endobj Tirgaar, Tirbanda. 1 0 obj Besides the myths, the members of a second-order division, belonging to all ekdas, shared certain customs and institutions, including worship of a tutelary deity. Although the ekda or tad was the most effective unit for endogamy, each unit of the higher order was also significant for endogamy. Weaving and cloth trading communities of Western India particularly of Gujarat are called Vankar/Wankar/Vaniya. Hence started farming and small scale business in the British Raj to thrive better conditions ahead to maintain their livelihood. <> The degree of contravention is less if the couple belong, let us say, to two different fourth-order divisions within a third-order division than if they belong to two different third-order divisions within a second-order division, and so on. Marriages were usually confined to neighbouring villages, so that marriage links were spread in a continuous manner from one end of the region to another. Britain's response was to cut off the thumbs of weavers, break their looms and impose duties on tariffs on Indian cloth, while flooding India and the world with cheaper fabric from the new steam mills of Britain. There was considerable elaboration in urban areas of what Ghurye long ago called the community aspect of caste (1932: 179) and frequently, this led to juxtaposition rather than hierarchy between caste divisions of the same order. All the small towns sections in each of the ekdas resented that, while the large town section accepted brides from small towns, they did not reciprocate. They married their daughters into higher Rajput lineages in the local area who in turn married their daughters into still higher nearly royal rajput lineages in Saurashtra and Kachchh. The Kolis seem to have had only two divisions in every part of Gujarat: for example, Talapada (indigenous) and Pardeshi (foreign) in central Gujarat and Palia and Baria in eastern Gujarat (significantly, one considered indigenous and the other outsider). State Id State Name Castecode Caste Subcaste 4 GUJARAT 4001 AHIR SORATHA 4 GUJARAT 4002 AHIR 4 GUJARAT 4003 ANSARI 4 GUJARAT 4004 ANVIL BRAHMIN 4 GUJARAT 4005 ATIT BAYAJI BAKSHI PANCH 4 GUJARAT 4006 BAJANIYA 4 GUJARAT 4007 BAJIR . In these divisions an increasing number of marriages are taking place against the grain of traditional hierarchy, i.e., girls of traditionally higher strata marry boys of traditionally lower strata. The small town sections therefore separated themselves from the respective large town sections and formed a new ekda. With the exclusion of caste (except scheduled caste) from the census since 1951 (practically since 1941, because the census of that year did not result in much reporting), writings on castes as horizontal units greatly declined. Also, the horizontal spread of a caste rarely coincided with the territorial boundaries of a political authority. Frequently, the shift from emphasis on co-operation and hierarchy in the caste system to emphasis on division (or difference or separation) is described as shift from whole to parts, from system to elements, from structure to substance. Caste divisions of the first-order can be classified broadly into three categories. Castes pervaded by divisive tendencies had small populations confined to small areas separated from each other by considerable gaps. In the meanwhile, it is important to note that there does not seem to have been any attempt to form small endogamous units (ekdas, gols) at any level among the Rajputs unlike attempts made as we shall see, among some other hypergamous castes in Gujarat. From the 15th century onwards we find historical references to political activities of Koli chieftains. The understanding of changes in caste is not likely to be advanced by clubbing such diverse groups together under the rubric of ethnic group. The main aim of this paper is to discuss, on the basis of data derived mainly from Gujarat, these and other problems connected with the horizontal dimension of caste. But there were also others who did not wield any power. We shall return to this issue later. The highest stratum among the Leva Kanbi tried to maintain its position by practising polygyny and female infanticide, among other customs and institutions, as did the highest stratum among the Rajput. The two considered themselves different and separateof course, within the Kanbi foldwhere they happened to live together in the villages in the merger zone between north and central Gujarat and in towns. I will not discuss the present situation in detail but indicate briefly how the above discussion could be useful for understanding a few important changes in modern times. In India Limbachiya is most frequent in: Maharashtra, where 70 percent reside, Gujarat . And how flexibility was normal at the lowest level has just been shown. During Mughal Empire India was manufacturing 27% of world's textile and Gujarati weavers dominated along with Bengali weavers in Indian textile trade industry overseas. The Kayasthas and Brahma-Kshatriyas, the so- called writer castes, employed mainly in the bureaucracy, and the Vahivancha Barots, genealogists and mythographers, were almost exclusively urban castes. To illustrate, among the Khadayata or Modh Vanias, an increasing number of marriages take place between two or more tads within an ekda. In any case, castes are not likely to cease to be castes in the consciousness of people in the foreseeable future. so roamed around clueless. Although I have not, during my limited field work, come across hypergamous marriages between Rajputs and Bhils, ethnographic reports and other literature frequently refer to such marriages (see, for example, Naik 1956: 18f; Nath I960. Frequently, a division among Vanias corresponded to a division among Brahmans. That Rajputs were one of the divisions, if not the only division of the first-order, not having further divisions, has already been mentioned. A few examples are: Brahman (priest), Vania (trader), Rajput (warrior and ruler), Kanbi (peasant), Koli (peasant), Kathi (peasant), Soni goldsmith), Suthar (carpenter), Valand (barber), Chamar (leatherworker), Dhed (weaver) and Bhangi (scavenger). There is a patterned widening of the connubial field along an area chalked out historically. The two areas merge gradually, and my field work covered most of the spectrum. They have been grouped in Vaishya category of Varna system. The three trading castes of Vania, Lohana and Bhatia were mainly urban. The earliest caste associations were formed in Bombay in the middle of the 19th century among migrants belonging to the primarily urban and upper castes from Gujarat, such as Vanias, Bhatias and Lohanas (see Dobbin 1972: 74-76, 121-30, 227f, 259-61). This stratum among the Kanbis coped with the problem mainly by practising remarriage of widows and divorced women. Data need to be collected over large areas by methods other than those used in village studies, castes need to be compared in the regional setting, and a new general approach, analytical framework, and conceptual apparatus need to be developed. All this trade encouraged development of trading and commercial towns in the rest of Gujarat, even in the highland area. Jun 12, 2022 . The main thrust of Pococks paper is that greater emphasis on difference rather than on hierarchy is a feature of caste among overseas Indians and in modern urban India. Sometimes castes are described as becoming ethnic groups in modern India, particularly in urban India. There was also another important correlation. This meant that he could marry a girl of any subdivision within the Vania division. The Rajputs in Radhvanaj, the village I have studied in central Gujarat, had no great difficulty in establishing their claim to being Rajputs: they owned substantial amounts of land under a traditional Rajput tenure, dominated village politics and possessed certain other traditional Rajput symbols. As could be expected, there were marriages between fairly close kin, resulting in many overlapping relationships, in such an endogamous unit. The small ekda or tad with its entire population residing in a single town was, of course, not a widespread phenomenon. The latter continued to be the provincial capital during Mughal rule. The bulk of the population was spread all over the villages as small landholders, tenants and labourers. Similarly, the Vanias were divided into such divisions as Disawal, Kapol, Khadayata, Lad, Modh, Nagar, Nima, Porwad, Shirmali, Vayada, and Zarola. That the sociological study of urban areas in India has not received as much attention as that of rural areas is well known, and the studies made so far have paid little attention to caste in urban areas. In contrast, there were horizontal units, the internal hierarchy and hypergamy of which were restricted to some extent by the formation of small endogamous units and which had discernible boundaries at the lowest level. Frequently, The ekdas or gols were each divided into groups called tads (split). This account of the divisions is based on various sources, but mainly on Bombay Gazetteer (1901). The urban centres in both the areas, it is hardly necessary to mention, are nucleated settlements populated by numerous caste and religious groups. It used to have a panch (council of leaders) and sometimes also a headman (patel). I have bits and pieces of information about relations between a considerable numbers of other lower-order divisions in their respective higher-order divisions. The tribal groups in the highland area, such as the Bhils and Naikdas, also did not have any urban component. For example, there were two ekdas, each with a large section resident in a large town and small sections resident in two or three neighbouring small towns. Division and hierarchy have always been stressed as the two basic principles of the caste system. Vankar is described as a caste as well as a community. The prohibition of inter-division marriage was much more important than the rules of purity and pollution in the maintenance of boundaries between the lower-order divisions. The indigenous Kolis in the highland area of Pal in eastern Gujarat were called Palia, but there was another smaller population of KoUs, who were locally called Baria but were actually Talapada immigrants from central Gujarat. //manvar surname caste in gujarat Radhvanaj Rajputs were clearly distinguished from, and ranked much above local Kolis. In some other cases, mainly of urban artisans, craftsmen and specialized servants, such as Kansaras (copper and bronze smiths), Salvis (silk weavers), Kharadis (skilled carpenters and wood carvers), Chudgars (bangle-makers) and Vahivanchas genealogists and mythographers), the small populations were so small and confined to so few towns that they had few subdivisions and the boundaries of their horizontal units were fairly easy to define. gujarati surnames castes The division had an elaborate internal hierarchy, with wealthy and powerful landlords and tax-farmers at the top and small landholders, tenants and labourers at the bottom. Srinivas has called the unity of the village manifested in these interrelations the vertical unity of the village (1952: 31f. We shall return later to a consideration of this problem. endobj The small endogamous units, on the other hand, did not practise either. Britain's Industrial Revolution was built on the de-industrialisation of India - the destruction of Indian textiles and their replacement by manufacturing in England, using Indian raw materials and exporting the finished products back to India and even the rest of the world. The Rajputs, in association with the Kolis, were probably the only horizontal unit which had continuous internal hierarchy, i.e., hypergamy unbroken by any endogamous subdivisions, and which did not have discernible boundaries at the lowest level. What may be called the census approach influenced a great deal of scholarly work. Simultaneously, there is gradual decline in the strength of the principle of hierarchy, particularly of ritual hierarchy expressed in purity and pollution. The emphasis on being different and separate rather than on being higher and lower was even more marked in the relationship among the forty or so second-order divisions. I have, therefore, considered them a first-order division and not a second-order one among Brahmans (for a fuller discussion of the status of Anavils, see Joshi, 1966; Van der Veen 1972; Shah, 1979). The most important example of primarily political caste association is the Gujarat Kshatriya Sabha. Roughly, while in the plains area villages are nucleated settlements, populated by numerous castes, in the highland area villages are dispersed settlements, populated by tribes and castes of tribal origin. manvar surname caste in gujarat - Be Falcon Thus, the result was the spread of the population of a caste division towards its fringes. A block printed and resist-dyed fabric, whose origin is from Gujarat was found in the tombs of Fostat, Egypt. If this rule was violated, i.e., if he married a girl with whom the Vanias did not have commensal relations, the maximum punishment, namely, excommunication, was imposed. I hope to show that the integration of the study of caste in urban areas with that of rural areas is essential to a comprehensive understanding of caste and its implications for Indian society and culture. The most important of them was the Koli division, which was, the largest division and mainly included small landholders, tenants and labourers. Since Vankars were involved in production and business they were known as Nana Mahajans or small merchants. Briefly, while the Varna model was significant in the total dynamics of the caste system to fit the numerous first-order divisions into the four-fold Varna model in any part of India is impossible, and, therefore, to consider varnas as caste divisions as such is meaningless. to which the divisions of the marrying couple belong. History. Which caste is Vaya surname? : r/gujarat - reddit.com The Rajput links entailed the spread of Rajput culture in each Koli division and provided a certain cultural homogeneity to all the divisions. One important first-order division, namely, Rajput, does not seem to have had any second-order division at all. It has already been mentioned that every first-order division was not divided into second-order divisions, and that every second-order division was not divided into third-order divisions, and so on. In each of these three divisions the top stratum was clear. 3 0 obj Together they provide a slice of Gujarati society from the sea- coast to the bordering highlands. In spite of them, however, sociologists and social anthropologists have not filled adequately the void left by the disappearance of caste from the census and the gazetteer. The highland Bhils seem to have provided brides to lower Rajputs on the other side of the highlands also, i.e., to those in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh (see, for example, Doshi, 1971: 7f., 13-15; Aurora 1972: 16, 32f.). Second, there used to be intense intra-ekda politics, and tads were formed as a result of some continuing conflict among ekda leaders and over the trial of violation of ekda rules. The sub- the manner in which the ideas of free marriages and castles society are used by both the old and the young in modern India and how a number of new customs and institutions have evolved to cope with these new ideas is a fascinating subject of study. That the role of the two principles could vary at different levels within a first-order division has also been seen. This does not solve the problem if there are four orders of divisions of the kind found in Gujarat. Prohibited Content 3. Inclusion of a lower-order division in a higher-order one and distinction between various divisions in a certain order was not as unambiguous. It is easy to understand that the pattern of change would be different in those first-order divisions (such as Rajput) or second-order divisions (such as Leva Kanbi) which did not have within them subdivisions of lower orders and which practised hypergamy extensively. Almost every village in this area included at least some Leva population, and in many villages they formed a large, if not the largest, proportion of the population. [1], People of India Gujarat Volume XXI Part Three edited by R.B Lal, P.B.S.V Padmanabham, G Krishnan & M Azeez Mohideen pages 1126-1129, Last edited on 14 November 2022, at 23:04, Learn how and when to remove this template message, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vankar&oldid=1121933086, This page was last edited on 14 November 2022, at 23:04. The migration of the Kolis of north Gujarat into central Gujarat and those of the latter into eastern Gujarat was a process of slow drift from one village to another over a period of time. I would suggest that this feature of urban caste, along with the well known general tendency of urban culture to encourage innovation, provided the groundhowever diffuse that ground might have beenfor a favourable response to the anti-hierarchical ideas coming from the West. The two together formed a single complex of continental dimension. To obtain a clear understanding of the second-order divisions with the Koli division, it is necessary first of all to find a way through the maze of their divisional names. The co-residence of people belonging to two or more divisions of the lower orders within a division of a higher order has been a prominent feature of caste in towns and cities. They were involved in agriculture in one way or another. In all there were thirty to forty such divisions. Gujarat did not have anything like the non-Brahmin movement of South India and Maharashtra before 1947. The Levas, Anavils and Khedawals provide examples of castes whose internal organization had a strong emphasis on the principle of hierarchy and a weak emphasis on that of division. Real Estate Software Dubai > blog > manvar surname caste in gujarat. For example, there were Khedawal Brahmans but not Khedawal Vanias, and Lad Vanias but no Lad Brahmans. Vankar - Wikipedia Many of them became the norm-setting elite for Gujaratis in the homeland. The patterns of change in marriage and in caste associations are two of the many indications of the growing significance of the principle of division (or separation or difference) in caste in urban areas in Gujarat. Early industrial labour was also drawn mainly from the urban artisan and servant castes. Marco Polo a Venetian merchant on his visit to India in 13th century Gujarat observed that "brocading art of Gujarat weavers is par excellent". There are other sub-castes like Satpanthis, who are mainly centered in Kutch district and have some social customs akin to Muslims . %PDF-1.7 In central Gujarat, for example, one and the same division, freely arranging marriages within it, was known by several names such as Baraiya, Dharala, Khant, Kotwal, Pagi, Patelia, Talapada, Thakarada, and Thakor. (Frequently, such models are constructed a priori rather than based on historical evidence, but that is another story). Usually, these divisions were distinguished from one another by prohibition of what people called roti vyavahar (bread, i.e., food transactions) as well as beti vyavahar (daughter, i.e., marital transactions). The freedom struggle brought the Indian handloom sector back to the fore, with Mahatma Gandhi spearheading the Swadeshi cause. A first-order division could be further divided into two or more second-order divisions. Sometimes a division corresponding to a division among Brahmans and Vanias was found in a third first-order division also. The social relations between and within a large number of such segregated castes should be seen in the context of the overall urban environment, characterized as it was by co-existence of local Hindu castes with immigrant Hindu castes and with the non-Hindu groups such as Jains, Muslims, Parsis and Christians, a higher degree of monetization, a higher degree of contractual and market relations (conversely, a lesser degree of jajmani-type relations), existence of trade guilds, and so on. As a consequence, the continuities of social institutions and the potentiality of endogenous elements for bringing about change are overlooked (for a discussion of some other difficulties with these paradigms, see Lynch 1977). Unfortunately, although the Kolis are an important element in Gujarats population, their earlier ethnography is confusing, and there is hardly any modern, systematic, anthropological, sociological or historical study, so that the confusion continues to persist. Most associations continue to retain their non-political character. What I am trying to point out, however, is that greater emphasis on division (Pococks difference, Dumonts separation. The decline was further accelerated by the industrial revolution. Fortunately, they have now started writing about it (see Rao 1974). The village was a small community divided into a relatively small number of castes; the population of each caste was also small, sometimes only one or two households, with little possibility of existence of subdivisions; and there were intensive relationships of various kinds between the castes. Sometimes a division could even be a self-contained endogamous unit. //]]>. That there was room for flexibility and that the rule of caste endogamy could be violated at the highest level among the Rajputs was pointed out earlier. Disclaimer 9. All Brahman divisions did not, however, have a corresponding Vania division. Reference to weaving and spinning materials is found in the Vedic Literature. Although they claimed to be Brahman they were closely associated with agriculture. As soon as there is any change in . Frequently, social divisions were neatly expressed in street names. There was also a tendency among bachelors past marriageable age to establish liaisons with lower-caste women, which usually led the couple to flee and settle down in a distant village.
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