Chapter 17

Marriage is forbidden between members of the same sept and between first and second cousins. Girls are generally betrothed in childhood and should be married before maturity. In the Uriya country if no suitable husband can be found for a girl she is sometimes made to go through the marriage ceremony with a peg of mahua wood driven into the ground and covered over with a cloth. She is then tied to a tree in the forest and any member of the caste may go and release her, when she becomes his wife. The Marars of Balaghat and Bhandara have the _lamjhana_ form of marriage, in which the prospective husband serves for his wife; this is a Dravidian custom and shows their connection with the forest tribes. The marriage ceremony follows the standard form prevalent in the locality. In Betul the couple go seven times round a slab on which a stone roller is placed, with their clothes knotted together and holding in their hands a lighted lamp. The slab and roller may be the implements used in powdering turmeric. "Among the Marars of Balaghat [167] the maternal uncle of the bridegroom goes to the village of the bride and brings back with him the bridal party. The bride's party do not at once cross the boundary of the bridegroom's village, but will stay outside it for a few hours. Word is sent and the bridegroom's party will bring out cooked food, which they eat with the bride's party. This done, they go to the house of the bridegroom and the bride forthwith walks five times round a pounding-stone. Next day turmeric is applied to the couple, and the caste people are given a feast. The essential portion of the ceremony consists in the rubbing of vermilion on the foreheads of the couple under the cover of a cloth. The caste permit the practice of _ralla-palla_ or exchanging sisters in marriage. They are said to have a custom at weddings known as _kondia_, according to which a young man of the bridegroom's party, called the _Sand_ or bull, is shut up in a house at night with all the women of the bride's party; he is at liberty to seize and have intercourse with any of them he can catch, while they are allowed to beat him as much as they like. It is said that he seldom has much cause to congratulate himself." But the caste have now become ashamed of this custom and it is being abandoned. In Chhattisgarh the Marars, like other castes, have the forms of marriage known as the _Badi Shadi_ and _Chhoti Shadi_ or great and small weddings. The former is an elaborate form of marriage, taking place at the house of the bride. Those who cannot afford the expense of this have a 'Small Wedding' at the house of the bridegroom, at which the rites are curtailed and the expenditure considerably reduced.

7. Widow-marriage, divorce and polygamy

Widow-marriage is permitted. The widower, accompanied by his relatives and a horn-blower, goes to the house of the widow, and here a space is plastered with cowdung and the couple sit on two wooden boards while their clothes are knotted together. In Balaghat [168] the bridegroom and bride bathe in a tank and on emerging the widow throws away her old cloth and puts on a new one. After this they walk five times round a spear planted in the ground. Divorce is permitted and can be effected by mutual consent of the parties. Like other castes practising intensive cultivation the Malis marry several wives when they can afford it, in order to obtain the benefit of their labour in the vegetable garden; a wife being more industrious and honest than a hired labourer. But this practice results in large families and household dissensions, leading to excessive subdivision of property, and wealthy members of the caste are rare. The standard of sexual morality is low, and if an unmarried girl goes wrong her family conceal the fact and sometimes try to procure an abortion. If these efforts are unsuccessful a feast must be given to the caste and a lock of the woman's hair is cut off by way of punishment. A young hard-working wife is never divorced, however bad her character may be, but an old woman is sometimes abandoned for very little cause.

8. Disposal of the dead

The dead may be either buried or burnt; in the former case the corpse is laid with the feet to the north. Mourning is observed only for three days and propitiatory offerings are made to the spirits of the dead. If a man is killed by a tiger his family make a wooden image of a tiger and worship it.

9. Religion

Devi is the principal deity of the Malis. Weddings are celebrated before her temple and large numbers of goats are sacrificed to the favourite goddess at her festival in the month of Magh (January). Many of the Marars of Balaghat are Kabirpanthis and wear the necklace of that sect; but they appear none the less to intermarry freely with their Hindu caste-fellows. [169] After the birth of a child it is stated that all the members of the sept to which the parents belong remain impure for five days, and no one will take food or water from them.

10. Occupation

The Mali combines the callings of a gardener and nurseryman. "In laying out a flower-garden and in arranging beds," Mr. Shearing remarks, [170] "the Mali is exceedingly expert. His powers in this respect are hardly surpassed by gardeners in England. He lacks of course the excellent botanical knowledge of many English gardeners, and also the peculiar skill displayed by them in grafting and crossing, and in watching the habits of plants. Yet in manipulative labour, especially when superintended by a European, he is, though much slower in execution, almost if not quite equal to gardeners at home." They are excellent and very laborious cultivators, and show much skill in intensive cultivation and the use of water. Malis are the best sugarcane growers of Betul and their holdings usually pay a higher rental than those of other castes. "In Balaghat," Mr. Low remarks, [171] "they are great growers of tobacco and sugarcane, favouring the alluvial land on the banks of rivers. They mostly irrigate by a _dhekli_ or dipping lift, from temporary wells or from water-holes in rivers. The pole of the lift has a weight at one end and a kerosene tin suspended from the other. Another form of lift is a hollowed tree trunk worked on a fulcrum, but this only raises the water a foot or two. The Marars do general cultivation as well; but as a class are not considered skilled agriculturists. The proverb about their cultivating status is:

Marar, Mali jote tali Tali margayi, dhare kudali

or, 'The Marar yokes cows; if the cow dies he takes to the pickaxe'; implying that he is not usually rich enough to keep bullocks." The saying has also a derogatory sense, as no good Hindu would yoke a cow to the plough. Another form of lift used by the Kachhis is the Persian wheel. In this two wheels are fixed above the well or tank and long looped ropes pass over them and down into the well, between which a line of earthen pots is secured. As the ropes move on the wheels the pots descend into the well, are filled with water, brought up, and just after they reach the apex of the wheel and turn to descend again, the water pours out to a hollow open tree-trunk, from which a channel conveys it to the field. The wheel which turns the rope is worked by a man pedalling, but he cannot do more than about three hours a day. The common lift for gardens is the _mot_ or bag made of the hide of a bullock or buffalo. This is usually worked by a pair of bullocks moving forwards down a slope to raise the _mot_ from the well and backwards up the slope to let it down when empty.

11. Traits and character

"It is necessary," the account continues, "for the Marar's business for one member at least of his family to go to market with his vegetables; and the Mararin is a noteworthy feature in all bazars, sitting with her basket or garment spread on the ground, full of white onions and garlic, purple brinjals and scarlet chillies, with a few handfuls of strongly flavoured green stuff. Whether from the publicity which it entails on their women or from whatever cause, the Mararin does not bear the best of reputations for chastity; and is usually considered rather a bold, coarse creature. The distinctive feature of her attire is the way in which she ties up her body-cloth so as to leave a tail sticking up behind; whence the proverb shouted after her by rude little boys: 'Jump from roof to roof, Monkey. Pull the tail of the Mararin, Monkey,' She also rejoices in a very large _tikli_ or spangle on her forehead and in a peculiar kind of _angia_ (waistcoat). The caste are usually considered rather clannish and morose. They live in communities by themselves, and nearly always inhabit a separate hamlet of the village. The Marars of a certain place are said to have boycotted a village carpenter who lost an axe belonging to one of their number, so that he had to leave the neighbourhood for lack of custom."

12. Other functions of the Mali

Many Malis live in the towns and keep vegetable- or flower-gardens just outside. They sell flowers, and the Mali girls are very good flower-sellers, Major Sutherland says, being famous for their coquetry. A saying about them is: "The crow among birds, the jackal among beasts, the barber among men and the Malin among women; all these are much too clever." The Mali also prepares the _maur_ or marriage-crown, made from the leaves of the date-palm, both for the bride and bridegroom at marriages. In return he gets a present of a rupee, a piece of cloth and a day's food. He also makes the garlands which are used for presentation at entertainments, and supplies the daily bunches of flowers which are required as offerings for Mahadeo. The Mali keeps garlands for sale in the bazar, and when a well-to-do person passes he goes up and puts a garland round his neck and expects a present of a pice or two.

13. Physical appearance

"Physically," Mr. Low states, "the Marar is rather a poor-looking creature, dark and undersized; but the women are often not bad looking, and dressed up in their best at a wedding, rattling their castanets and waving light-coloured silk handkerchiefs, give a very graceful dance. The caste are not as a rule celebrated for their cleanliness. A polite way of addressing a Marar is to call him Patel."

Mallah

_Mallah, Malha_. [172]--A small caste of boatmen and fishermen in the Jubbulpore and Narsinghpur Districts, which numbered about 5000 persons in 1911. It is scarcely correct to designate the Mallahs as a distinct caste, as in both these Districts it appears from inquiry that the term is synonymous with Kewat. Apparently, however, the Mallahs do form a separate endogamous group, and owing to many of them having adopted the profession of growing hemp, a crop which respectable Hindu castes usually refuse to cultivate, it is probable that they would not be allowed to intermarry with the Kewats of other Districts. In the United Provinces Mr. Crooke states that the Mallahs, though, as their Arabic name indicates, of recent origin, have matured into a definite social group, including a number of endogamous tribes. The term Mallah has nothing to do with the Mulla or Muhammadan priest among the frontier tribes, but comes from an Arabic word meaning 'to be salt,' or, according to another derivation, 'to move the wings as a bird.' [173] The Mallahs of the Central Provinces are also, in spite of their Arabic name, a purely Hindu caste. In Narsinghpur they say that their original ancestor was one Bali or Baliram, who was a boatman and was so strong that he could carry his boat to the river and back under his armpit. On one occasion he ferried Rama across the Ganges in Benares, and it is said that Rama gave him a horse to show his gratitude; but Baliram was so ignorant that he placed the bridle on the horse's tail instead of the head. And from this act of Baliram's arose the custom of having the rudder of a boat at the stern instead of at the bow. The Mallahs in the Central Provinces appear from their family names to be immigrants from Bundelkhand. Their customs resemble those of lower-class Hindus. Girls are usually married under the age of twelve years, and the remarriage of widows is permitted, while divorce may be effected in the presence of the _panchayat_ or caste committee by the husband and wife breaking a straw between them. They are scantily clothed and are generally poor. A proverb about them says:

Jahan bethen Malao Tahan lage alao,

or, 'Where Mallahs sit, there is always a fire.' This refers to their custom of kindling fires on the river-bank to protect themselves from cold. In Narsinghpur the Mallahs have found a profitable opening in the cultivation of hemp, a crop which other Hindu castes until recently tabooed on account probably of the dirty nature of the process of cleaning out the fibre and the pollution necessarily caused to the water-supply. They sow and cut hemp on Sundays and Wednesdays, which are regarded as auspicious days. They also grow melons, and will not enter a melon-field with their shoes on or allow a woman during her periodical impurity to approach it. The Mallahs are poor and illiterate, but rank with Dhimars and Kewats, and Brahmans will take water from their hands.

Mana

_Mana_. [174]--A Dravidian caste of cultivators and labourers belonging to the Chanda District, from which they have spread to Nagpur, Bhandara and Balaghat. In 1911 they numbered nearly 50,000 persons, of whom 34,000 belonged to Chanda. The origin of the caste is obscure. In the _Chanda Settlement Report_ of 1869 Major Lucie Smith wrote of them: "Tradition asserts that prior to the Gond conquest the Manas reigned over the country, having their strongholds at Surajgarh in Ahiri and at Manikgarh in the Manikgarh hills, now of Hyderabad, and that after a troubled rule of two hundred years they fell before the Gonds. In appearance they are of the Gond type, and are strongly and stoutly made; while in character they are hardy, industrious and truthful. Many warlike traditions still linger among them, and doubtless in days gone by they did their duty as good soldiers, but they have long since hung up sword and shield and now rank among the best cultivators of rice in Chanda." Another local tradition states that a line of Mana princes ruled at Wairagarh. The names of three princes are remembered: Kurumpruhoda, the founder of the line; Surjat Badwaik, who fortified Surjagarh; and Gahilu, who built Manikgarh. As regards the name Manikgarh, it may be mentioned that the tutelary deity of the Nagvansi kings of Bastar, who ruled there before the accession of the present Raj-Gond dynasty in the fourteenth century, was Manikya Devi, and it is possible that the chiefs of Wairagarh were connected with the Bastar kings. Some of the Manas say that they, as well as the Gowaris, are offshoots of the Gond tribe; and a local saying to the effect that 'The Gond, the Gowari and the Mana eat boiled juari or beans on leaf-plates' shows that they are associated together in the popular mind. Hislop states that the Ojhas, or soothsayers and minstrels of the Gonds, have a subdivision of Mana Ojhas, who lay claim to special sanctity, refusing to take food from any other caste. [175] The Gonds have a subdivision called Mannewar, and as _war_ is only a Telugu suffix for the plural, the proper name Manne closely resembles Mana. It is shown in the article on the Parja tribe that the Parjas were a class of Gonds or a tribe akin to them, who were dominant in Bastar prior to the later immigration under the ancestors of the present Bastar dynasty. And the most plausible hypothesis as to the past history of the Manas is that they were also the rulers of some tracts of Chanda, and were displaced like the Parjas by a Gond invasion from the south.

In Bhandara, where the Manas hold land, it is related that in former times a gigantic kite lived on the hill of Ghurkundi, near Sakoli, and devoured the crops of the surrounding country by whole fields at a time. The king of Chanda proclaimed that whoever killed the kite would be granted the adjoining lands. A Mana shot the kite with an arrow and its remains were taken to Chanda in eight carts, and as his reward he received the grant of a zamindari. In appearance the Manas, or at least some of them, are rather fine men, nor do their complexion and features show more noticeable traces of aboriginal descent than those of the local Hindus. But their neighbours in Chanda and Bastar, the Maria Gonds, are also taller and of a better physical type than the average Dravidian, so that their physical appearance need not militate against the above hypothesis. They retained their taste for fighting until within quite recent times, and in Katol and other towns below the Satpura hills, Manas were regularly enlisted as a town guard for repelling the Pindari raids. Their descendants still retain the ancestral matchlocks, and several of them make good use of these as professional _shikaris_ or hunters. Many of them are employed as servants by landowners and moneylenders for the collection of debts or the protection of crops, and others are proprietors, cultivators and labourers, while a few even lend money on their own account. Manas hold three zamindari estates in Bhandara and a few villages in Chanda; here they are considered to be good cultivators, but have the reputation as a caste of being very miserly, and though possessed of plenty, living only on the poorest and coarsest food. [176] The Mana women are proverbial for the assistance which they render to their husbands in the work of cultivation.

Owing to their general adoption of Maratha customs, the Manas are now commonly regarded as a caste and not a forest tribe, and this view may be accepted. They have two subcastes, the Badwaik Manas, or soldiers, and the Khad Manas, who live in the plains and are considered to be of impure descent. Badwaik or 'The Great Ones' is a titular term applied to a person carrying arms, and assumed by certain Rajputs and also by some of the lower castes. A third group of Manas are now amalgamated with the Kunbis as a regular subdivision of that caste, though they are regarded as somewhat lower than the others. They have also a number of exogamous septs of the usual titular and totemistic types, the few recognisable names being Marathi. It is worth noticing that several pairs of these septs, as Jamare and Gazbe, Narnari and Chudri, Wagh and Rawat, and others are prohibited from intermarriage. And this may be a relic of some wider scheme of division of the type common among the Australian aborigines. The social customs of the Manas are the same as those of the other lower Maratha castes, as described in the articles on Kunbi, Kohli and Mahar. A bride-price of Rs. 12-8 is usually paid, and if the bridegroom's father has the money, he takes it with him on going to arrange for the match. Only one married woman of the bridegroom's family accompanies him to the wedding, and she throws rice over him five times. Four days in the year are appointed for the celebration of weddings, the festivals of Shivratri and of Akhatij, and a day each in the months of Magh (January) and Phagun (February). This rule, however, is not universal. Brahmans do not usually officiate at their ceremonies, but they employ a Brahman to prepare the rice which is thrown over the couples. Marriage within the sept is forbidden, as well as the union of the children of two sisters. But the practice of marrying a brother's daughter to a sister's son is a very favourite one, being known as Mahunchar, and in this respect the Manas resemble the Gonds. When a widow is to be remarried, she stops on the way by the bank of a stream as she is proceeding to her new husband's house, and here her clothes are taken off and buried by an exorcist with a view to laying the first husband's spirit and preventing it from troubling the new household. If a woman goes wrong with a man of another caste she is not finally cast out, but if she has a child she must first dispose of it to somebody else after it is weaned. She may then be re-admitted into caste by having her hair shaved off and giving three feasts; the first is prepared by the caste and eaten outside her house, the second is prepared by her relatives and eaten within her house, and at the third the caste reinstate her by partaking of food cooked by herself. The dead are either buried or burnt; in the former case a feast is given immediately after the burial and no further mourning is observed; in the latter the period of mourning is three days. As among the Gonds, the dead are laid with feet to the north. A woman is impure for seven days after child-birth.

The Manas have Bhats or genealogists of their own caste, a separate one being appointed for each sept. The Bhat of any sept can only accept gifts from members of that sept, though he may take food from any one of the caste. The Bhats are in the position of beggars, and the other Manas will not take food from them. Every man must have a Bhat for his family under penalty of being temporarily put out of caste. It is said that the Bhats formerly had books showing the pedigrees of the different families, but that once in a spirit of arrogance they placed their shoes upon the books; and the other Manas, not brooking this insolence, burnt the books. The gravity of such an act may be realised when it is stated that if anybody even threatens to hit a Mana with a shoe, the indignity put upon him is so great that he is temporarily excluded from caste and penalised for readmission. Since this incident the Bhats have to address the Manas as 'Brahma,' to show their respect, the Mana replying 'Ram, Ram.' Their women wear short loin-cloths, exposing part of the thigh, like the Gonds. They eat pork and drink liquor, but will take cooked food only from Brahmans.

Manbhao

1. History and nature of the sect