8. Wearing and lending the clothes of It is also currently believed that the Dhobi wears the clothes of his customers himself. Thus, 'The Dhobi looks smart in other people's clothes'; and ‘Rājāche shiri, customers. Paritache tiri,' or 'The king's headscarf is the washerman's loin-cloth.' On this point Mr. Thurston writes of the Madras washerman: "It is an unpleasant reflection that the Vannāns or washermen add to their income by hiring out the clothes of their customers for funeral parties, who lay them on the path before the pall-bearers, so that they may not step upon the ground. On one occasion a party of Europeans, when out shooting near the village of a hill tribe, met a funeral procession on its way to the burial-ground. The bier was draped in many folds of clean cloth, which one of the party recognised by the initials as one of his bed-sheets. Another identified as his sheet the cloth on which the corpse was lying. He cut off the corner with the initial, and a few days later the sheet was returned by the Dhobi, who pretended ignorance of the mutilation, and gave as an explanation that it must have been done in his absence by one of his assistants.” 1 And Eha describes the same custom in the following amusing manner: "Did you ever open your handkerchief with the suspicion that you had got a duster into your pocket by mistake, till the name of De Souza blazoned on the corner showed you that you were wearing some one else's property? An accident of this kind reveals a beneficent branch of the Dhobi's business, one in which he comes to the relief of needy respectability. Suppose yourself (if you can) to be Mr. Lobo, enjoying the position of first violinist in a string band which performs at Parsi weddings and on other festive occasions. Noblesse oblige; you cannot evade the necessity for clean shirt-fronts, ill able as your precarious income may be to meet it. In these circumstances a Dhobi with good connections is what you require. He finds you in shirts of the best quality at so much an evening, and you are saved all risk and outlay of capital; you need keep no clothes except a greenish-black surtout and pants and an effective necktie. In this way the wealth of the rich helps the want of the poor without their feeling it or knowing it—an excellent arrange1 Ethnographic Notes in Southern India, p. 226. II ment. Sometimes, unfortunately, Mr. Lobo has a few clothes of his own, and then, as I have hinted, the Dhobi may exchange them by mistake, for he is uneducated and has much to remember; but if you occasionally suffer in this way you gain in another, for Mr. Lobo's family are skilful with the needle, and I have sent a torn garment to the wash which returned carefully repaired."1 and sub Dhuri. A caste belonging exclusively to Chhattisgarh, 1. Origin which numbered 3000 persons in 1911. Dhuri is an honorific divisions. abbreviation from Dhuriya as Bāni from Bania. The special occupation of the caste is rice-parching, and they are an offshoot from Kahārs, though in Chhattisgarh the Dhuris now consider the Kahārs as a subcaste of their own. In Bengal the Dhuriyas are a subcaste of the Kandus or Bharbhūnjas. Sir H. Risley states that "the Dhurias rank lowest of all the subcastes of Kandus, owing either to their having taken up the comparatively menial profession of palanquin-bearing, or to their being a branch of the Kahār caste who went in for grain-parching and thus came to be associated with the Kandus." The caste have immigrated to Chhattisgarh from the United Provinces. In Kawardha they believe that the Rāja of that State brought them back with him on his return from a pilgrimage. In Bilaspur and Raipur they say they came from Badhār, a pargana in the Mīrzāpur District, adjoining Rewah. Badhār is mentioned in one of the Rājim inscriptions, and is a place remembered by other castes of Chhattisgarh as their ancestral home. The Dhuris of Chhattisgarh relate their origin as follows: Mahādeo went once to the jungle and the damp earth stuck to his feet. He scraped it off and made it into a man, and asked him what caste he would like to belong to. The man said he would leave it to Mahadeo, who decided that he should be called Dhuri from dhur, dust. The man then asked Mahādeo to assign him an occupation, and Mahādeo said that as he was made from dust, which is pounded earth, his work should 1 Behind the Bungalow. 2 This article is mainly compiled from papers by Mr. Gokul Prasad, Naib-Tahsildar, Dhamtari, and Pyare Lal Misra, a clerk in the Gazetteer 3 Tribes and Castes of Bengal, art. 2. Marriage. be to prepare cheora or pounded rice, and added as a special distinction that all castes including Brāhmans should eat the pounded rice prepared by him. All castes do eat cheora because it is not boiled with water. The Dhuris have two subcastes, a higher and a lower, but they are known by different names in different tracts. In Kawardha they are called Raj Dhuri and Cheorākūta, the Rāj Dhuris being the descendants of personal servants in the Raja's family and ranking above the Cheorākūtas or rice-pounders. In Bilaspur they are called Badhāria and Khawās, and in Raipur Badhāria and Desha. The Khawās and Desha subcastes do menial household service and rank below the Badhārias, who are perhaps later immigrants and refuse to engage in this occupation. The names of their exogamous sections are nearly all territorial, as Naugahia from Naogaon in Bilaspur District, Agoria from Agori, a pargana in Mīrzāpur District, Kāshi or Benāres, and a number of other names derived from villages in Bilaspur. But the caste do not strictly enforce the rule forbidding marriage within the gotra or section, and are content with avoiding three generations both on the father's and mother's side. They have probably been driven to modify the rule on account of the paucity of their numbers and the difficulty of arranging marriages. For the same reason perhaps they look with indulgence on the practice, as a rule strictly prohibited, of marriage with a woman of another caste of lower social rank, and will admit the children of such a marriage into the caste, though not the woman herself. Infant-marriage is in vogue, and polygamy is permitted only if the first wife be barren. The betrothal is cemented by an exchange of betel-leaves and areca-nuts between the fathers of the engaged couple. A bride-price of from ten to twenty rupees is usually paid. Some rice, a pice coin, 21 cowries and 21 pieces of turmeric are placed in the hole in which the marriage post is erected. When the wedding procession arrives at the girl's house the bridegroom goes to the marriage-shed and pulls out the festoons of mango leaves, the bride's family trying to prevent him by offering him a winnowing-fan. He then approaches the door of the house, behind which his future mother-in-law is standing, II OCCUPATION AND SOCIAL STATUS 529 and slips a piece of cloth through the door for her. She takes this and retires without being seen. The wedding consists of the bhanwar ceremony or walking round the sacred pole. During the proceedings the women tie a new thread round the bridegroom's neck to avert the evil eye. After the wedding the bride and bridegroom, in opposition to the usual custom, must return to the latter's house on foot. In explanation of this they tell a story to the effect that the married couple were formerly carried in a palanquin. But on one occasion when a wedding procession came to a river, everybody began to catch fish, leaving the bride deserted, and the palanquin-bearers, seeing this, carried her off. To prevent the recurrence of such a mischance the couple now have to walk. Widow-marriage is permitted, and the widow usually marries her late husband's younger brother. Divorce is only permitted for misconduct on the part of the wife. gious The Dhuris principally worship the goddess Devi. 3. ReliNearly all members of the caste belong to the Kabīrpanthi beliefs. sect. They believe that the sun on setting goes through the earth, and that the milky way is the path by which the elephant of the heavens passes from south to north to feed on the young bamboo shoots, of which he is very fond. They think that the constellation of the Great Bear is a cot with three thieves tied to it. The thieves came to steal the cot, which belonged to an old woman, but God caught them and tied them down there for ever. Orion is the plough left by one of the Pandava brothers after he had finished tilling the heavens. The dead are burnt. They observe mourning during nine or ten days for an adult and make libations to the dead at the usual period in the month of Kunwar (September-October). tion and The proper occupation of the caste is to parch rice. 4. OccupaThe rice is husked and then parched in an earthen pan, social and subsequently bruised with a mallet in a wooden mortar. status. When prepared in this manner it is called cheora. The Dhuris also act as khidmatgars or household servants, but the members of the Badharia subcaste refuse to do this work. Some members of the caste are fishermen, and others grow melons and sweet potatoes. Considering that they VOL. II 2 M 1. Origin and live in Chhattisgarh, the caste are somewhat scrupulous in the matter of food, neither eating fowls nor drinking liquor. The Kawardha Dhuris, however, who are later immigrants than the others, do not observe these restrictions, the reason for which may be that the Dhuris think it necessary to be strict in the matter of food, so that no one may object to take parched rice from them. Rāwats and Gonds take food from their hands in some places, and their social status in Chhattisgarh is about equivalent to that of the Rāwats or Ahirs. A man of the caste who kills a cow or gets vermin in a wound must go to Amarkantak to bathe in the Nerbudda. Dumal.1- An agricultural caste found in the Uriya traditions, country and principally in the Sonpur State, recently transferred to Bihār and Orissa. In 1901, 41,000 Dumāls were enumerated in the Central Provinces, but only a few persons now remain. The caste originally came from Orissa. They themselves say that they were formerly a branch of the Gaurs, with whom they now have no special connection. They derive their name from a village called Dumba Hadap in the Athmālik State, where they say that they lived. Another story is that Dumāl is derived from Duma, the name of a gateway in Baud town, near which they dwelt. Sir H. Risley says: "The Dumāls or Jādupuria Gaura seem to be a group of local formation. They cherish the tradition that their ancestors came to Orissa from Jādupur, but this appears to be nothing more than the name of the Jadavas or Yadavas, the mythical progenitors of the Goala caste transformed into the name of an imaginary town." 2. Subdivisions. The Dumals have no subcastes, but they have a complicated system of exogamy. This includes three kinds of divisions or sections, the got or sept, the barga or family title and the mitti or earth from which they sprang, that is, the name of the original village of the clan. Marriage is prohibited only between persons who have the same got, barga and mitti; if any one of these is different it is allowed. Thus a man of the Nag got, Padhān barga and Hindolsai mitti may marry a girl of the Nāg got, Padhān barga and 1 This article is taken almost entirely from a paper drawn up by Mr. Hira Lal, Extra Assistant Commissioner. |