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II

FESTIVALS-SOCIAL CUSTOMS

335

spiritual preceptors, whom he describes as the most ignorant Bairagis, very little better than impostors. When a boy or girl grows up the Bairagi comes and whispers the Karn mantra or spell in his ear, also hanging a necklace of tulsi (basil) beads round his neck; for this the guru receives a cloth, a cocoanut and a cash payment of four annas to a rupee. Thereafter he visits his disciples annually at harvest time and receives a present of grain from them.

vals.

On the 11th of Bhadon (August) the tribe celebrate 8. Festithe karma festival, which is something like May-Day or a harvest feast. The youths and maidens go to the forest and bring home a young karma tree, singing, dancing and beating drums. Offerings are made to the tree, and then the whole village, young and old, drink and dance round it all through the night. Next morning the tree is taken to the nearest stream or tank and consigned to it. the young girls of five or six villages make up a party and go about to the different villages accompanied by drummers and Gānda musicians. They are entertained for the night, and next morning dance for five or six hours in the village and then go on to another.

After this

The tribe are indiscriminate in their diet, which includes pork, snakes, rats, and even carnivorous animals, as panthers. They refuse only beef, monkeys and the leavings of others. The wilder Binjhwārs of the forests will not accept cooked food from any other caste, but those who live in association with Hindus will take it when cooked without water from a few of the higher ones. The tribe are not considered as impure. Their dress is very simple, consisting as a rule only of one dirty white piece of cloth in the case of both men and women. Their hair is unkempt, and they neither oil nor comb it. A genuine Binjhwār of the hills wears long frizzled hair with long beard and moustaches, but in the open country they cut their hair and shave the chin. Every Binjhwär woman is tattooed either before or just after her marriage, when she has attained to the age of adolescence. A man will not touch or accept food from a woman who is not tattooed on the feet. The expenses must be paid either by the woman's parents or her brothers and not by her husband. The practice is carried to an extreme, and many

9. Social

customs.

In

women have the upper part of the chest, the arms from shoulder to wrist, and the feet and legs up to the knee covered with devices. On the chest and arms the patterns are in the shape of flowers and leaves, while along the leg a succession of zigzag lines are pricked. The Binjhwārs are usually cultivators and labourers, while, as already stated, several zamindāri and other estates are owned by members of the tribe. Binjhwārs also commonly hold the office of Jhankar or priest of the village gods in the Sambalpur District, as the Baigas do in Mandla and Bālāghāt. Sambalpur the Jhankar or village priest is a universal and recognised village servant of fairly high status. His business is to conduct the worship of the local deities of the soil, crops, forests and hills, and he generally has a substantial holding, rent free, containing some of the best land in the village. It is said locally that the Jhankar is looked on as the founder of the village, and the representative of the old owners who were ousted by the Hindus. He worships on their behalf the indigenous deities, with whom he naturally possesses a more intimate acquaintance than the later immigrants; while the gods of these latter cannot be relied on to exercise a sufficient control over the works of nature in the foreign land to which they have been imported, or to ensure that the earth and the seasons will regularly perform their necessary functions in producing sustenance for mankind.

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Bishnoi.'-A Hindu sect which has now developed into 1. Origin

a caste.

The sect was founded in the Punjab, and the of the sect. Bishnois are immigrants from northern India. In the Central Provinces they numbered about 1100 persons in 1911, nearly all of whom belonged to the Hoshangābād District. The best description of the sect is contained in Mr. Wilson's Sirsa Settlement Report (quoted in Sir E. Maclagan's Census Report of the Punjab for 1891), from which the following details are taken: "The name Bishnoi means a worshipper of Vishnu. The founder of the sect was a Panwār Rājpūt named Jhāmbāji, who was born in a village of Bikaner State in A.D. 1451. His father had hitherto remained childless, and being greatly oppressed by this misfortune had been promised a son by a Muhammadan Fakir. After nine months Jhambāji was born and showed his miraculous origin in various ways, such as producing sweets from nothing for the delectation of his companions. Until he was thirty-four years old he spoke no word and was employed in tending his father's cattle. At this time a Brahman was sent for to get him to speak, and on confessing his failure, Jhambāji showed his power by lighting a

1 This article is compiled from Mr. Wilson's account of the Bishnois as reproduced in Mr. Crooke's Tribes and VOL. II

337

Castes, and from notes taken by Mr.
Adurām Chaudhri in the Hoshangābād
District.

Z

2. Precepts of Jham

bāji.

He

lamp with a snap of his fingers and spoke his first word. adopted the life of a teacher and went to reside on a sandhill some thirty miles south of Bikaner. In 1485 a fearful famine desolated the country, and Jhambāji gained an enormous number of disciples by providing food for all who would declare their belief in him. He is said to have died on his sandhill at the good old age of eighty-four, and to have been buried at a spot about a mile distant from it. A further account says that his body remained suspended for six months in the bier without decomposing. His name Jhāmbāji was a contraction of Achambha (The Wonder), with the honorific suffix ji.

"The sayings (shabd) of Jhāmbāji, to the number of one hundred and twenty, were recorded by his disciples, and have been handed down in a book (pothi) which is written in the Nagari character, and in a Hindu dialect similar to Bagri and therefore probably a dialect of Rajasthāni. The following is a translation of the twenty-nine precepts given by him for the guidance of his followers: 'For thirty days after childbirth and five days after a menstrual discharge a woman must not cook food. Bathe in the morning. Commit no adultery. Be content. Be abstemious and Be careful of your pure. Strain your drinking-water. speech. Examine your fuel in case any living creature be burnt with it. Show pity to living creatures. Keep duty present to your mind as the teacher bade. Do not steal. Do not speak evil of others. Do not tell lies. Never quarrel. Avoid opium, tobacco, bhang and blue clothing. Flee from spirits and flesh. See that your goats are kept alive (not sold to Musalmāns, who will kill them for food). Do not plough with bullocks. Keep a fast on the day before the new moon. Do not cut green trees. Sacrifice with fire. Say prayers; meditate. Perform worship and attain heaven.' And the last of the twenty-nine duties prescribed by the teacher: 'Baptise your children if you would be called a true Bishnoi.'1

"Some of these precepts are not strictly obeyed. For

1 The total number of precepts as given above is only twenty-five, but can be raised to twenty-nine by counting

the prohibition of opium, tobacco, bhāng, blue clothing, spirits and flesh separately.

II CUSTOMS Of the bishNOIS IN THE PUNJAB 339

of the

instance, though ordinarily they allow no blue in their 3. Customs clothing, yet a Bishnoi, if he is a police constable, is allowed Bishnois in to wear a blue uniform; and Bishnois do use bullocks, the Punjab. though most of their farming is done with camels. They also seem to be generally quarrelsome (in words) and given to use bad language. But they abstain from tobacco, drugs and spirits, and are noted for their regard for animal life, which is such that not only will they not themselves kill any living creature, but they do their utmost to prevent others from doing so. Consequently their villages are generally swarming with antelope and other animals, and they forbid their Musalman neighbours to kill them, and try to dissuade European sportsmen from interfering with them. They wanted to make it a condition of their settlement that no one should be allowed to shoot on their land, but at the same time they asked that they might be assessed at lower rates than their neighbours, on the ground that the antelope, being thus left undisturbed, did more damage to their crops; but I told them that this would lessen the merit (pun) of their actions in protecting the animals, and they must be treated just as the surrounding villages were. They consider it a good deed to scatter grain to pigeons and other birds, and often have a large number of half-tame birds about their villages. The day before the new moon (Amāwas) they observe as a Sabbath and fast-day, doing no work in the fields or in the house. They bathe and pray three times a day, in the morning, afternoon and evening, saying ' Bishnu ! Bishnu !' instead of the ordinary Hindu' Rām! Rām.' Their clothing is the same as that of other Bagris, except that their women do not allow the waist to be seen, and are fond of wearing black woollen clothing. They are more particular about ceremonial purity than ordinary Hindus are, and it is a common saying that if a Bishnoi's food is on the first of a string of twenty camels and a man of another caste touches the last camel of the string, the Bishnoi would consider his food defiled and throw it away."

baptism.

The ceremony of initiation is as follows: "A number 4. Initiaof representative Bishnois assemble, and before them a Sadh tion and or Bishnoi priest, after lighting a sacrificial fire (hom), instructs the novice in the duties of the faith. He then

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