Gandhmāli,1 Thānāpati.—The caste of village priests of the temples of Siva or Mahādeo in Sambalpur and the Uriya States. They numbered about 700 persons in the Central Provinces in 1911. The caste appears to be an offshoot of the Mālis or gardeners, differentiated from them by their special occupation of temple attendants. In Hindustān the priests of Siva’s temples in villages are often Mālis, and in the Marātha country they are Guraos, another special caste, or Phulmālis. Some members of the caste in Sambalpur, however, aspire to Rājpūt origin and wear the sacred thread. These prefer the designation of Thānāpati or ‘Master of the sacred place,’ and call the others who do not wear the thread Gandhmālis. Gandh means incense. The Thānāpatis say that on one occasion a Rājpūt prince from Jaipur made a pilgrimage to the temple of Jagannāth at Puri, and on his return stopped at the celebrated temple of Mahādeo at Huma near Sambalpur. Mahādeo appeared before the prince and asked him to become his priest; the Rājpūt asked to be excused as he was old, but Mahādeo promised him three sons, which he duly obtained and in gratitude dedicated them to the service of the god. From these sons the Thānāpatis say that they are descended, but the claim is no doubt quite illusory. The truth is, probably, that the Thānāpatis are priests of the temples situated in towns and large villages, and owing to their calling have obtained considerable social estimation, which they desire to justify and place on an enduring basis by their claim to Rājpūt ancestry; while the Gandhmālis are village priests, more or less in the position of village menials and below the cultivating castes, and any such pretensions would therefore in their case be quite untenable. There are signs of the cessation of intermarriage between the two groups, but this has not been brought about as yet, probably owing to the paucity of members in the caste and the difficulty of arranging matches. Three functional subdivisions also appear to be in process of formation, the Pujāris or priests of Mahādeo’s temples, the Bandhādias or those who worship him on the banks of tanks, and the Mundjhulas2 or devotees of the goddess Somlai in Sambalpur, on whom the inspiration of the goddess descends, making them shake and roll their heads. When in this state they are believed to drink the blood flowing from goats sacrificed in the temple. For the purposes of marriage the caste is divided into exogamous groups or bargas, the names of which are usually titles or designations of offices. Marriage within the barga is prohibited. When the bride is brought to the altar in the marriage ceremony, she throws a garland of jasmine flowers on the neck of the bridegroom. This custom resembles the old Swayamwāra form of marriage, in which a girl chose her own husband by throwing a garland of flowers round his neck. But it probably has no connection with this and merely denotes the fact that the caste are gardeners by profession, similar ceremonies typifying the caste calling being commonly performed at marriages, especially among the Telugu castes. Girls should be married before adolescence and, as is usual among the Uriya castes, if no suitable husband is forthcoming a symbolic marriage is celebrated; the Thānāpatis make her go through the form with her maternal grandfather or sister’s husband, and in default of them with a tree. She is then immediately divorced and disposed of as a widow. Divorce and the remarriage of widows are permitted. A bachelor marrying a widow must first go through the ceremony with a flower. The Gandhmālis, as the priests of Mahādeo, are generally Saivas and wear red clothes covered with ochre. They consider that their ultimate ancestor is the Nāg or cobra and especially observe the festival of Nāg-Panchmi, abstaining from any cooked food on that day. They both burn and bury the dead and perform the shrāddh ceremony or the offering of sacrificial cakes. They eat flesh but do not drink liquor. Their social position is fairly good and Brāhmans will take water from their hands. Many of them hold free grants of land in return for their services at the temples. A few are ordinary cultivators.
Gārpagāri.1—A caste of village menials whose function it is to avert hailstorms from the crops. They are found principally in the Marātha Districts of the Nāgpur country and Berār, and numbered 9000 persons in 1911. The name is derived from the Marāthi gār, hail. The Gārpagāris are really Nāths or Jogis who have taken to this calling and become a separate caste. They wear clothes coloured with red ochre, and a garland of rudrāksha beads, and bury their dead in a sitting posture. According to their tradition the first Gārpagāri was one Rāut, a Jogi, who accompanied a Kunbi mālguzār on a visit to Benāres, and while there he prophesied that on a certain day all the crops of their village would be destroyed by a hailstorm. The Kunbi then besought him to save the crops if he could, and he answered that by his magic he could draw off the hail from the rest of the village and concentrate it in his own field, and he agreed to do this if the cultivators would recompense him for his loss. When the two came home to their village they found that there had been a severe hailstorm, but it had all fallen in the Jogi’s field. His loss was made good to him and he adopted this calling as a profession, becoming the first Gārpagāri, and being paid by contributions from the proprietor and tenants. There are no subcastes except that the Kharchi Gārpagāri are a bastard group, with whom the others refuse to intermarry.
Marriage is regulated by exogamous groups, two of which, Watāri from the Otāri or brass-worker, and Dhankar from the Dhangar or shepherds, are named after other castes. Some are derived from the names of animals, as Harnya from the black-buck, and Wāgh from the tiger. The Diunde group take their name from diundi, the kotwar’s2 drum. They say that their ancestor was so named because he killed his brother, and was proclaimed as an outlaw by beat of drum. The marriage of members of the same group is forbidden and also that of the children of two sisters, so long as the relationship between them is remembered. The caste usually celebrate their weddings after those of the Kunbis, on whom they depend for contributions to their expenses. Widow-marriage is permitted, but the widow sometimes refuses to marry again, and, becoming a Bhagat or devotee, performs long pilgrimages in male attire. Divorce is permitted, but as women are scarce, is rarely resorted to. The Gārpagāris say, “If one would not throw away a vegetable worth a damri (one-eighth of a pice or farthing), how shall one throw away a wife who is 3½ cubits long.” A divorced wife is allowed to marry again.
The caste worship Mahādeo or Siva and Mahābīr or Hanumān, and do not usually distinguish them. Their principal festival is called Māhi and takes place on the first day of Poush (December), this being the day from which hailstorms may be expected to occur; and next to this Māndo Amāwas, or the first day of Chait (March), after which hailstorms need not be feared. They offer goats to Mahādeo in his terrible form of Kāl Bhairava, and during the ceremony the Kunbis beat the dāheka, a small drum with bells, to enhance the effect of the sacrifice, so that their crops may be saved. When a man is at the point of death he is placed in the sitting posture in which he is to be buried, for fear that after death his limbs may become so stiff that they cannot be made to assume it. The corpse is carried to the grave in a cloth coloured with red ochre. A gourd containing pulse and rice, a pice coin, and a small quantity of any drug to which the deceased may have been addicted in life are placed in the hands, and the grave is filled in with earth and salt. A lamp is lighted on the place where the death occurred, for one night, and on the third day a cocoanut is broken there, after which mourning ends and the house is cleaned. A stone brought from the bed of a river is plastered down on to the grave with clay, and this may perhaps represent the dead man’s spirit.
The occupation of the Gārpagāri is to avert hailstorms, and he was formerly remunerated by a customary contribution of rice from each cultivator in the village. He received the usual presents at seed-time and harvest, and two pice from each tenant on the Basant-Panchmi festival. When the sky is of mixed red and black at night like smoke and flame, the Gārpagāri knows that a hailstorm is coming. Then, taking a sword in his hand, he goes and stands before Mahābīr, and begs him to disperse the clouds. When entreaties fail, he proceeds to threats, saying that he will kill himself, and throws off his clothes. Sometimes his wife and children go and stand with him before Mahābīr’s shrine and he threatens to kill them. Formerly he would cut and slash himself, so it is said, if Mahābīr was obdurate, but now the utmost he does is to draw some blood from a finger. He would also threaten to sacrifice his son, and instances are known of his actually having done so.
Two ideas appear to be involved in these sacrifices of the Gārpagāri. One is the familiar principle of atonement, the blood being offered to appease the god as a substitute for the crops which he seems about to destroy. But when the Gārpagāri threatened to kill himself, and actually killed his son, it was not merely as an atonement, because in that case the threats would have had no meaning. His intention seems rather to have been to lay the guilt of homicide upon the god by slaying somebody in front of his shrine, in case nothing less would move him from his purpose of destroying the crops. The idea is the same as that with which people committed suicide in order that their ghosts might haunt those who had driven them to the act. As late as about the year 1905 a Gond Bhumka or village priest was hanged in Chhindwāra for killing his two children. He owed a debt of Rs. 25 and the creditor was pressing him and he had nothing to pay. So he flew into a rage and exclaimed that the gods would do nothing for him even though he was a Bhumka, and he seized his two children and cut off their heads and laid them before the god. In this it would appear that the Bhumka’s intention was partly to take revenge on his master for the neglect shown to him, the god’s special servant. The Gārpagāri diverts the hail by throwing a handful of grain in the direction in which he wishes it to go. When the storm begins he will pick up some hailstones, smear them with his blood and throw them away, telling them to rain over rivers, hills, forests and barren ground. When caterpillars or locusts attack the crops he catches one or two and offers them at Mahābīr’s shrine, afterwards throwing them up in the air. Or he buries one alive and this is supposed to stay the plague. When rust appears in the crops, one or two blades are in like manner offered to Mahābīr, and it is believed that the disease will be stayed. Or if the rice plants do not come into ear a few of them are plucked and offered, and fresh fertile blades then come up. He also has various incantations which are believed to divert the storm or to cause the hailstones to melt into water. In some localities, when the buffalo is slaughtered at the Dasahra festival, the Gārpagāri takes seven different kinds of spring-crop seeds and dips them in its blood. He buries them in a spot beside his hearth, and it is believed that when a hailstorm threatens the grains move about and give out a humming sound like water boiling. Thus the Gārpagāri has warning of the storm. If the Gārpagāri is absent and a storm comes his wife will go and stand naked before Mahābīr’s shrine. The wives know the incantations, but they must not learn them from their husbands, because in that case the husband would be in the position of a guru or spiritual preceptor to his wife and the conjugal relation could no longer continue. No other caste will learn the incantations, for to make the hailstones melt is regarded as equivalent to causing an abortion, and as a sin for which heavy retribution would be incurred in a future life.
In Chhattīsgarh the Baiga or village priest of the aboriginal tribes averts hailstorms in the same manner as the Gārpagāri, and elsewhere the Barais or betel-vine growers perform this function, which is especially important to them because their vines are so liable to be injured by hailstorms. In ancient Greece there existed a village functionary, the Chalazo phulax, who kept off hailstorms in exactly the same manner as the Gārpagāri. He would offer a victim, and if he had none would draw blood from his own fingers to appease the storm.3
The same power has even been imputed to Christian priests as recorded by Sir James Frazer: “In many villages of Provence the priest is still required to possess the faculty of averting storms. It is not every priest who enjoys this reputation; and in some villages when a change of pastors takes place, the parishioners are eager to learn whether the new incumbent has the power (pouder) as they call it. At the first sign of a heavy storm they put him to the proof by inviting him to exorcise the threatening clouds; and if the result answers to their hopes, the new shepherd is assured of the sympathy and respect of his flock. In some parishes where the reputation of the curate in this respect stood higher than that of the rector, the relations between the two have been so strained in consequence that the bishop has had to translate the rector to another benefice.”4
Of late years an unavoidable scepticism as to the Gārpagāri’s efficiency has led to a reduction of his earnings, and the cultivators now frequently decline to give him anything, or only a sheaf of corn at harvest. Some members of the caste have taken to weaving newār or broad tape for beds, and others have become cultivators.
The Gārpagāris eat flesh and drink liquor. They will take cooked food from a Kunbi, though the Kunbis will not take even water from them. They are a village menial caste and rank with others of the same position, though on a somewhat lower level because they beg and accept cooked food at the weddings of Kunbis. Their names usually end in nāth, as Rāmnāth, Kisannāth and so on.
Gauria.1—A small caste of snake-charmers and jugglers who are an offshoot of the Gond tribe. They number about 500 persons and are found only in Chhattīsgarh. They have the same exogamous septs as the Gonds, as Markām, Marai, Netām, Chhedaiha, Jagat, Purteti, Chichura and others. But they are no doubt of very mixed origin, as is shown by the fact that they do not eat together at their feasts, but the guests all cook their own food and eat it separately. And after a daughter has been married her own family even will not take food from her hand because they are doubtful of her husband’s status. It is said that the Gaurias were accustomed formerly to beg only from the Kewat caste, though this restriction is no longer maintained. The fact may indicate that they are partly descended from the unions of Kewats with Gond women.
Adult marriage is the general rule of the caste and a fixed bride-price of sixteen rupees is paid. The couple go away together at once and six months afterwards return to visit the bride’s parents, when they are treated as outsiders and not allowed to touch the food cooked for the family, while they reciprocally insist on preparing their own. Male Gaurias will take food from any of the higher castes, but the women will eat only from Gaurias. They will admit outsiders belonging to any caste from whom they can take food into the community. And if a Gauria woman goes wrong with a member of any of these castes they overlook the matter and inflict only a feast as a penalty.
Their marriage ceremony consists merely in the placing of bangles on the woman’s wrists, which is the form by which a widow is married among other castes. If a widow marries a man other than her husband’s younger brother, the new husband must pay twelve rupees to her first husband’s family, or to her parents if she has returned to them. If she takes with her a child born of her first husband with permission to keep it, the second husband must pay eight rupees to the first husband’s family as the price of the child. But if the child is to be returned as soon as it is able to shift for itself the second husband receives eight rupees instead of paying it, as remuneration for his trouble in rearing the baby. The caste bury their dead with the feet to the south, like the Hindus. The principal business of the Gaurias is to catch and exhibit snakes, and they carry a damru or rattle in the shape of an hour-glass, which is considered to be a distinctive badge of the caste. If a Gauria saw an Ojha snake-charmer carrying a damru he would consider himself entitled to take it from the Ojha forcibly if he could. A Gauria is forbidden to exhibit monkeys under penalty of being put out of caste. Their principal festival is the Nāg-Panchmi, when the cobra is worshipped. They also profess to know charms for curing persons bitten by snakes. The following incantation is cried by a Gauria snake-doctor three times into the ears of his patient in a loud voice:
“The bel tree and the bel leaves are on the other side of the river. All the Gaurias are drowned in it. The breast of the koil; over it is a net. Eight snakes went to the forest. They tamed rats on the green tree. The snakes are flying, causing the parrots to fly. They want to play, but who can make them play? After finishing their play they stood up; arise thou also, thou sword. I am waking you (the patient) up by crying in your ear, I conjure you by the name of Dhanvantari2 to rise carefully.”
Similar meaningless charms are employed for curing the bites of scorpions and for exorcising bad spirits and the influence of the evil eye.
The Gaurias will eat almost all kinds of flesh, including pigs, rats, fowls and jackals, but they abstain from beef. Their social status is so low that practically no caste will take food or water from them, but they are not considered as impure. They are great drunkards, and are easily known by their damrus or rattles and the baskets in which they carry their snakes.
Ghasia, Sais.1—A low Dravidian caste of Orissa and Central India who cut grass, tend horses and act as village musicians at festivals. In the Central Provinces they numbered 43,000 in 1911, residing principally in the Chhattīsgarh Division and the adjoining Feudatory States. The word Ghasia is derived from ghās (grass) and means a grass-cutter. Sir H. Risley states that they are a fishing and cultivating caste of Chota Nāgpur and Central India, who attend as musicians at weddings and festivals and also perform menial offices of all kinds.2 In Bastar they are described as an inferior caste who serve as horse-keepers and also make and mend brass vessels. They dress like the Māria Gonds and subsist partly by cultivation and partly by labour.3 Dr. Ball describes them in Singhbhūm as gold-washers and musicians. Colonel Dalton speaks of them as “An extraordinary tribe, foul parasites of the Central Indian hill tribes and submitting to be degraded even by them. If the Chandāls of the Purānas, though descended from the union of a Brāhmini and a Sūdra, are the lowest of the low, the Ghasias are Chandāls and the people further south who are called Pariahs are no doubt of the same distinguished lineage.”4
The Ghasias generally, however, appear now to be a harmless caste of labourers without any specially degrading or repulsive traits. In Mandla their social position and customs are much on a par with those of the Gonds, from whom a considerable section of the caste seems to be derived. In other localities they have probably immigrated into the Central Provinces from Bundelkhand and Orissa. Among their subdivisions the following may be mentioned: the Udia, who cure raw hides and do the work of sweepers and are generally looked down on; the Dingkuchia, who castrate cattle and ponies; the Dolboha, who carry dhoolies or palanquins; the Nagārchi, who derive their name from the nakkāra or kettle-drum and are village musicians; the Khaltaha or those from Raipur; the Laria, belonging to Chhattīsgarh, and the Uria of the Uriya country; the Rāmgarhia, who take their name from Rāmgarh in the Mandla District, and the Mahobia from Mahoba in Bundelkhand. Those members of the caste who work as grooms have become a separate group and call themselves Sais, dropping the name of Ghasia. They rank higher than the others and marry among themselves, and some of them have become cultivators or work as village watchmen. They are also called Thānwar by the Gonds, the word meaning stable or stall. In Chota Nāgpur a number of Ghasias have become tailors and are tending to form a separate subcaste under the name of Darzi.
Their septs are of the usual low-caste type, being named after animals, inanimate objects or nicknames of ancestors. One of them is Pānch-biha or ‘He who had five wives,’ and another Kul-dīp or ‘The sept of the lamp.’ Members of this sept will stop eating if a lamp goes out. The Janta Ragda take their name from the mill for grinding corn and will not have a grinding-mill in their houses. They say that a female ancestor was delivered of a child when sitting near a grinding-mill and this gave the sept its name. Three septs are named after other castes: Kumhārbans, descended from a potter; Gāndbans, from a Gānda; and Luha, from a Lohār or blacksmith, and which names indicate that members of these castes have been admitted into the community.
Marriage is forbidden within the sept, but is permitted between the children of brothers and sisters. Those members of the caste who have become Kabīrpanthis may also marry with the others. Marriages may be infant or adult. A girl who is seduced by a member of the caste is married to him by a simple ceremony, the couple standing before a twig of the ūmar5 tree, while some women sprinkle turmeric over them. If a girl goes wrong with an outsider she is permanently expelled and a feast is exacted from her parents. The boy and his relatives go to the girl’s house for the betrothal, and a present of various articles of food and dress is made to her family, apparently as a sort of repayment for their expenditure in feeding and clothing her. A gift of clothes is also made to her mother, called dudh-sāri, and is regarded as the price of the milk with which the mother nourished the girl in her infancy. A goat, which forms part of the bride-price, is killed and eaten by the parties and their relatives. The binding portion of the marriage is the bhānwar ceremony, at which the couple walk seven times round the marriage-post, holding each other by the little fingers. When they return to the bridegroom’s house, a cock or a goat is killed and the head buried before the door; the foreheads of the couple are marked with its blood and they go inside the house. If the bride is not adult, she goes home after a stay of two days, and the gauna or going-away ceremony is performed when she finally leaves her parents’ house. The remarriage of widows is permitted, no restriction being imposed on the widow in her choice of a second husband. Divorce is permitted for infidelity on the part of the wife.
Children are named on the sixth day after birth, special names being given to avert ill-luck, while they sometimes go through the ceremony of selling a baby for five cowries in order to disarm the jealousy of the godlings who are hostile to children. They will not call any person by name when they think an owl is within hearing, as they believe that the owl will go on repeating the name and that this will cause the death of the person bearing it. The caste generally revere Dūlha Deo, the bridegroom god, whose altar stands near the cooking place, and the goddess Devi. Once in three years they offer a white goat to Bura Deo, the great god of the Gonds. They worship the sickle, the implement of their trade, at Dasahra, and offer cocoanuts and liquor to Ghāsi Sādhak, a godling who lives by the peg to which horses are tied in the stable. He is supposed to protect the horse from all kinds of diseases. At Dasahra they also worship the horse. Their principal festival is called Karma and falls on the eleventh day of the second half of Bhādon (August). On this day they bring a branch of a tree from the forest and worship it with betel, areca-nut and other offerings. All through the day and night the men and women drink and dance together. They both burn and bury the dead, throwing the ashes into water. For the first three days after a death they set out rice and pulse and water in a leaf cup for the departed spirit. They believe that the ghosts of the dead haunt the living, and to cure a person possessed in this manner they beat him with shoes and then bury an effigy of the ghost outside the village.
The Ghasias usually work as grass-cutters and grooms to horses, and some of them make loom-combs for weavers. These last are looked down upon and called Madarchawa. They make the kūnch or brushes for the loom, like the Kūchbandhias, from the root of the babai or khas-khas grass, and the rāchh or comb for arranging the threads on the loom from the stalks of the bharru grass. Other Ghasias make ordinary hair combs from the kathai, a grass which grows densely on the borders of streams and springs. The frame of the comb is of bamboo and the teeth are fixed in either by thread or wire, the price being one pice (farthing) in the former case and two in the latter.
The caste admit outsiders by a disgusting ceremony in which the candidate is shaved with urine and forced to eat a mixture of cowdung, basil leaves, dub6 grass and water in which a piece of silver or gold has been dipped. The women do not wear the choli or breast-cloth nor the nose-ring, and in some localities they do not have spangles on the forehead. Women are tattooed on various parts of the body before marriage with the idea of enhancing their beauty, and sometimes tattooing is resorted to for curing a pain in some joint or for rheumatism. A man who is temporarily put out of caste is shaved on readmission, and in the case of a woman a lock of her hair is cut. To touch a dead cow is one of the offences entailing temporary excommunication. They employ a Brāhman only to fix the dates of their marriages. The position of the caste is very low and in some places they are considered as impure. The Ghasias are very poor, and a saying about them is ‘Ghasia ki jindagi hasia’, or ‘The Ghasia is supported by his sickle,’ the implement used for cutting grass. The Ghasias are perhaps the only caste in the Central Provinces outside those commonly returning themselves as Mehtar, who consent to do scavenger’s work in some localities.
The caste have a peculiar aversion to Kāyasths and will not take food or water from them nor touch a Kāyasth’s bedding or clothing. They say that they would not serve a Kāyasth as horse-keeper, but if by any chance one of them was reduced to doing so, he at any rate would not hold his master’s stirrup for him to mount. To account for this hereditary enmity they tell the following story:
On one occasion the son of the Kāyasth minister of the Rāja of Ratanpur went out for a ride followed by a Ghasia sais (groom). The boy was wearing costly ornaments, and the Ghasia’s cupidity being excited, he attacked and murdered the child, stripped him of his ornaments and threw the body down a well. The murder was discovered and in revenge the minister killed every Ghasia, man, woman or child that he could lay his hands on. The only ones who escaped were two pregnant women who took refuge in the hut of a Gānda and were sheltered by him. To them were born a boy and a girl and the present Ghasias are descended from the pair. Therefore a Ghasia will eat even the leavings of a Gānda but will accept nothing from the hands of a Kāyasth.
This story is an instance of the process which has been called the transplantation of myth. Sir H. Risley tells a similar legend of the Ghasias of Orissa,7 but in their case it was a young Kāyasth bridegroom who was killed, and before dying he got leave from his murderers to write a letter to his relatives informing them of his death, on condition that he said nothing as to its manner. But in the letter he disclosed the murder, and the Ghasias, who could not read, were duly brought to justice. In the Ratanpur story as reported from Bilāspur it was stated that “Somehow, even from down the well, the minister’s son managed to get a letter sent to his father telling him of the murder.” And this sentence seems sufficient to establish the fact that the Central Provinces story has merely been imported from Orissa and slightly altered to give it local colour. The real reason for the traditional aversion felt by the Ghasias and other low castes for the Kāyasths will be discussed in the article on that caste.
1 This article is compiled partly from papers by Munshis Pyāre Lāl Misra and Kanhya Lāl of the Gazetteer Office.
2 Tribes and Castes of Bengal, art. Ghāsi.
3 Central Provinces Gazetteer (1871), p. 273.
4 Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, p. 325.
5 Ficus glomerata.
6 Cynodon dactylon.
7 Tribes and Castes of Bengal, art. Ghāsi.
Ghosi.1—A caste of herdsmen belonging to northern India and found in the Central Provinces in Saugor and other Districts of the Jubbulpore and Nerbudda Divisions. In 1911 they numbered 10,000 persons in this Province out of a strength of about 60,000 in India. The name is said to be derived from the Sanskrit root ghush, to shout, the word ghosha meaning one who shouts as he herds his cattle. A noticeable fact about the caste is that, while in Upper India they are all Muhammadans—and it is considered to be partly on account of the difference in religion that they have become differentiated into a separate caste from the Ahīrs—in the Central Provinces they are nearly all Hindus and show no trace of Muhammadan practices. A few Muhammadan Ghosis are found in Nimār and some Muhammadans who call themselves Gaddi in Mandla are believed to be Ghosis. And as the Ghosis of the northern Districts of the Central Provinces must in common with the bulk of the population be descended from immigrants from northern India, it would appear that they must have changed their religion, or rather abandoned one to which their ancestors had only been imperfectly proselytised, when it was no longer the dominant faith of the locality in which they lived. Sir D. Ibbetson says that in the Punjab the name Ghosi is used only for Muhammadans, and is often applied to any cowherd or milkman of that religion, whether Gūjar, Ahīr or of any other caste, just as Goāla is used for a Hindu cowherd. It is said that Hindus will buy pure milk from the Musalmān Ghosi, but will reject it if there is any suspicion of its having been watered by the latter, as they must not drink water at his hands.2 But in Berār Brāhmans will now buy milk and curds from Muhammadan milkmen. Mr. Crooke remarks that most of the Ghosis are Ahīrs who have been converted to Islām. To the east of the United Provinces they claim a Gūjar origin, and here they will not eat beef themselves nor take food with any Muhammadans who consume it. They employ Brāhmans to fix the auspicious times for marriage and other ceremonies. The Ghosis of Lucknow have no other employment but the keeping of milch cattle, chiefly buffaloes of all kinds, and they breed buffaloes.3 This is the case also in Saugor, where the Ghosis are said to rank below ordinary Ahīrs because they breed and tend buffaloes instead of cows. Those of Narsinghpur, however, are generally not herdsmen at all but ordinary cultivators. In northern India, owing to the large number of Muhammadans who, other things being equal, would prefer to buy their milk and ghī from co-religionists, there would be an opening for milkmen professing this faith, and on the facts stated above it may perhaps be surmised that the Ghosi caste came into existence to fill the position. Or they may have been forcibly converted as a number of Ahīrs in Berār were forcibly converted to Islām, and still call themselves Muhammadans, though they can scarcely repeat the Kalma and only go to mosque once a year.4 But when some of the Ghosis migrated into the Central Provinces, they would find, in the absence of a Musalmān clientele, that their religion, instead of being an advantage, was a positive drawback to them, as Hindus would be reluctant to buy milk from a Muhammadan who might be suspected of having mixed it with water; and it would appear that they have relapsed naturally into Hinduism, all traces of their profession of Islām being lost. Even so, however, in Narsinghpur they have had to abandon their old calling and become ordinary cultivators, while in Saugor, perhaps on account of their doubtful status, they are restricted to keeping buffaloes. If this suggestion turned out to be well founded, it would be an interesting instance of a religion being changed to secure a professional advantage. But it can only be considered as a guess. A parallel to the disadvantage of being unable to water their milk without rendering it impure, which attaches to the Ghosis of the Punjāb, may be adduced in the case of the Telis of the small town of Multai in Betūl District. Here the dairyman’s business is for some reason in the hands of Telis (oilmen) and it is stated that from every Teli who engages in it a solemn oath is exacted that he will not put water in the milk, and any violation of this would be punished by expulsion from caste. Because if the Hindus once found that they had been rendered impure by drinking water touched by so low a caste as the Telis, they would decline any longer to purchase milk from them. It is curious that the strict rule of ceremonial purity which obtains in the case of water has apparently no application to milk.
In the Central Provinces the Ghosis have two subcastes, the Havelia or those living in open wheat country, and the Birchheya or residents of jungle tracts. In Saugor they have another set of divisions borrowed from the Ahīrs, and here the Muhammadan Ghosis are said to be a separate subcaste, though practically none were returned at the census. They have the usual system of exogamous groups with territorial names derived from those of villages. At their marriages the couple walk six times round the sacred post, reserving the seventh round, if the bride is a child, to be performed subsequently when she goes to her husband. But if she is adult, the full number may be completed, the ceremony known as lot pata coming between the sixth and seventh rounds. In this the bride sits first on the right of her husband and then changes seats so as to be on his left; and she is thus considered to become joined to her husband as the left part of his body, which the Hindus consider the wife to be, holding the same belief as that expressed in Genesis. After this the bride takes some child of the household into her lap and then makes it over to the bridegroom saying, ‘Take care of the baby while I go and do the household work.’ This ceremony, which has been recorded also of the Kāpus in Chānda, is obviously designed as an auspicious omen that the marriage may be blessed with children. Like other castes of their standing, the Ghosis permit polygamy, divorce and the remarriage of widows, but the practice of taking two wives is rare. The dead are burnt, with the exception that the bodies of young children whose ears have not been pierced and of persons dying of smallpox are buried. Children usually have their ears pierced when they are three or four years old. A corpse must not be taken to the pyre at night, as it is thought that in that case it would be born blind in the next birth. The caste have bards and genealogists of their own who are known as Patia. In Damoh the Ghosis are mainly cart-drivers and cultivators and very few of them sell milk. In Nimār there are some Muhammadan Ghosis who deal in milk. Their women are not secluded and may be known by the number of little rings worn in the ear after the Muhammadan custom. Like the Ahīrs, the Ghosis are considered to be somewhat stupid. They call themselves Ghosi Thākur, as they claim to be Rājpūts, and outsiders also sometimes address them as Thākur. But in Sangor and Damoh these aspirations to Kshatriya rank are so widespread that when one person asks another his caste the usual form of the question is ‘What Thākur are you?’ The questioner thus politely assumes that his companion must be a Rājpūt of some sort and leaves it to him to admit or deny the soft impeachment. Another form of this question is to say ‘What dudh, or milk, are you?’