Part 46

In the Central Provinces the Kirars have no regular subcastes. In Chhindwara a subdivision is in course of formation from the illegitimate offspring of male Kirars, who are known as Vidur or Saoneria. The Dhakar Kirars do not marry or eat with Saonerias. The section-names of the Kirars are not eponymous, as might be anticipated from their claim to Rajput descent, but they are generally territorial. Instances are Bankhedi, from Bankhedi, a village in Hoshangabad; Garhya, from Garha, near Jubbulpore; and Teharia, from Tehri, a State in Bundelkhand. Other section-names are Chaudharia, from Chaudhari, headman; Khandait or swordsman, and Banda, or tailless. Some gotras are derived from the names of other castes or subcastes, or of Rajput septs, as Loharia, from Lohar (blacksmith); Chauria, a subcaste of Kurmis; Lilorhia, a subcaste of Gujars; and Solanki and Chauhan, the names of Rajput septs. These names may probably be taken to indicate the mixed origin of the caste, and record the admission of families from other castes. A man cannot marry in his own gotra nor in the families of his grandmother, paternal uncle or maternal aunt to three degrees of consanguinity. Boys and girls are usually married between the ages of five and twelve. Marriages take place so long as the planet Venus or Shukra is visible at nights, i.e. between the months of Aghan (November) and Asarh (June). The proposal for marriage proceeds from the boy's father, who ascertains the wishes of the girl's father through a barber. If the latter is willing, the Sagai or betrothal ceremony is performed at the girl's house. The boy's father proceeds there with a rupee, two pice and a cocoanut-core, which he presents to the girl, taking her into his lap. The fathers of the boy and girl embrace, and this seals the compact of betrothal. The date of the marriage is usually fixed in consultation with a Brahman, who computes an auspicious day from the ceremonial names of the couple. But if it is desired to perform the marriage at once, it may take place on Akhatij, or the third day of the bright fortnight of Baisakh (April-May), which is always auspicious. The lagan or paper containing the date of the marriage is drawn up ceremonially by a Brahman of the girl's house, and he also writes another, giving the names of the relatives who are selected to officiate at the ceremony. The first ceremony at the marriage is that of Mangar Mati, or bringing earth for ovens, the earth being worshipped by a burnt offering of butter and sugar, and then dug up by the Sawasin or girl's attendant for the marriage, and carried home by several women in baskets. This is done in the morning, and in the evening the boy and girl in their respective houses are anointed with oil and turmeric, a little being first thrown on the ground for the family gods. This ceremony is repeated every evening for some three to fifteen days. The mandwa or marriage-shed is then erected at both houses, under which the ceremony of tel or touching the feet, knees, shoulders and forehead of the boy and the girl with oil is performed. Next day the kham or marriage-post is placed in the mandwa, a little rice, turmeric and two pice being put in the hole in which it is fixed, and the shed is covered with leaves. The bridegroom, clad in a blanket and with date-leaves tied on his head, is taken out for the binaiki or the marriage procession on horseback. Before mounting, he bows to Mata or Devi, Mahabir, Hardaul Lala, and Patel Deo, the spirit of the deceased malguzar of the village. He is taken round to the houses of friends and relatives, who present him with a few pice. On his return he bathes and puts on the marriage dress, which consists of a red or yellow jama or gown, a pair of trousers, a pagri, a maur or marriage crown and a cloth about his waist. A few women's ornaments are put on his neck, and he is furnished with a katar or dagger, and in its absence a nutcracker or knife. He then comes out of the house and the parchhan ceremony is performed, the boy's mother putting her nipple in his mouth and giving him a little ghi and sugar to eat as a symbol of the termination of his infancy. The Barat or marriage procession then sets out for the girl's village, being met on its outskirts by the bride's father, and the forehead of the bridegroom is marked with sandalwood paste. The bridegroom touches the Mandwa with his hand or throws a bamboo fan over it and returns with his followers to the Janwasa or lodging given to the Barat. Next morning the ceremony of Chadhao or decorating the bride is performed, and the bridegroom's party give her the clothes and ornaments which they have brought for her, these being first offered to an image of Ganesh made of cowdung. The bride is then mounted on a horse provided by the bridegroom's party and goes round to the houses of the friends of the family, accompanied by music and the women of her party, and receives small presents. The Bhanwar ceremony is performed during the night, the couple being seated near the marriage-post with their backs to the house. A ball of kneaded flour is put in the girl's right hand, which is then placed on the right hand of the bridegroom, and the bride's brother pours water over their hands. The bride's maternal uncle and aunt, with the skirts of their clothes tied together, step forward and wash the feet of the couple and give them presents. The other relatives follow suit, and this completes the ceremony of Paon Pakhurai or Daija, that is giving the dowry. The couple then go round the marriage-post seven times, the girl leading for the first four rounds and the boy for the last three. This is the Bhanwar ceremony or binding portion of the marriage, and the polar star is called on to make it inviolable. The bridegroom's party are then feasted, the women meantime singing obscene songs. The bride goes back to the bridegroom's house and stays there for a few days, after which she returns to her parents' house and does not leave it again until the gauna ceremony is performed. On this occasion the bridegroom's party go to the girl's house with a present of sweets and clothes which they present to her parents, and they then take away the girl. Even after this she is again sent back to her parents' house, and the bridegroom comes a second time to fetch her, on which occasion the parents of the bride have to make a present in return for the sweets and clothes previously given to them. The marriage expenses are said to average between Rs. 50 and Rs. 100, but the extravagance of Kirars is notorious. Sir R. Craddock says [527] that they are much given to display, the richer members of the caste being heavily weighted with jewellery, while a well-to-do Kirar will think nothing of spending Rs. 1000 on his house, or if he is a landowner Rs. 5000. Extravagance ruins a great many of the Kirar community. This statement, however, perhaps applies to those of the Nagpur District rather than to their comrades of the Nerbudda valley and Satpura highlands. The remarriage of widows is permitted, and the widow may marry either her husband's younger brother or any other member of the caste at her choice. The ceremony takes place at night, the woman being brought to her husband's house by the back door and given a new cloth and bangles. Turmeric is then applied to her body, and the clothes of the couple are tied together. When a bachelor marries a widow, he must first be married to an akau plant (swallow-wort). Divorce may be effected for infidelity on the part of the wife or for serious disagreement. A divorced woman may marry again. Polygamy is allowed, and in Chhindwara is said to be restricted to three wives, all living within the District, but elsewhere no such limitation is enforced. A man seldom, however, takes more than one wife, except for the sake of children.

3. Religion.

They worship the ordinary Hindu gods and especially Devi, to whom they offer female kids. During the months of Baisakh and Jeth (April-June) those living in Betul and Chhindwara make a pilgrimage to the Nag Deo or cobra god, who is supposed to have his seat somewhere on the border of the two Districts. Every third year they also take their cattle outside the village, and turning their faces in the direction of the Nag Deo sprinkle a little water and kill goats and fowls. They worship the Patel Deo or spirit of the deceased malguzar of the village only on the occasion of marriages. They consider the service of the village headman to be their traditional occupation besides agriculture, and they therefore probably pay this special compliment to the spirit of their employer. They worship their implements of husbandry on some convenient day, which must be a Wednesday or a Sunday, after they have sown the spring crops. Those who grow sugarcane offer a goat or a cocoanut to the crop before it is cut, and a similar offering is made to the stock of grain after harvest, so that its bulk may not decrease. They observe the ordinary festivals, and like other Hindus cease to observe one on which a death has occurred in the family, until some happy event such as the birth of a child, or even of a calf, supervenes on the same day. Unmarried children under seven and persons dying of smallpox, snake-bite or cholera are buried, and others are either buried or burnt according to the convenience of the family. Males are placed on the pyre or in the grave on their faces and females on their backs, with their feet pointing to the south in each case. In some places the corpse is buried stark naked, and in others with a piece of cloth wrapped round it, and two pice are usually placed in the grave to buy the site. When a corpse is burnt the head is touched with a bamboo before it is laid on the funeral pyre, by way of breaking it in and allowing the soul to escape if it has not already done so. For three days the mourners place food, water and tobacco in cups for the disembodied soul. Mourning is observed for children for three days and for adults from seven to ten days. During this period the mourners refrain from luxurious food such as flesh, turmeric, vegetables, milk and sweets; they do not wear shoes, nor change their clothes, and males are not shaved until the last day of mourning. Balls of rice are then offered to the dead, and the caste people are feasted. Oblations of water are offered to ancestors in the month of Kunwar (September-October).

4. Social customs.

The caste do not admit outsiders. In the matter of food they eat flesh and fish, but abstain from liquor and from eating fowls, except in the Maratha country. They will take pakka food or that cooked without water from Gujars, Raghuvansis and Lodhis. In the Nagpur country, where the difference between katcha and pakka food is not usually observed, they will not take it from any but Maratha Brahmans. Abirs and Dhimars are said to eat with them, and the northern Brahmans will take water from them. They have a caste panchayat or committee with a hereditary president called Sethia, whose business it is to eat first when admitting a person who has been put out of caste. Killing a cat or a squirrel, selling a cow to a butcher, growing hemp or selling shoes are offences which entail temporary excommunication from caste. A woman who commits adultery with a man of another caste is permanently excluded. The Kirars are tall in stature and well and stoutly built. They have regular features and are generally of a fair colour. They are regarded as quarrelsome and untruthful, and as tyrannical landlords. As agriculturists they are supposed to be of encroaching tendencies, and the proverbial prayer attributed to them is, "O God, give me two bullocks, and I shall plough up the common way." Another proverb quoted in Mr. Standen's Betul Settlement Report, in illustration of their avarice, is "If you put a rupee between two Kirars, they become like mast buffaloes in Kunwar." The men always wear turbans, while the women may be distinguished in the Maratha country by their adherence to the dress of the northern Districts. Girls are tattooed on the back of their hands before they begin to live with their husbands. A woman may not name her husband's elder brother or even touch his clothes or the vessels in which he has eaten food. They are not distinguished for cleanliness.

5. Occupation.

Agriculture and the service of the village headman are the traditional occupations of Kirars. In Nagpur they are considered to be very good cultivators, but they have no special reputation in the northern Districts. About a thousand of them are landowners, and the large majority are tenants. They grow garden crops and sugarcane, but abstain from the cultivation of hemp.

Kohli

1. General notice.

Kohli.--A small caste of cultivators found in the Marathi-speaking tracts of the Wainganga Valley, comprised in the Bhandara and Chanda Districts. They numbered about 26,000 persons in 1911. The Kohlis are a notable caste as being the builders of the great irrigation reservoirs or tanks, for which the Wainganga Valley is celebrated. The water is used for irrigating rice and sugarcane, the latter being the favourite crop of the Kohlis. The origin of the caste is somewhat doubtful. The name closely resembles that of the Koiri caste of market-gardeners in northern India; and the terms Kohiri and Kohli are used there as variations of the caste name Koiri. The caste themselves have a tradition that they were brought to Bhandara from Benares by one of the Gond kings of Chanda on his return from a visit to that place; [528] and the Kohlis of Bhandara say that their first settlement in the Central Provinces was at Lanji, which lies north of Bhandara in Balaghat. But on the other hand all that is known of their language, customs, and sept or family names points to a purely Maratha origin, the caste being in all these respects closely analogous to the Kunbis. The Settlement Officer of Chanda, Colonel Lucie Smith, stated that they thought their forefathers came from the south. They tie their head-cloths in a similar fashion to the Gandlis, who are oilmen from the Telugu country. If they belonged to the south of India they might be an offshoot from the well-known Koli tribe of Bombay, and this hypothesis appears the more probable. As a general rule castes from northern India settling in the Maratha country have not completely abandoned their ancestral language and customs even after a residence of several centuries. In the case of such castes as the Panwars and Bhoyars their foreign extraction can be detected at once; and if the Kohlis had come from Hindustan the rule would probably hold good with them. On the other hand the Kolis have in some parts of Bombay now taken to cultivation and closely resemble the Kunbis. In Satara it is said [529] that they associate and occasionally eat with Kunbis, and their social and religious customs resemble those of the Kunbi caste. They are quiet, orderly, settled and hard-working. Besides fishing they work ferries along the Krishna, are employed in villages as water-carriers, and grow melons in river-beds with much skill. The Kolis of Bombay are presumably the same tribe as the Kols of Chota Nagpur, and they probably migrated to Gujarat along the Vindhyan plateau, where they are found in considerable numbers, and over the hills of Rajputana and Central India. The Kols are one of the most adaptive of all the non-Aryan tribes, and when they reached the sea they may have become fishermen and boatmen, and practised these callings also in rivers. From plying on rivers they might take to cultivating melons and garden-crops on the stretches of silt left uncovered in their beds in the dry season, which is the common custom of the boating and fishing castes. And from this, as seen in Satara, some of them attained to regular cultivation and, modelling themselves on the Kunbis, came to have nearly the same status. They may thus have migrated to Chanda and Bhandara with the Kunbis, as their language and customs would indicate, and retaining their preference for irrigated and garden-crops have become expert growers of sugarcane. The description which has been received of the Kohlis of Bhandara would be rather favourable than otherwise to the hypothesis of their ultimate origin from the Kol tribe, allowing for their having acquired the Maratha language and customs from a lengthened residence in Bombay. It has been mentioned above that the Kohlis have a legend of their ancestors having come from Benares, but this story appears to be not infrequently devised as a means of obtaining increased social estimation, Benares being the principal centre of orthodox Hinduism. Thus the Dangris, a small caste of vegetable- and melon-growers who are certainly an offshoot of the Kunbis, and therefore of Maratha extraction, have the same story. As regards the tradition of the Bhandara Kohlis that their first settlement was at Lanji, this may well have been the case even though they came from the south, as Lanji was an important place and a centre of administration under the Marathas. It is probable, however, that they first came to Chanda and from here spread north to Lanji, as, if they had entered Bhandara through Wardha and Nagpur, some of them would probably have remained in these Districts.

2. Marriage and other customs.

The Kohlis have no subcastes. They are divided into the usual exogamous groups or septs with the object of preventing marriages between relations, and these have Marathi names of the territorial or titular type. Among them may be mentioned Handifode (one who breaks a cooking vessel), Sahre (from shahar, a town), Nagpure (from Nagpur), Shende (from shend, cowdung), Parwate (from parwat, mountain), Hatwade (an obstinate man), Mungus-mare (one who killed a mongoose), Pustode (one who broke a bullock's tail), and so on. Marriage within the sept is prohibited. A brother's daughter may be married to his sister's son, but not vice versa. Girls are usually wedded before arriving at adolescence, more especially as there is a great demand for brides. Like other castes engaged in spade cultivation, the Kohlis marry two or more wives when they can afford it, a wife being a more willing servant than a hired labourer, apart from the other advantages. If his wives do not get on together, the Kohli gives them separate huts in his courtyard, where each lives and cooks her meals for herself. He will also allot them separate tasks, assigning to one the care of his household affairs, to another the watching of his sugarcane plot, and so on. If he does this successfully the wives are kept well at work and have not time to quarrel. It is said that whenever a Kohli has a bountiful harvest he looks out for another wife. This naturally leads to a scarcity of women and the payment of a substantial bride-price. The recognised amount is Rs. 30, but this is only formal, and from Rs. 50 to Rs. 150 may be given according to the attractions of the girl, the largest sum being paid for a woman of full age who can go and live with her husband at once. As a consequence of this state of things poor men are sometimes unable to get wives at all. Though they pay highly for their wives the Kohlis are averse to extravagant expenditure on weddings, and all marriages in a village are generally celebrated on the same day once a year, the number of guests at each being thus necessarily restricted. The officiating Brahman ascends the roof of a house and, after beating a brass dish to warn the parties, repeats the marriage texts as the sun goes down. At this moment all the couples place garlands of flowers on each other's shoulders, each bridegroom ties the mangal-sutram or necklace of black beads round his bride's neck, and the weddings are completed. The bride's brother winds a thread round the marriage crowns of the couple and is given two rupees for untying it. The services of a Brahman are not indispensable, and an elder of the caste may officiate as priest. Next day the barber and washerman take the bridegroom and bride in their arms and dance, holding them, to the accompaniment of music, while the women throw red rose-powder over the couple. At their weddings the Kohlis make models in wood of a Chamar's rampi or knife and khurpa or scraper, this custom perhaps indicating some connection with the Chamars; or it may have arisen simply on account of the important assistance rendered by the Chamar to the cultivation of sugarcane, in supplying the mot or leather bag for raising water from the well. After the wedding is over a string of hemp from a cot is tied round the necks of the pair, and their maternal uncles then run and offer it at the shrine of Marai Mata, the goddess of cholera. Widows with any remains of youth or personal attractions always marry again, the ceremony being held at midnight according to the customary ritual of the Maratha Districts. [530] Sometimes the husband does not attend at all, and the widow is united to a sword or dagger as representing him. Otherwise the widow may be conducted to her new husband's house by five other widows, and in this case they halt at a stream by the way and the bangles and beads are broken from off her neck and wrists. On account, perhaps, of the utility of their wives, and the social temptations which beset them from being continually abroad at work, the Kohlis are lenient to conjugal offences, and a woman going wrong even with an outsider will be taken back by her husband and only a trifling punishment imposed by the caste. A Kohli can also keep a woman of any other caste, except of those regarded as impure, without incurring any censure. Divorce is very seldom resorted to and involves severe penalties to both parties. As among the Panwars, a wife retains any property she may bring to her husband and her wedding gifts at her own disposal, this separate portion being known as khamora. The caste burn their dead when they can afford it, placing the head of the corpse to the north on the pyre. The bodies of those who have died from cholera or smallpox are buried. Like the Panwars it is the custom of the Kohlis on bathing after a funeral to have a meal of cakes and sugar on the river-bank, a practice which is looked down on by orthodox Hindus. After a month or so the deceased person is considered to be united to the ancestors, and when he was the head of the family his successor is inducted to the position by the presentation of a new head-cloth and a silver bangle. The bereaved family are then formally escorted to the weekly market and are considered to have resumed their regular social relations. The Kohlis revere the ordinary Hindu deities, and on the day of Dasahra they worship their axe, sickle and ploughshare by washing them and making an offering of rice, flowers and turmeric. The axe is no doubt included because it serves to cut the wood for fencing the sugarcane garden.

3. The Kohlis as tank-builders.