Bania, Maheshri
Bania, Maheshri.—This important subcaste of Banias numbered about 14,000 persons in the Central Provinces in 1911, of whom 8000 belonged to the Berār Districts, and the remainder principally to Hoshangābād, Nimār, Wardha and Nāgpur. The name is said to be derived from Maheshwar, an ancient town on the Nerbudda, near Indore, and one of the earliest Rājpūt settlements. But some of them say that their original home is in Bīkanīr, and tell a story to the effect that their ancestor was a Rāja who was turned into stone with his seventy-two followers by some ascetics whose devotions they had interrupted in the forest. But when their wives came to commit sati by the stone figures the god Siva intervened and brought them to life again. He told them to give up the profession of arms and take to trade. So the seventy-two followers were the ancestors of the seventy-two gotras or sections of the Maheshris, and the Rāja became their tribal Bhāt or genealogist, and they were called Maheshri or Maheswari, from Mahesh, a name of Siva. In Gujarāt the term Maheshri or Meshri appears to be used for all Banias who are not Jains, including the other important Hindu subcastes.1 This is somewhat peculiar, and perhaps tends to show that several of the local subcastes are of recent formation. But though they profess to be named after Siva, the Maheshris, like practically all other Hindu Banias, are Vaishnava by sect, and wear the kunti or necklace of beads of basil. A small minority are Jains. It is to be noticed that both the place of their origin, an early Rājpūt settlement of the Yādava clan, and their own legend tend to show that they were derived from the Rājpūt caste; for as their ancestors were attendants on a Rāja and followed the profession of arms, which they were told to abandon, they could be none other than Rājpūts. The Maheshris also have the Rājpūt custom of sending a cocoanut as a symbol of a proposal of marriage. In Nimār the Maheshri Banias say they belong to the Dhākar subcaste, a name which usually means illegitimate, though they themselves explain that it is derived from a place called Dhākargarh, from which they migrated. As already stated they are divided into seventy-two exogamous clans, the names of which appear to be titular or territorial. It is said that at their weddings when the bridegroom gets to the door of the marriage-shed, the bride’s mother ties a scarf round his neck and takes hold of his nose and drags him into the shed. Sometimes they make the bridegroom kneel down and pay reverence to a shoe as a joke. They do not observe the custom of the pangat or formal festal assembly, which is usual among Hindu castes; according to this, none can begin to eat until all the guests have assembled, when they all sit down at once. Among the Maheshris the guests sit down as they come in, and are served and take their food and go. They only have the pangat feast on very rare occasions. The Maheshris are one of the richest, most enterprising and influential classes of Banias. They are intelligent, of high-bred appearance, cleanly habits and courteous manners. The great bankers, Sir Kastūrchand Daga of Kamptee, of the firm of Bansi Lāl Abīrchand, and Rai Bahādur Seth Jīwan Das and Diwān Bahādur Seth Ballabh Das, of Jubbulpore, belong to this subcaste.
1 Bombay Gazetteer, Hindus of Gujarāt, p. 70.
Bania, Nema
Bania, Nema.—This subcaste numbers nearly 4000 persons, the bulk of whom reside in the Saugor, Damoh, Narsinghpur and Seoni Districts. The Nemas are most largely returned from Central India, and are probably a Bundelkhand group; they will eat food cooked without water with Golapūrab Banias, who are also found in Bundelkhand. They are mainly Hindus, with a small minority of Jains. The origin of the name is obscure; the suggestion that it comes from Nimār appears to be untenable, as there are very few Nemas in that District. They say that when Parasurāma was slaying the Kshatriyas fourteen young Rājpūt princes, who at the time were studying religion with their family priests, were saved by the latter on renouncing their Kshatriya status and declaring themselves to be Vaishyas. These fourteen princes were the ancestors of the fourteen gotras of the Nema subcaste, but the gotras actually bear the names of the fourteen Rīshis or saints who saved their lives. These sections appear to be of the usual Brāhmanical type, but marriage is regulated by another set of fifty-two subsections, with names which are apparently titular or territorial. Like other Bania groups the Nemas are divided into Bīsa and Dasa subdivisions or twenties and tens, the Bīsa being of pure and the Dasa of irregular descent. There is also a third group of Pacha or fives, who appear to be the offspring of kept women. After some generations, when the details of their ancestry are forgotten, the Pachas probably obtain promotion into the Dasa group. The Bīsa and Dasa groups take food together, but do not intermarry. The Nemas wear the sacred thread and apparently prohibit the remarriage of widows. The Nemas are considered to be very keen business men, and a saying about them is, “Where a sheep grazes or a Nema trades, what is there left for anybody else?”
Bania, Oswāl
Bania, Oswāl.—This is perhaps the most important subdivision of the Banias after the Agarwāla. The Oswāls numbered nearly 10,000 persons in the Central Provinces in 1911, being found in considerable numbers in all the Berār Districts, and also in Nimār, Wardha and Raipur. The name is derived from the town of Osia or Osnagar in Mārwār. According to one legend of their origin the Rāja of Osnagar had no son, and obtained one through the promise of a Jain ascetic. The people then drove the ascetic from the town, fearing that the Rāja would become a Jain; but Osadev, the guardian goddess of the place, told the ascetic, Sri Ratan Suri, to convert the Rāja by a miracle. So she took a small hank (pūni) of cotton and passed it along the back of the saint, when it immediately became a snake and bit Jaichand, the son of the Rāja, in the toe, while he was asleep beside his wife. Every means was tried to save his life, but he died. As his corpse was about to be burnt, the ascetic sent one of his disciples and stopped the cremation. Then the Rāja came with the body of his son and stood with hands clasped before the saint. He ordered that it was to be taken back to the place where the prince had been bitten, and that the princess was to lie down beside it as before. At midnight the snake returned and licked the bite, when the prince was restored to life. Then the Rāja, with all his Court and people, became a Jain. He and his family founded the gotra or section now known as Sri Srimāl or most noble; his servants formed that known as Srimāl or excellent, while the other Rājpūts of the town became ordinary Oswāls. When the Brāhmans of the place heard of these conversions they asked the saint how they were to live, as all their clients had become Jains. The saint directed that they should continue to be the family priests of the Oswāls and be known as Bhojak or ‘eaters.’ Thus the Oswāls, though Jains, continue to employ Mārwāri Brāhmans as their family priests. Another version of the story is that the king of Srimāli1 allowed no one who was not a millionaire to live within his city walls. In consequence of this a large number of persons left Srimāl, and, settling in Mandovad, called it Osa or the frontier. Among them were Srimāli Banias and also Bhatti, Chauhān, Gahlot, Gaur, Yādava, and several other clans of Rājpūts, and these were the people who were subsequently converted by the Jain ascetic, Sri Ratan Suri, and formed into the single caste of Oswāl.2 Finally, Colonel Tod states that the Oswāls are all of pure Rājpūt descent, of no single tribe, but chiefly Panwārs, Solankis and Bhattis.3 From these legends and the fact that their headquarters are in Rājputāna, it may safely be concluded that the Oswāl Banias are of Rājpūt origin.
The large majority of the Oswāls are Jain by religion, but a few are Vaishnava Hindus. Intermarriage between the Hindu and Jain sections is permitted. Like the Agarwālas, the Oswāls are divided into Bīsa, Dasa and Pacha sections or twenties, tens and fives, according to the purity of their lineage. The Pacha subcaste still permit the remarriage of widows. The three groups take food together but do not intermarry. In Bombay, Dasa Oswāls intermarry with the Dasa groups of Srimāli and Parwār Banias,4 and Oswāls generally can marry with other good Bania subcastes so long as both parties are Jains. The Oswāls are divided into eighty-four gotras or exogamous sections for purposes of marriage, a list of which is given by Mr. Crooke.5 Most of these cannot be recognised, but a few of them seem to be titular, as Lorha a caste which grows hemp, Nunia a salt-refiner, Seth a banker, Daftari an office-boy, Vaid a physician, Bhandāri a cook, and Kukara a dog. These may indicate a certain amount of admixture of foreign elements in the caste. As stated from Benāres, the exogamous rule is that a man cannot marry in his own section, and he cannot marry a girl whose father’s or mother’s section is the same as that of either his father or mother. This would bar the marriage of first cousins.
Though Jains the Oswāls perform their weddings by walking round the sacred fire and observe certain Hindu rites, including the worship of the god Ganpati.6 They also revere other Hindu deities and the sun and moon. The dead are burnt, but they do not observe any impurity after a death nor clean the house. On the day after the death the mourning family, both men and women, visit Parasnāth’s temple, and lay one seer (2 lbs.) of Indian millet before the god, bow to him and go home. They do not gather the ashes of the dead nor keep the yearly death-day. Their only observance is that on some day between the twelfth day after a death and the end of a year, the caste-people are treated to a dinner of sweetmeats and the dead ‘are then forgotten.’7 The Oswāls will take food cooked with water (katchi) only from Brāhmans, and that cooked without water (pakki) from Agarwāla and Maheshri Banias. In the Central Provinces the principal deity of the Oswāls is the Jain Tirthakār Parasnāth, and they spend large sums in the erection of splendid temples. The Oswāls are the most prominent trading caste in Rājputāna; and they have also frequently held high offices, such as Diwān or minister, and paymaster in Rājpūt States.8
1 A town near Jhalor in Mārwār, now called Bhinmāl.
2 Bombay Gazetteer, Hindus of Gujarāt, p. 97.
3 Rājasthān, ii. p. 210, footnote.
4 Hindus of Gujarāt, loc. cit., and Bombay Gazetteer, xvi. 45.
5 Tribes and Castes, art. Oswāl.
6 Bombay Gazetteer, vol. xvii. p. 51.
7 Ibidem.
8 Bhattachārya, Hindu Castes and Sects, p. 207.
Bania, Parwār
1. Origin.
Bania, Parwār.1—This Jain subcaste numbered nearly 29,000 persons in 1911. They belong almost entirely to the Jubbulpore and Nerbudda Divisions, and the great bulk are found in the Saugor, Damoh and Jubbulpore Districts. The origin of the Parwārs and of their name is not known, but there is some reason to suppose that they are from Rājputāna. Their women wear on the head the bīj, a Rājputāna ornament, and use the chāru, a deep brass plate for drinking, which also belongs there. Their songs are said to be in the Rājasthāni dialect. It seems likely that the Parwārs may be identical with the Porawāl subcaste found in other Provinces, which, judging from the name, may belong to Rājputāna. In the northern Districts the Parwārs speak Bundeli, but in the south their language is said to be Mārwāri.
2. Subdivisions.
Among the Parwārs the Samaiya or Channāgri form a separate sectarian Jain group. They do not worship the images of the Jain Tirthakārs, but enshrine the sacred books of the Jains in their temples, and worship these. The Parwārs will take daughters in marriage from the Channāgris, and sometimes give their daughters in consideration of a substantial bride-price. Among the Parwārs themselves there is a social division between the Ath Sāke and the Chao Sāke; the former will not permit the marriage of persons related more nearly than eight degrees, while the latter permit it after four degrees. The Ath Sāke have the higher position, and if one of them marries a Chao Sāke he is degraded to that group. Besides this the Parwārs have an inferior division called Benaikia, which consists of the offspring of irregular unions and of widows who have remarried. Persons who have committed a caste offence and cannot pay the fine imposed on them for it also go into this subcaste. The Benaikias2 themselves are distributed into four groups of varying degrees of respectability, and families who live correctly and marry as well as they can tend to rise from one to the other until after several generations they may again be recognised as Parwārs proper.
3. Exogamy.
The Parwārs have twelve gotras or main sections, and each gotra has, or is supposed to have, twelve muls or subsections. A Parwār must not marry in his own gotra nor in the mul of his mother, or any of his grandmothers or greatgrandmothers. This practically bars marriage within seven degrees of relationship. But a man’s sister and daughter may be married in the same family, and even to two brothers, and a man can marry two sisters.
4. Marriage customs.
As a rule no bride-price is paid, but occasionally an old man desiring a wife will give something substantial to her father in secret. There are two forms of marriage, called Thinga and Dajanha; in the former, women do not accompany the wedding procession, and they have a separate marriage-shed at the bridegroom’s house for their own celebrations; while in the latter, they accompany it and erect such a shed at the house in the bridegroom’s village or town where they have their lodging. Before the wedding, the bridegroom, mounted on a horse, and the bride, carried in a litter, proceed together round the marriage-shed. The bridegroom then stands by the sacred post in the centre and the bride walks seven times round him. In the evening there was a custom of dressing the principal male relatives of the bridegroom in women’s clothes and making them dance, but this is now being discarded. On the fifth day is held a rite called Palkachār. A new cot is provided by the bride’s father, and on it is spread a red cloth. The couple are seated on this with their hands entwined, and their relations come and make them presents. If the bridegroom catches hold of the dress of his mother- or father-in-law, they are expected to make him a handsome present. In other respects the wedding follows the ordinary Hindu ritual. Widow-marriage and divorce are forbidden among the Parwārs proper, and those who practise them go into the lower Benaikia group.
5. Religion: Hindu observances.
The Parwārs are practically all Jains of the Digambari sect. They build costly and beautiful temples for their Tirthakārs, especially for their favourite Parasnāth. They have also many Hindu practices. They observe the Diwāli, Rakshabandhan and Holi festivals; they say that at the Diwāli the last Tirthakār Mahāvīra attained beatitude and the gods rained down jewels; the little lamps now lighted at Diwāli are held to be symbolic of these jewels. They tie the threads round the wrist on Rakshabandhan to keep off evil spirits. They worship Sītala Devi, the Hindu goddess of smallpox, and employ Brāhmans to choose names for their children and fix the dates of their wedding and other ceremonies, though not at the ceremonies themselves.
6. Disposal of the dead.
The caste burn the dead, with the exception of the bodies of young children, which are buried. The corpse is sometimes placed sitting in a car to be taken to the cremation ground, but often laid on a bier in the ordinary manner. The sitting posture is that in which all the Tirthakārs attained paradise, and their images always represent them in this posture. The corpse is naked save for a new piece of cloth round the waist, but it is covered with a sheet. The Jains do not shave their hair in token of mourning, nor do they offer sacrificial cakes to the dead. When the body is burnt they bathe in the nearest water and go home. Neither the bearers nor the mourners are held to be impure. Next day the mourning family, both men and women, visit Parasnāth’s temple, lay two pounds of Indian millet before the god and go home.3 But in the Central Provinces they whitewash their houses, get their clothes washed, throw away their earthen pots and give a feast to the caste.
7. Social rules and customs.
The Parwārs abstain from eating any kind of flesh and from drinking liquor. They have a panchāyat and impose penalties for offences against caste rules like the Hindus. Among the offences are the killing of any living thing, unchastity or adultery, theft or other bad conduct, taking cooked food or water from a caste from which the Parwārs do not take them, and violation of any rule of their religion. To get vermin in a wound, or to be beaten by a low-caste man or with a shoe, incidents which entail serious penalties among the Hindus, are not offences with the Parwārs. When an offender is put out of caste the ordinary deprivation is that he is not allowed to enter a Jain temple, and in serious cases he may also not eat nor drink with the caste. The Parwārs are generally engaged in the trade in grain, ghī, and other staples. Several of them are well-to-do and own villages.
Bania, Srimāli
Bania, Srimāli.—This subcaste takes its name from the town of Srimāl, which is now Bhinmāl in Mārwār. They numbered 600 persons in the Central Provinces in 1911, most of whom belonged to the Hoshangābād District. More than two-thirds were Hindus and the remainder Jains. Colonel Tod writes of Bhinmāl and an adjoining town, Sanchor: “These towns are on the high road to Cutch and Gujarāt, which has given them from the most remote times a commercial celebrity. Bhinmāl is said to contain about 1500 houses and Sanchor half that number. Very wealthy mahājans or merchants used to reside here, but insecurity both within and without has much injured these cities.” From Bhinmāl the Srimālis appear to have gone to Gujarāt, where they are found in considerable numbers. Their legend of origin is that the goddess Lakshmi created from a flower-garland 90,000 families to act as servants to the 90,000 Srimāli Brāhmans, and these were the ancestors of the Srimāli Banias.1 Both the Jain and Hindu sections of the Srimāli Banias employ Srimāli Brāhmans as priests. Like other classes of Banias, the Srimāli are divided into two sections, the Bīsa and Dasa, or twenty and ten, of which the Bīsa are considered to be of pure and the Dasa of somewhat mixed descent. In Gujarāt they also have a third territorial group, known as Lādva, from Lād, the old name of Gujarāt. All three subdivisions take food together but do not intermarry.2 The two highest sections of the Oswāl Banias are called Sri Srimāl and Srimāl, and it is possible that further investigation might show the Srimāls and Oswāls to have been originally of one stock.
Bania, Umre
Bania, Umre.—This Hindu subcaste belongs to Damoh and Jubbulpore. They are perhaps the same as the Ummar Banias of the United Provinces, who reside in the Meerut, Agra and Kumaon Divisions. The name Umre is found as a subdivision of several castes in the Central Provinces, as the Telis and others, and is probably derived from some town or tract of country in northern or central India, but no identification has been made. Mr. Bhīmbhai Kirpārām states that in Gujarāt the Ummar Banias are also known as Bāgaria from the Bāgar or wild country, comprised in the Dongarpur and Pertābgarh States of Rājputāna, where considerable numbers of them are still settled. Their headquarters is at Sāgwāra, near Dongarpur.1 In Damoh the Umre Banias formerly cultivated the al plant,2 which yielded a well-known dye, and hence they lost caste, as in soaking the roots of the plant to extract the dye the numerous insects in them are necessarily destroyed. The Dosar subcaste3 are a branch of the Umre, who allow widow-remarriage.