II SEPT AND SUBSEPT-SOCIAL CUSTOMS 455 is against them here, as it records that Ratanpur capitulated to the Marathas without striking a blow. and As already stated, the Daharias were originally a clan 2. Sept of Rajputs, whose members must take wives or husbands subsept. from other clans. They have now become a caste and marry among themselves, but within the caste they still have exogamous groups or septs, several of which are named after Rajput clans as Bais, Chandel, Baghel, Bundela, Mainpuri Chauhan, Parihār, Räthor and several others. Certain names are not of Rājpūt origin, and probably record the admission of outsiders into the caste. Like the Rājpūts, within the sept they have also subsepts, some of which are taken from the Brahmans, as Parāsar, Bhāradwāj, Sāndilya, while others are nicknames, as Kachariha (one who does not care about a beating), Atariha, Hiyas and others. The divisions of the septs and subsepts are very confused, and seem to indicate that at different times various foreign elements have been received into the community, including Rājpūts of many different clans. According to rule, a man should not take a wife whose sept or subsept are the same as his own, but this is not adhered to; and in some cases the Daharias, on account of the paucity of their numbers and the difficulty of arranging matches, have been driven to permit the marriage of first cousins, which among proper Rajputs is forbidden. They also practise hypergamy, as members of the Mainpuri Chauhan, Hiyās, Bisen, Surkhi and Bais septs or subsepts will take girls in marriage from families of other septs, but will not give their daughters to them. This practice leads to polygamy among the five higher septs, whose daughters are all married in their own circle, while in addition they receive girls from the other groups. Members of these latter also consider it an honour to marry a daughter into one of the higher septs, and are willing to pay a considerable price for such a distinction. It seems probable that the small Daraiha caste of Bilāspur are an inferior branch of the Daharias. customs. The Daharias, in theory at any rate, observe the same 3. Social rules in regard to their women as Brahmans and Rājpūts. Neither divorce nor the marriage of widows is permitted, and a woman who goes wrong is finally expelled from the caste. Their social customs resemble those of the higher Hindustani castes. When the bridegroom starts for the wedding he is dressed in a long white gown reaching to the ankles, with new shoes, and he takes with him a dagger; this serves the double purpose of warding off evil spirits, always prone to attack the bridal party, and also of being a substitute for the bridegroom himself, as in case he should for some unforeseen reason be rendered unable to appear at the ceremony, the bride could be married to the dagger as his representative. It may also be mentioned that, before the bridegroom starts for the wedding, after he has been rubbed with oil and turmeric for five days he is seated on a wooden plank over a hole dug in the courtyard and bathed. He then changes his clothes, and the women bring twentyone small chukias or cups full of water and empty them over him. His head is then covered with a piece of new cloth, and a thread wound round it seven times by a Brahman. The thread is afterwards removed, and tied round an iron ring with some mango leaves, and this ring forms the kankan which is tied to the bridegroom's wrist, a similar one being worn by the bride. Before the wedding the bride goes round to the houses of her friends, accompanied by the women of her party singing songs, and by musicians. At each house the mistress appears with her forehead and the parting of her hair profusely smeared with vermilion. She rubs her forehead against the bride's so as to colour it also with vermilion, which is now considered the symbol of a long and happy married life. The barber's wife applies red paint to the bride's feet, the gardener's wife presents her with a garland of flowers, and the carpenter's wife gives her a new wooden doll. She must also visit the potter's and washerman's wives, whose benisons are essential; they give her a new pot and a little rice respectively. When the bridegroom comes to touch the marriage - shed with his dagger he is resisted by the bride's sister, to whom he must give a rupee as a present. The binding portion of the marriage consists in the couple walking seven times round the marriage-post. At each turn the bridegroom seizes the bride's right toe and with it upsets one of seven little cups of rice placed near the marriage-post. This is probably a II DANGI 457 symbol of fertility. After it they worship seven pairs of little wooden boxes smeared with vermilion and called singhora and singhori as if they were male and female. The bridegroom's father brings two little dough images of Mahādeo and Parvati as the ideal married pair, and gives them to the couple. The new husband applies vermilion to his wife's forehead, and covers and uncovers her head seven times, to signify to her that, having become a wife, she should henceforth be veiled when she goes abroad. The bride's maid now washes her face, which probably requires it, and the wedding is complete. The Daharias usually have a guru or spiritual preceptor, but husband and wife must not have the same one, as in that case they would be in the anomalous position of brother and sister, a guru's disciples being looked upon as his children. The Daharias were formerly warriors in the service of the Ratanpur kings, and many families still possess an old sword which they worship on the day of Dasahra. Their names usually end in Singh or Lāl. They are now engaged in cultivation, and many of them are proprietors of villages, and tenants. Some of them are employed as constables and chuprassies, but few are labourers, as they may not touch the plough with their own hands. They eat the flesh of clean animals, but do not drink liquor, and avoid onions and tomatoes. They have good features and fair complexions, the traces of their Rājpūt blood being quite evident. Brahmans will take water from them, but they now rank below Rājpūts, on a level with the good cultivating castes. and Dangi. A cultivating caste found almost exclusively 1. Origin in the Saugor District, which contained 23,000 persons out traditions. of a total of 24,000 of the caste in the Central Provinces in 1911. There are also considerable numbers of them in Rājputana and Central India, from which localities they probably immigrated into the Saugor District during the eleventh century. The Dangis were formerly dominant in Saugor, a part of which was called Dangiwāra after them. The kings of Garhpahra or old Saugor were Dangis, and their family still remains at the village of Bilehra, which with a few other villages they hold as a revenue-free grant. The traditional The name of the caste is variously derived. story is that the Rajput king of Garhpahra detained the palanquins of twenty-two married women of different castes and kept them as his wives. The issue of the illicit intercourse were named Dangis, and there are thus twenty-two subdivisions of the caste, besides three other subdivisions who are held to be descended from pure Rājpūts. The name is said to be derived from dang, fraud, on account of the above deception. A more plausible derivation is from the Persian dáng, a hill, the Dangis being thus hillmen; and they may not improbably have been a set of robbers and freebooters in the Vindhyan Hills, like the Gujars and Mewatis in northern India, naturally recruiting their band from all classes of the population, as is shown by ingenious implication in this story itself. 'Khet men bāmi, gaon men Dangi,' or 'A Dangi in the village is like the hole of a snake in one's field' is a proverb which shows the estimation in which they were formerly held. The three higher septs may have been their leaders and may well have been Rājpūts. Since they have settled down as respectable cultivators and enjoy a good repute among their neighbours, the Dangis have disowned the above story, and now say that they are descended from Rāja Dāng, a Kachhwāha Rajput king of Narwar in Central India. Nothing is known of Rāja Dāng except a rude couplet which records how he was cheated by a horse-dealer : Jitki ghori tit gayi 'The mare bolted to the seller again, leaving in Dang's hand nothing except the reins.' The Dangis have a more heroic version of this story to the effect that the mare was a fairy of Indra's court, who for some reason had been transformed into this shape and was captured by Rāja Dāng. He refused to give her up to Indra and a battle was about to ensue, when the mare besought them to place her on a pyre and sacrifice her instead of fighting. They agreed to do this, and out of the flames of the pyre the fairy emerged and floated up to heaven, leaving only the reins and bridle of the mare in Rāja Dāng's hand. II CASTE SUBDIVISIONS 459 Yet a third story is that their original ancestor was Rāja Nipal Singh of Narwar, and when he was fighting with Indra over the fairy, Krishna came to Indra's assistance. But Nipal Singh refused to bow down to Krishna, and being annoyed at this and wishing to teach him a lesson the god summoned him to his court. At the gate through which Nipal Singh had to pass, Krishna fixed a sword at the height of a man's neck, so that he must bend or have his head cut off. But Nipal Singh saw the trick, and, sitting down, propelled himself through the doorway with his head erect. The outwitted god remarked,' Tum bare dandi ho,' or 'You are very cunning,' and the name Dandi stuck to Nipal Singh and was afterwards corrupted to Dangi. There can be little doubt that the caste are an offshoot of Rājpūts of impure blood, and with a large admixture of other classes of the population. Some of their sept names indicate their mixed descent, as Rakhya, born of a potter woman, Dhoniya, born of a washerwoman, and Pavniya, born of a weaver woman. In past times the Dangis served in the Rājpūt and Maratha armies, and a small isolated colony of them is found in one village of Indora in the Nagpur District, the descendants of Dangis who engaged in military service under the Bhonsla kings. sub The Dangis have no subcastes distinguished by separate 2. Caste names, but they are divided into three classes, among whom divisions. the principle of hypergamy prevails. As already seen, there were formerly twenty-five clans, of whom the three highest, the Nahonias, Bhadonias and Nadias, claimed to be pure Rājpūts. The other twenty-two clans are known as Baīsa (22) or Prithwipat Dangis, after the king who is supposed to have been the ancestor of all the clans. Each of his twenty-two wives is said to have been given a village for her maintenance, and the clans are named after these villages. But there are now only thirteen of these local clans left, and below them is a miscellaneous group of clans, representing apparently later accretions to the caste. Some of them are named from the places from which they came, as Mahobia, from Mahoba, Narwaria, from Narwar, and so on. The Solakhia sept is named after the Solanki Rājpūts, of whom they may be the partly illegitimate descendants. The Parnami sept are |