far as is known, prevail at present, at least in the Central Provinces: [180] "The gurus or priests of Siva, who are known in the Western Provinces by the name of Jangams, are for the most part celibates. They have a custom which is peculiar to themselves, and curious enough to be worth remarking. When a guru travels about his district he lodges with some member of the sect, and the members contend among themselves for the honour of receiving him. When he has selected the house he wishes to stay in, the master and all the other male inmates are obliged, out of respect for him, to leave it and go and stay elsewhere. The holy man remains there day and night with only the women of the house, whom he keeps to wait on him and cook for him, without creating any scandal or exciting the jealousy of the husbands. All the same, some scandal-mongers have remarked that the Jangams always take care to choose a house where the women are young." The Jangams are not given to austerities, and go about well clad.

JAT

List of Paragraphs

1. Theories of the origin of the caste. 2. Sir D. Ibbetson's description of the caste. 3. Are the Jats and Rajputs distinct? 4. The position of the Jat in the Punjab. 5. Social status of the Jats. 6. Brahmanical legend of origin. 7. The Jats in the Central Provinces. 8. Marriage customs. 9. Funeral rites. 10. The Paida ceremony. 11. Customs at birth. 12. Religion. 13. Social customs. 14. Occupation.

1. Theories of the origin of the caste.

Jat. [181]--The representative cultivating caste of the Punjab, corresponding to the Kurmi of Hindustan, the Kunbi of the Deccan, and the Kapu of Telingana. In the Central Provinces 10,000 Jats were returned in 1911, of whom 5000 belonged to Hoshangabad and the bulk of the remainder to Narsinghpur, Saugor and Jubbulpore. The origin of the Jat caste has been the subject of much discussion. Sir D. Ibbetson stated some of the theories as follows: [182] "Suffice it to say that both General Cunningham and Major Tod agree in considering the Jats to be of Indo-Scythian stock. The former identifies them with the Zanthii of Strabo and the Jatii of Pliny and Ptolemy; and holds that they probably entered the Punjab from their home on the Oxus very shortly after the Meds or Mands, who also were Indo-Scythians, and who moved into the Punjab about a century before Christ.... Major Tod classes the Jats as one of the great Rajput tribes, and extends his identification with the Getae to both races; but here General Cunningham differs, holding the Rajputs to belong to the original Aryan stock, and the Jats to a later wave of immigrants from the north-west, probably of Scythian race." It is highly probable that the Jats may date their settlement in the Punjab from one of the three Scythian inroads mentioned by Mr. V. A. Smith, [183] but I do not know that there is as yet considered to be adequate evidence to identify them with any particular one.

The following curious passage from the Mahabharata would appear to refer to the Jats: [184]

"An old and excellent Brahman reviling the countries Bahika and Madra in the dwelling of Dhritarashtra, related facts long known, and thus described those nations. External to the Himavan, and beyond the Ganges, beyond the Sarasvati and Yamuna rivers and Kurukshetra, between five rivers, and the Sindhu as the sixth, are situated the Bahikas, devoid of ritual or observance, and therefore to be shunned. Their figtree is named Govardhana (i.e. the place of cow-killing); their market-place is Subhadram (the place of vending liquor: at least so say the commentators), and these give titles to the doorway of the royal palace. A business of great importance compelled me to dwell amongst the Bahikas, and their customs are therefore well known to me. The chief city is called Shakala, and the river Apaga. The people are also named Jarttikas; and their customs are shameful. They drink spirits made from sugar and grain, and eat meat seasoned with garlic; and live on flesh and wine: their women intoxicated appear in public places, with no other garb than garlands and perfumes, dancing and singing, and vociferating indecencies in tones more harsh than those of the camel or the ass; they indulge in promiscuous intercourse and are under no restraint. They clothe themselves in skins and blankets, and sound the cymbal and drum and conch, and cry aloud with hoarse voices: 'We will hasten to delight, in thick forests and in pleasant places; we will feast and sport; and gathering on the highways spring upon the travellers, and spoil and scourge them!' In Shakala, a female demon (a Rakshasi) on the fourteenth day of the dark fortnight sings aloud: 'I will feast on the flesh of kine, and quaff the inebriating spirit attended by fair and graceful females.' The Sudra-like Bahikas have no institutes nor sacrifices; and neither deities, manes, nor Brahmans accept their offerings. They eat out of wooden or earthen plates, nor heed their being smeared with wine or viands, or licked by dogs, and they use equally in its various preparations the milk of ewes, of camels and of asses. Who that has drunk milk in the city Yugandhara can hope to enter Svarga? Bahi and Hika were the names of two fiends in the Vipasha river; the Bahikas are their descendants and not of the creation of Brahma. Some say the Arattas are the name of the people and Bahika of the waters. The Vedas are not known there, nor oblation, nor sacrifice, and the gods will not partake of their food. The Prasthalas (perhaps borderers), Madras, Gandharas, Arattas, Khashas, Vasas, Atisindhus (or those beyond the Indus), Sauviras, are all equally infamous. There one who is by birth a Brahman, becomes a Kshatriya, or a Vaishya, or a Sudra, or a Barber, and having been a barber becomes a Brahman again. A virtuous woman was once violated by Aratta ruffians, and she cursed the race, and their women have ever since been unchaste. On this account their heirs are their sisters' children, not their own. All countries have their laws and gods: the Yavanas are wise, and preeminently brave; the Mlechchas observe their own ritual, but the Madrakas are worthless. Madra is the ordure of the earth: it is the region of inebriety, unchastity, robbery, and murder: fie on the Panchanada people! fie on the Aratta race!"

In the above account the country referred to is clearly the Punjab, from the mention of the five rivers and the Indus. The people are called Bahika or Jarttika, and would therefore seem to be the Jats. And the account would appear to refer to a period when they were newly settled in the Punjab and had not come under Hindu influence. But at the same time the Aryans or Hindus had passed through the Punjab and were settled in Hindustan. And it would therefore seem to be a necessary inference that the Jats were comparatively late immigrants, and were one of the tribes who invaded India between the second century B.C. and the fifth century A.D. as suggested above.

2. Sir D. Ibbetson's description of the caste.

Sir D. Ibbetson held that the Jats and Rajputs must be, to some extent at least, of the same blood. Though the Jats are represented in the Central Provinces only by a small body of immigrants it will be permissible to quote the following passages from his admirable and classical account of the caste: [185]

"It may be that the original Rajput and the original Jat entered India at different periods in its history, though to my mind the term Rajput is an occupational rather than an ethnological expression. But if they do originally represent two separate waves of immigration, it is at least exceedingly probable, both from their almost identical physique and facial character and from the close communion which has always existed between them, that they belong to one and the same ethnic stock; while, whether this be so or not, it is almost certain that they have been for many centuries and still are so intermingled and so blended into one people that it is practically impossible to distinguish them as separate wholes. It is indeed more than probable that the process of fusion has not ended here, and that the people who thus in the main resulted from the blending of the Jat and the Rajput, if these two were ever distinct, is by no means free from foreign elements....

3. Are the Jats and Rajputs distinct?

"But whether Jats and Rajputs were or were not originally distinct, and whatever aboriginal elements may have been affiliated to their society, I think that the two now form a common stock, the distinction between Jat and Rajput being social rather than ethnic. I believe that those families of that common stock whom the tide of fortune has raised to political importance have become Rajputs almost by mere virtue of their rise; and that their descendants have retained the title and its privileges on the condition, strictly enforced, of observing the rules by which the higher are distinguished from the lower castes in the Hindu scale of precedence; of preserving their purity of blood by refusing to marry with families of inferior social rank, of rigidly abstaining from widow-marriage, and of refraining from degrading occupations. Those who transgressed these rules have fallen from their high position and ceased to be Rajputs; while such families as, attaining a dominant position in their territory, began to affect social exclusiveness and to observe the rules, have become not only Rajas but also Rajputs or sons of Rajas. For the last seven centuries at least the process of elevation has been almost at a standstill. Under the Delhi Emperors king-making was practically impossible. Under the Sikhs the Rajput was overshadowed by the Jat, who resented his assumption of superiority and his refusal to join him on equal terms in the ranks of the Khalsa, deliberately persecuted him wherever and whenever he had the power, and preferred his title of Jat Sikh to that of the proudest Rajput. On the frontier the dominance of Pathans and Biloches and the general prevalence of Muhammadan feelings and ideas placed recent Indian origin at a discount, and led the leading families who belonged to neither of these two races to claim connection not with the Kshatriyas of the Sanskrit classics but with the Mughal conquerors of India or the Qureshi cousins of the Prophet; in so much that even admittedly Rajput tribes of famous ancestry, such as the Khokha, have begun to follow the example. But in the hills, where Rajput dynasties, with genealogies perhaps more ancient and unbroken than can be shown by any other royal families in the world, retained their independence till yesterday, and where many of them still enjoy as great social authority as ever, the twin processes of degradation from and elevation to Rajput rank are still to be seen in operation. The Raja is there the fountain not only of honour but also of caste, which is the same thing in India....

4. The position of the Jat in the Punjab.

"The Jat is in every respect the most important of the Punjab peoples. In point of numbers he surpasses the Rajput, who comes next to him, in the proportion of nearly three to one; while the two together constitute twenty-seven per cent of the whole population of the Province. Politically he ruled the Punjab till the Khalsa yielded to our arms. Ethnologically he is the peculiar and most prominent product of the plain of the five rivers. And from an economical and administrative point of view he is the husbandman, the peasant, the revenue-payer par excellence of the Province. His manners do not bear the impress of generations of wild freedom which marks the races of our frontier mountains. But he is more honest, more industrious, more sturdy, and no less manly than they. Sturdy independence indeed and patient, vigorous labour are his strongest characteristics. The Jat is of all Punjab races the most impatient of tribal or communal control, and the one which asserts the freedom of the individual most strongly. In tracts where, as in Rohtak, the Jat tribes have the field to themselves, and are compelled, in default of rival castes as enemies, to fall back upon each other for somebody to quarrel with, the tribal ties are strong. But as a rule a Jat is a man who does what seems right in his own eyes and sometimes what seems wrong also, and will not be said nay by any man. I do not mean, however, that he is turbulent; as a rule he is very far from being so. He is independent and he is self-willed; but he is reasonable, peaceably inclined if left alone, and not difficult to manage. He is usually content to cultivate his fields and pay his revenue in peace and quietness if people will let him do so; though when he does go wrong he takes to anything from gambling to murder, with perhaps a preference for stealing other people's wives and cattle. As usual the proverbial wisdom of the villages describes him very fairly though perhaps somewhat too severely: 'The soil, fodder, clothes, hemp, grass-fibre, and silk, these six are best beaten; and the seventh is the Jat.' 'A Jat, a Bhat, a caterpillar, and a widow woman; these four are best hungry. If they eat their fill they do harm.' 'The Jat, like a wound, is better when bound.' In agriculture the Jat is pre-eminent. The market-gardening castes, the Arain, the Mali, the Saini are perhaps more skilful cultivators on a small scale; but they cannot rival the Jat as landowners and yeoman cultivators. The Jat calls himself zamindar or 'husbandman' as often as Jat, and his women and children alike work with him in the fields: 'The Jat's baby has a plough-handle for a plaything.' 'The Jat stood on his corn heap and said to the king's elephant-drivers, Will you sell those little donkeys?' Socially the Jat occupies a position which is shared by the Ror, the Gujar, and the Ahir, all four eating and smoking together. He is, of course, far below the Rajput, from the simple fact that he practises widow-marriage. The Jat father is made to say in the rhyming proverbs of the countryside, 'Come, my daughter, and be married; if this husband dies there are plenty more.' But among the widow-marrying castes he stands first. The Bania with his sacred thread, his strict Hinduism, and his twice-born standing, looks down on the Jat as a Sudra. But the Jat looks down upon the Bania as a cowardly, spiritless money-grubber, and society in general agrees with the Jat. The Khatri, who is far superior to the Bania in manliness and vigour, probably takes precedence of the Jat. But among the races or tribes of purely Hindu origin, I think that the Jat stands next after the Brahman, the Rajput, and the Khatri."

5. Social status of the Jats.

The above account clearly indicates the social position of the Jat. His is the highest caste except the aristocracy consisting of the Brahmans and Rajputs, the Khatris who are derived from the Rajputs, and the Banias who are recognised as ranking not much below the Rajputs. The derivation of some of the Rajput clans from the Jats seems highly probable, and is confirmed by other instances of aristocratic selection in such castes as the Marathas and Kunbis, the Raj-Gonds and Gonds, and so on. If, however, the Rajputs are a Jat aristocracy, it is clear that the Jats were not the Sudras, who are described as wholly debased and impure in the Hindu classics; and the present application of the term Sudra to them is a misnomer arising from modern errors in classification by the Hindus themselves. The Jats, if Sir D. Ibbetson's account be accepted, must have been the main body of the invading host, whether Aryan or Scythian, of whom the Rajputs were the leaders. They settled on the land and formed village communities, and the status of the Jat at present appears to be that of a member of the village community and part-holder of its land. A slightly undue importance may perhaps have been given in the above passage to the practice of widow-marriage as determining the position of a great caste like the Jats. Some Rajputs, Kayasths and Banias permit widow-marriage, and considerable sections of all these castes, and Brahmans also, permit the practice of keeping widows, which, though not called a marriage, does not differ very widely from it. The Jat probably finds his women too valuable as assistants in cultivation to make a pretence at the abolition of widow-marriage in order to improve his social status as some other castes do. The Jat, of course, ranks as what is commonly called a pure caste, in that Brahmans take water to drink from him. But his status does not depend on this, because Brahmans take water from such menials as barbers, Kahars or bearers, Baris or household servants, and so on, who rank far below the Jat, and also from the Malis and other gardening castes who are appreciably below him. The Jat is equal to the Gujar and Ahir so far as social purity is concerned, but still above them, because they are graziers and vagrants, while he is a settled cultivator. It is from this fact that his status is perhaps mainly derived; and his leading characteristics, his independence, self-sufficiency, doggedness, and industry, are those generally recognised as typical of the peasant proprietor. But the Jat, in the Punjab at any rate, has also a higher status than the principal cultivating castes of other provinces, the Kurmi and the Kunbi. And this may perhaps be explained by his purer foreign descent, and also by the fact that both as Jat and as Sikh his caste has been a military and dominant one in history and has furnished princes and heads of states.

6. Brahmanical legend of origin.

The Jats themselves relate the following Brahmanical legend of their origin. On one occasion when Himachal or Daksha Raja, the father-in-law of Mahadeo, was performing a great sacrifice, he invited all the gods to be present except his son-in-law Mahadeo (Siva). The latter's wife Parvati was, however, very anxious to go, so she asked Mahadeo to let her attend, even though she had not been invited. Mahadeo was unwilling to do this, but finally consented. But Daksha treated Parvati with great want of respect at the sacrifice, so she came home and told Mahadeo about him. When Mahadeo heard this he was filled with wrath, and untying his matted hair (jata) dashed it on the ground, when two powerful beings arose from it. He sent them to destroy Daksha's sacrifice and they went and destroyed it, and from these were descended the race of the Jats, and they take their name from the matted locks (jata) of the lord Mahadeo. Another saying of the caste is that "The ancestor of the Rajputs was Kashyap [186] and of the Jats Siva. In the beginning these were the only two races of India."

7. The Jats in the Central Provinces.