Hindu Tribes and Castes (Set of 3 Volumes)

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THIS work is of a practical character, and professes to be a description of the actual circumstances of the castes and tribes, of which it treats. No one can be more alive to the difficulty of the task he has undertaken than the writer himself. Although he has striven to make the work as complete as possible, he is deeply conscious of the imperfectness of his achievement. It has appeared to him strange that hitherto no one has attempted to give in English a consecutive and detailed account of the castes of India. The author has endeavoured to present an outline of them as existing in Benares, the religious and social metropolis of India, in the hope that other persons in various parts of the country will investigate the subject and add their quota to the enterprise until it be completed.

Undoubtedly, Benares is a very favourable spot for the commencement of a work of this nature. First or last, representatives from all the tribes of India come up to the sacred city. Perhaps no city in the world draws to itself such a motley assemblage of tribes and tongues. Much information, more or less trustworthy, has thus been collected in Benares respecting races. whose haunts are in remote regions of India. Nevertheless, the dissertations in this work relating to them must be regarded as simply tentative. Many persons who have made certain castes and races their special study would doubtless wish for fuller statements about them than have been given here. Those who have published their views will find their writings referred to; so that the reader may, if he chooses, investigate them more thoroughly. Such as have not made public their researches, are earnestly requested to do so without delay. It should be borne in mind that the object of the author has been to gather together in one all the Hindu families with which he was acquainted. A critic, living in other parts of the land, would very likely be able to show the incom- pleteness of his performance; and indeed in Benares itself, in spite of his vigi- lance, it is not improbable that some castes, where the aggregate number is so great, have escaped his notice.

WHILE Brahmanical families in early times preserved, with great and unremitting care, the purity of their race, nevertheless, it is plain, from the statements of Manu, that many new tribes were continually being created by the intercourse of Brahmans with women of other castes. For instance, a son of a Brahman married to a woman of the Vaisya caste, was called Ambashtha, or Vaidya; and a Brahman's son of a Sudra wife was called Nishida, and also Parasava (a). The same origin is assigned by the Dharma Purana to the Varajivi, or astrologer (6); and by the Tantra, to the Brahme-sudra (e). From the marriage of a Brahman with a Kshatriya woman, according to the same Purana, have sprung the Kumbhakara, or potter, and Tantravaya, or weaver (d); and from a Brahman husband and Vaisya wife, the Kansakâra, or brazier, and the Sankhakara, or worker in shells (e). Again, Manu states, that the male progeny of Brahman husbands and Kshatriya wives occupied a rank between the two, and were termed Mûrdhabhishikta, Mahishya, and Karana, or Kayastha (f). These were not illicit connexions, but connexions of marriage, recognized as such by all classes, and regarded as honourable and right. The only difference between them and marriages of Brahmans with Brahman women was, that the children of the latter marriages continued in the same caste as both their parents, and therefore possessed, socially and legally, far greater privileges than children of the other marriages.

A Brahman could be married to women taken from all four of the prime castes,-that is to say, he might have, for example, four wives, the first taken from the Brahmanical caste, the second from the Kshatriya caste, the third from the Vaisya caste, the fourth from the Sudra caste (g). The sons of these wives inherited differently. The son of the Brahmani wife received four parts out of ten of the inheritance; the son of the Kshatriya wife, three; the son of the Vaisya wife, two; and the son of the Sudra, one (h). But it is specially added, in regard to the son of a Sudra woman and Brahman father, he could inherit nothing unless his mother had been lawfully married to his father; and the same observation is made likewise respecting the son of a Sudra woman and a Kshatriya or Vaisya father (a). This relationship subsisting between husband and wife of two differeut, not to say widely separated, castes, was not held to be disgraceful or worthy of denunciation. On the con- trary, while it was less dignified for a Brahman to marry a woman of a lower caste than a woman of his own, yet marriage in the one case was just as legal as marriage in the other.

But it was not the peculiar privilege of the Brahman to solicit the hand of a woman of another caste. The same privilege was enjoyed by members of all the higher castes in regard to castes beneath them. Indeed, apparently, there was no such rigid restriction in those early ages on intermarriages like that which exists among the castes at the present day. It was considered to be improper for men of the superior castes to take their first wives from any caste except their own; but their other wives might be taken from the lower castes with propriety. It is explicitly stated by Manu, that a Vaisya man might take a Vaisya, and also a Sudra, woman, to be his wives; and a Kshatriya man might take a Kshatriya, a Vaisya, and a Sudra woman, for his wives (6). From the union of a Kshatriya husband with a Sudra sprang the Ugra, the Nâpita, or barber, and the Maudaka, or confectioner (c). The Tambuli, or betel seller, and the Tanlika, were, says the Dharma Purana, the fruit of the union of Vaisya men with Sudra women.