It is not easy to find out if the tads became ekdas in course of time and if the process of formation of ekdas was the same as that of the formation of tads. PDF Castes and Subcastes List in Gujarat - Matchfinder I should hasten to add, however, that the open-minded scholar that he is, he does not rule out completely the possibility of separation existing as independent principle. Caste divisions of the first-order can be classified broadly into three categories. I have done field work in two contiguous parts of Gujarat: central Gujarat (Kheda district and parts of Ahmedabad and Baroda districts) and eastern Gujarat (Panchmahals district). While certain first-order divisions were found mainly in towns, the population of certain other first-order divisions was dispersed in villages as well as in towns, the population of the rural and the urban sections differing from one division to another. There were Brahman and Vania divisions of the same name, the myths about both of them were covered by a single text. In 1931, the Rajputs of all strata in Gujarat had together a population of about 35,000 forming nearly 5 per cent of the total population of Gujarat. So in this way, the Maharashtra caste list is given to all cast Aarakshan belonging to the Scheduled Castes category for the state of MH. 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. In India Limbachiya is most frequent in: Maharashtra, where 70 percent reside, Gujarat . This list may not reflect recent changes. 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). Of particular importance seems to be the fact that a section of the urban population was more or less isolatedsome may say, alienatedfrom the rural masses from generation to generation. 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 recent years, however, there has been a tendency to emphasize hierarchy as the primary principle encompassing the principle of division. 100 Most Common Surnames in India | Probability Comparison Moreover, the king himself belonged to some caste (not just to the Kshatriya Varna) and frequently a number of kings belonged to the same caste (e.g., Rajput). https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Social_groups_of_Gujarat&oldid=1080951156, Social groups of India by state or union territory, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 4 April 2022, at 12:36. Each ekda or gol was composed of a definite number of families living in certain villages and/or towns. The Brahmans and Vanias seem to have had the largest number of divisions as mentioned earlier, about eighty in the former and about forty in the latter. In other words, it did not involve a big jump from one place to another distant place. Because of these two major factors, one economic and the other political, Gujarat at the beginning of the 19th century had a large urban population, distributed over a large number of small towns. Thus, finding any boundary between Rajputs and Kolis in the horizontal context was impossible, although there were sharp boundaries between the two in the narrow local context. The castes pervaded by hierarchy and hypergamy had large populations spread evenly from village to village and frequently also from village to town over a large area. This list may not reflect recent changes. There was an emphasis on being different and separate rather than on being higher and lower. We will now analyze the internal structure of a few first-order divisions, each of which was split into divisions going down to the fourth order. While some hypergamous and hierarchical tendency, however weak, did exist between tads within an ekda and between ekdas within a second- order division, it was practically non-existent among the forty or so second-order divisions, such as Modh, Porwad, Shrimali, Khadayata and so on, among the Vanias. 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. Many of them claimed that they were Brahmans but this claim was not accepted by most established Brahmans. A first-order division could be further divided into two or more second-order divisions. A recent tendency in sociological literature is to consider jatis as castes. To whichever of the four orders a caste division belonged, its horizontal spread rarely, if ever, coincided with that of another. Most of them were, true to their name, rulers at various levels of the political hierarchy from the kingly level to the level of dominant caste in many villages. Frequently, a division among Vanias corresponded to a division among Brahmans. These prefixes Visa and Dasa, were generally understood to be derived from the words for the numbers 20 (vis) and 10 (das), which suggested a descending order of status, but there is no definite evidence of such hierarchy in action. Castes having continuous internal hierarchy and lacking effective small endogamous units, such as Rajputs, Leva Kanbis, Anavils and Khedawals, do not have active associations for lower-order divisions. There was a continuous process of formation and disintegration of such units. History. The weavers were forced into selling exclusively to the British at extremely low rates, pushing them into poverty. Village studies, as far as caste is a part of them, have been, there fore, concerned with the interrelations between sections of various castes in the local context. window.__mirage2 = {petok:"uGhRfiuY26l2oZgRlfZRFSp4BWPIIt7Gh61sQC1XrRU-3600-0"}; There were about three hundred divisions of this order in the region as a whole. There was also another kind of feast, called bhandaro, where Brahmans belonging to a lesser number of divisions (say, all the few in a small town) were invited. From the 15th century onwards we find historical references to political activities of Koli chieftains. That the role of the two principles could vary at different levels within a first-order division has also been seen. The lowest stratum among the Khedawals tried to cope with the problem of scarcity of brides mainly by practising ignominious exchange marriage and by restricting marriage of sons in a family to the younger sons, if not to only the youngest. 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. 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. In 1931, their total population was more than 1,700,000, nearly one-fourth of the total population of Gujarat. The humble Charkha (spinning wheel) and khadi became a dominant symbol of self-reliance, self-determination and nationalist pride. To take one sensitive area of purity/pollution behaviour, the concern for observance of rules of commensality has greatly declined not only in urban but also in rural areas. They are described by the ruling elite as robbers, dacoits, marauders, predators and the like. Caste Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster The larger castes and even larger subdivisions among them used to have their houses segregated on their own streets (called pol, sheri, khadki, vad, khancho). Srinivas has called the unity of the village manifested in these interrelations the vertical unity of the village (1952: 31f. Most associations continue to retain their non-political character. Although my knowledge is fragmentary, I thought it was worthwhile to put together the bits and pieces for the region as a whole. Inclusion of a lower-order division in a higher-order one and distinction between various divisions in a certain order was not as unambiguous. 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. In the plains, therefore, every village had one or more towns in its vicinity. It seems the highland Bhils (and possibly also other tribes) provided brides to lower Rajputs in Gujarat. [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. 4 0 obj Kayatias and Tapodhans were considered such low Brahmans that even some non-Brahman castes did not accept food and water from them. endobj Any one small caste may look insignificant in itself but all small castes put together become a large social block and a significant social phenomenon. Similarly, the Vanias were divided into such divisions as Disawal, Kapol, Khadayata, Lad, Modh, Nagar, Nima, Porwad, Shirmali, Vayada, and Zarola. They have been grouped in Vaishya category of Varna system. And how flexibility was normal at the lowest level has just been shown. Even if we assume, for a moment, that the basic nature of a structure or institution was the same, we need to know its urban form or variant. It is important to note that the more literate and learned Brahmans lived in towns, more particularly in capital and pilgrim towns, which were, indeed, the centres of higher Hindu culture and civilization. For example, in a Rajput kingdom the families of the Rajput king and his nobles resided in the capital town, while the Rajput landlords and cultivators resided in villages. Both were recognized as Brahman but as degraded ones. But this is not enough. % Indeed, a major achievement of Indian sociology during the last thirty years or so has been deeper understanding of caste in the village context in particular and of its hierarchical dimension in general. I know some ekdas, and tads composed of only 150 to 200 households. Hypergamy was accompanied by sanskritization of at least a section of the tribal population, their claim to the Kshatriya Varna and their economic and political symbiosis with the caste population. The fact that Mahatma Gandhi came from a small third-order division in the Modh Vania division in a town in Saurashtra does not seem to be an accident. The primarily rural and lower castes were the last to form associations and that too mainly after independence (1947). But many Rajput men of Radhvanaj got wives from people in distant villages who were recognized there as Kolisthose Kolis who had more land and power than the generality of Kolis had tried to acquire some of the traditional Rajput symbols in dress manners and customs and had been claiming to be Rajputs. This was unlike the situation among the Rajputs who did not make any attempt to form small endogamous units. Although the people of one tad would talk about their superiority over those of another tad in an ekda, and the people of one ekda over those of another in a higher-order division, particularly in large towns where two or more tads and ekdas would be found living together, there was no articulate ranking and hypergamy among them. All associations originated in large towns, are more active in towns than in villages, and are led by prominent members in towns. Tapodhans were priests in Shiva temples. Since after expansion of British textile markets and decline of Indian textile industry Vankars suffered a lot. We need to formulate some idea of the nature of the Indian urban society and its relation with the rural society in the past, at least at the beginning of the 19th century. The Kolis in such an area may not even be concerned about a second-order divisional name and may be known simply as Kolis. The Anavil, numbering 30,000 to 40,000 in 1931, were found mainly in south Gujarat. Many primarily rural castes, such as Kolisthe largest castehave remained predominantly rural even today. The three trading castes of Vania, Lohana and Bhatia were mainly urban. 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. In the past the dispersal over a wide area of population of an ekda or tad was uncommon; only modern communications have made residential dispersal as well as functional integration possible. Many of these names were also based on place names. 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. The main reason was that Anavils did not practise priesthood as a traditional occupation, nor were they involved in traditional Sanskrit learning. Unfortunately, such figures are not available for the last fifty years or so. Limbachiya Surname Origin, Meaning & Last Name History - Forebears 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. professor melissa murray. Once the claim was accepted at either level, hypergamous marriage was possible. The members of a kings caste were thus found not only in his own kingdom but in other kingdoms as well. The following 157 pages are in this category, out of 157 total. This was because political authorities were hierarchized from little kingdom to empire and the boundaries of political authorities kept changing. Since Vankars were involved in production and business they were known as Nana Mahajans or small merchants. This category has the following 18 subcategories, out of 18 total. They wrote about the traditional Indian village, but not about the traditional Indian town. The latter continued to be the provincial capital during Mughal rule. For example, there was considerable ambiguity about the status of Anavils. Moreover, a single division belonging to any one of the orders may have more than one association, and an association may be uni-purpose or multi-purpose. 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. When the rural population began to be drawn towards the new opportunities, the first to take advantage of them were the rural sections of the rural-cum-urban castes. They then spread to towns in the homeland and among all castes. In 1920 there were 2 Mehta families living in New Jersey. Leva Sheri and Kadva Sheri, named after the two major second-order divisions among the Kanbis. 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. 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. These marriage links do not seem to have allowed, among the Kolis, formation of well organized, small, endogamous units (ekadas, gols) as were found among some other castes. This was dramatized at huge feasts called chorasi (literally, eighty-four) when Brahmans belonging to all the traditional 84 second-order divisions sat together to eat food cooked at the same kitchen. We have seen how one second-order division among Brahmans, namely, Khedawal, was marked by continuous internal hierarchy and strong emphasis on hypergamy on the one hand and by absence of effective small endogamous units on the other. There are thus a few excellent studies of castes as horizontal units. Hindu society is usually described as divided into a number of castes the boundaries of which are maintained by the rule of caste endogamy. The existence of flexibility at both the levels was made possible by the flexibility of the category Rajput. endobj The degree of contravention involved in an inter-divisional marriage, however, depends upon the order (i.e., first-order, second-order, etc.) These coastal towns were involved in trade among themselves, with other towns on the rest of the Indian sea coast, and with many foreign lands. While some of the divisions of a lower order might be the result of fission, some others might be a result of fusion. : 11-15, 57-75). Although the number of inter-ekda marriages has been increasing, even now the majority of marriages take place within an ekda. I hope to show in this paper how the principle of division is also a primary principle competing with the principle of hierarchy and having important implications for Indian society and culture. A block printed and resist-dyed fabric, whose origin is from Gujarat was found in the tombs of Fostat, Egypt. //]]>. Such a description not only overlooks the diversity and complexity of caste divisions and the rural-urban Link- ages in them but also leads to placing them in the same category as Muslims, Christians, Parsis, Jains, Buddhists, and so on. A great deal of discussion of the role of the king in the caste system, based mainly on Indological literature, does not take these facts into account and therefore tends to be unrealistic. Further, during this lengthy process of slow amalgamation those who will marry in defiance of the barriers of sub-caste, will still be imbued with caste mentality (1932: 184). 91. Visited Ahmedabad for the weekend to meet a friend but her family had a medical emergency. Koli Patels are recognised as a Other Backward Class caste by Government of Gujarat. No analytical gains are therefore likely to occur by calling them by any other name. 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 four major woven fabrics produced by these communities are cotton, silk, khadi and linen. Let me illustrate briefly. Nowadays, in urban areas in particular, very few people think of making separate seating arrangements for members of different castes at wedding and such other feasts. The marital alliances of the royal families forming part of the Maratha confederacy, and of the royal families of Mysore in south India and of Kashmir and Nepal in the north with the royal families of Gujarat and Rajasthan show, among other things, how there was room for flexibility and how the rule of caste endogamy could be violated in an acceptable manner at the highest level. We had seen earlier that in the first-order division, such as that of the Rajputs, there were no second-order divisions, and no attempt was made to form small endogamous units: hypergamy had free play, as it were. Fortunately, they have now started writing about it (see Rao 1974). Hence as we go down the hierarchy we encounter more and more debates regarding the claims of particular lineages to being Rajput so much so that we lose sight of any boundary and the Rajput division merges imperceptibly into some other division. Division and hierarchy have always been stressed as the two basic principles of the caste system. An important idea behind the activities of caste associations is: service to ones caste is service to the nation. Firstly, there were divisions whose population was found almost entirely in towns. Content Guidelines 2. The pattern of inter-divisional marriages shows how the idea of free marriage, which guides most of the inter-caste marriages, is restricted, modified, and graded according to the traditional structure of caste divisions. %PDF-1.7 Most of the second-order divisions were further divided into third-order divisions. He stresses repeatedly the primacy of the principle of hierarchy-epitomized in the title of his book. Most inter-divisional marriages take place between boys and girls belonging to the lowest order in the structure of divisions. The tribal groups in the highland area, such as the Bhils and Naikdas, also did not have any urban component. Although they claimed to be Brahman they were closely associated with agriculture. This account of the divisions is based on various sources, but mainly on Bombay Gazetteer (1901). Almost all the myths about the latter are enshrined in the puranas (for an analysis of a few of them, see Das 1968 and 1977). No sooner had the village studies begun that their limitations and the need for studying caste in its horizontal dimension were realized. // Trader Joe's Greek Chickpeas Copycat Recipe, Articles M