22. Their virtues.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Russell, R. V. (Robert Vane)
The Banjāras, however, are far from being wholly criminal, and the number who have adopted an honest mode of livelihood is continually on the increase. Some allowance must be made for their having been deprived of their former calling by the cessation of the continual wars which distracted India under native rule, and the extension of roads and railways which has rendered their mode of transport by pack-bullocks almost entirely obsolete. At one time practically all the grain exported from Chhattīsgarh was carried by them. In 1881 Mr. Kitts noted that the number of Banjāras convicted in the Berār criminal courts was lower in proportion to the strength of the caste than that of Muhammadans, Brāhmans, Koshtis or Sunars,61 though the offences committed by them were usually more heinous. Colonel Mackenzie had quite a favourable opinion of them: “A Banjāra who can read and write is unknown. But their memories, from cultivation, are marvellous and very retentive. They carry in their heads, without slip or mistake, the most varied and complicated transactions and the share of each in such, striking a debtor and creditor account as accurately as the best-kept ledger, while their history and songs are all learnt by heart and transmitted orally from generation to generation. On the whole, and taken rightly in their clannish nature, their virtues preponderate over their vices. In the main they are truthful and very brave, be it in war or the chase, and once gained over are faithful and devoted adherents.
With the pride of high descent and with the right that might gives in unsettled and troublous times, these Banjāras habitually lord it over and contemn the settled inhabitants of the plains. And now not having foreseen their own fate, or at least not timely having read the warnings given by a yearly diminishing occupation, which slowly has taken their bread away, it is a bitter pill for them to sink into the ryot class or, oftener still, under stern necessity to become the ryot’s servant. But they are settling to their fate, and the time must come when all their peculiar distinctive marks and traditions will be forgotten.”
Source notes
1 This article is based principally on a Monograph on the Banjāra Clan, by Mr. N. F. Cumberlege of the Berār Police, believed to have been first written in 1869 and reprinted in 1882; notes on the Banjāras written by Colonel Mackenzie and printed in the Berār Census Report (1881) and the Pioneer newspaper (communicated by Mrs. Horsburgh); Major Gunthorpe’s Criminal Tribes; papers by Mr. M. E. Khare, Extra-Assistant Commissioner, Chānda; Mr. Nārāyan Rao, Tahr., Betūl; Mr. Mukund Rao, Manager, Pachmarhi Estate; and information on the caste collected in Yeotmāl and Nimār.
2 Mr. Crooke’s Tribes and Castes, art. Banjāra, para. 1.
3Berār Census Report (1881), p. 150.
4Ibidem, para. 2, quoting Dowson’s Elliot, v. 100.
5 Khan Bahadur Fazalullah Lutfullah Farīdi in the Bombay Gazetteer (Muhammadans of Gujarat, p. 86) quoting from General Briggs (Transactions Bombay Literary Society, vol. i. 183) says that “as carriers of grain for Muhammadan armies the Banjāras have figured in history from the days of Muhammad Tughlak (A.D. 1340) to those of Aurāngzeb.”
6 Sir H. M. Elliot’s Supplemental Glossary.
7Monograph on the Banjāra Clan, p. 8.
8Hindus of Gujarāt, p. 214 et seq.
9Rājasthān, i. 602.
10Ibidem, ii. 570, 573.
11 This custom does not necessarily indicate a special connection between the Banjāras and Chārans, as it is common to several castes in Rājputāna; but it indicates that the Banjāras came from Rājputāna. Banjāra men also frequently wear the hair long, down to the neck, which is another custom of Rājputāna.
12Jungle Life in India, p. 517.
13Berār Census Report (1881), p. 152.
14Bombay Gazetteer, Hindus of Gujarāt.
15Letter on the Marāthas (1798), p. 67, India Office Tracts.
16Army of the Indian Mughals, p. 192.
17Monograph, p. 14, and Berār Census Report (1881) (Kitts), p. 151.
18 These are held to have been descendants of the Bhīka Rāthor referred to by Colonel Mackenzie above.
19 See note 3, p. 168.
20 General Briggs quoted by Mr. Farīdi in Bombay Gazetteer, Muhammadans of Gujarāt, p. 86.
21 A. Wellesley (1800), quoted in Mr. Crooke’s edition of Hobson-Jobson, art. Brinjarry.
22 Cumberlege, loc. cit.
23 Cumberlege, pp. 28, 29.
24 Elliot’s Races, quoted by Mr. Crooke, ibidem.
25 Cumberlege, pp. 4, 5.
26 Cumberlege, l.c.
27 This custom is noticed in the article on Khairwār.
28 Cumberlege, p. 18.
29 Mr. Hīra Lāl suggests that this custom may have something to do with the phrase Athāra jāt ke gāyi, or ‘She has gone to the eighteen castes,’ used of a woman who has been turned out of the community. This phrase seems, however, to be a euphemism, eighteen castes being a term of indefinite multitude for any or no caste. The number eighteen may be selected from the same unknown association which causes the goat to be cut into eighteen pieces.
30Ethnographic Notes in Southern India, p. 344, quoting from Moor’s Narrative of Little’s Detachment.
31 Cumberlege, p. 35.
32Berār Census Report, 1881.
33 Cumberlege, p. 21.
34 The following instance is taken from Mr. Balfour’s article, ‘Migratory Tribes of Central India,’ in J. A. S. B., new series, vol. xiii., quoted in Mr. Crooke’s Tribes and Castes.
35 From the Sanskrit Hātya-ādhya, meaning ‘That which it is most sinful to slay’ (Balfour).
36Monograph, p. 12.
37Asiatic Studies, i. p. 118 (ed. 1899).
38 Cumberlege, p. 23 et seq. The description of witchcraft is wholly reproduced from his Monograph.