1 0 obj In the plains, therefore, every village had one or more towns in its vicinity. Nor were ekdas and tads entirely an urban phenomenon. These and many other artisans, craftsmen and servants reflected the special life-style of the town. They were involved in agriculture in one way or another. 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. What may be called the census approach influenced a great deal of scholarly work. Among the Kanbis, while there was hypergamy within the Leva division and possibly, similar hypergamy within the Kadva division, there was no hierarchy or hypergamy between the two second-order divisions. In many villages in Gujarat, particularly in larger villages, one or two first-order divisions would be represented by more than one second-order division. The essential idea in the category was power, and anybody who wielded powereither as king or as dominant group in a rural (even tribal) areacould claim to be Rajput. The migrants, many of whom came from heterogeneous urban centres of Gujarat, became part of an even more heterogeneous environment in Bombay. There was an emphasis on being different and separate rather than on being higher and lower. In some parts of Gujarat they formed 30 to 35 per cent of the population. Here, usually, what mattered was the first-order division, as for example Brahman, Vania, Rajput, Kanbi, carpenter, barber, leather-worker, and so on. And even when a Brahman name corresponded with a Vania name, the former did not necessarily work as priests of the latter.The total number of second-divisions in a first-order division differed from one first-order division to another. In fact, inter-tad marriages have increased so much that the tads have more or less lost their identity and such marriages are no longer considered as violating the rule of tad endogamy. The Chumvalias and Patanwadias migrated possibly from the same tract and continued to belong to the same horizontal unit after migration. In effect, the Vania population in a large town like Ahmedabad could have a considerable number of small endogamous units of the third or the fourth order, each with its entire population living and marrying within the town itself. 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. . The idea of inter-caste marriage is, moreover, linked with the idea of creating such a society involves a compromise with, if not subtle negation of, the ideal. professor melissa murray. 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. They are described by the ruling elite as robbers, dacoits, marauders, predators and the like. But during the 18th century, when the Mughal Empire was disintegrating, a large number of small kingdoms came into existence, and each had a small capital town of its own. Hindu society is usually described as divided into a number of castes the boundaries of which are maintained by the rule of caste endogamy. <>/ExtGState<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB/ImageC/ImageI] >>/Annots[ 9 0 R] /MediaBox[ 0 0 612 792] /Contents 4 0 R/Group<>/Tabs/S/StructParents 0>> Similarly, the Khedawal Brahmans were divided into Baj and Bhitra, the Nagar Brahmans into Grihastha and Bhikshuk, the Anavils into Desai and Bhathela, and the Kanbis into Kanbi and Patidar. On the other hand, there was an almost simultaneous spurt in village studies. 4 GUJARAT 4273 SHODA . For example, among Vanias in a large town like Ahmedabad many of the thirty or forty second-order divisions (such as Khadayata, Modh, Porwad, Shrimali, and so on) were represented. 3 0 obj If the marriage took place within the Vania fold but outside the tad or ekda, as the case may be, the punishment varied according to the social distance between the tads or ekdas of the bride and the groom. It seems the highland Bhils (and possibly also other tribes) provided brides to lower Rajputs in Gujarat. Most of the other eighty or so second-order divisions among Brahmans, however, seem to be subdivided the way the Vania second-order divisions were subdivided into third-order and fourth-order divisions. Caste associations in Gujarat were formed mainly among upper castes to provide welfare (including recreation), to promote modern education, and to bring about reforms in caste customs. These divisions have, however, been kept out of the present analysis for reasons which have become well known to students of Hindu society since the 1950s. Systematic because castes exist and are like each other in being different (298). 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. There was apparently a close relation between a castes internal organization and the size and spatial distribution of its population. Division and hierarchy have always been stressed as the two basic principles of the caste system. This stratum among the Kanbis coped with the problem mainly by practising remarriage of widows and divorced women. Since Rajput as a caste occurred all over northern, central and western India (literally, it means rulers son, ruling son), the discussion of Rajputs in Gujarat will inevitably draw us into their relationship with Rajputs in other regions. One may say that there are now more hypogamous marriages, although another and perhaps a more realistic way of looking at the change would be that a new hierarchy is replacing the traditional one. The Hindu and Muslim kingdoms in Gujarat during the medieval period had, of course, their capital towns, at first Patan and then Ahmedabad. Some ekdas did come into existence in almost the same way as did the tads, that is to say, by a process of fission of one ekda into two or more ekdas. They worked not only as high priests but also as bureaucrats. 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. For example, the Khadayata Brahmans worked as priests at important rituals among Khadayata Vanias. There are thus a few excellent studies of castes as horizontal units. 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. The Rajputs relationship with the Kolis penetrated every second-order division among them, i.e., Talapada, Pardeshi, Chumvalia, Palia, and so on. The tad thus represented the fourth and last order of caste divisions. There was also a third category called Pancha, derived from the word punch (meaning 5) and denoting extremely low Vania. 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. While some of the divisions of a lower order might be the result of fission, some others might be a result of fusion. Prohibited Content 3. Real Estate Software Dubai > blog > manvar surname caste in gujarat. 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. The hypergamous tendency was never as sharp, pervasive and regular among the Vania divisions as among the Rajputs, Leva Kanbis, Anavils and Khedawals. stream The above brief analysis of change in caste in modern Gujarat has, I hope, indicated that an overall view of changes in caste in modern India should include a careful study of changes in rural as well as in urban areas in relation to their past. Leva Sheri and Kadva Sheri, named after the two major second-order divisions among the Kanbis. 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. 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. It was also an extreme example of a division having a highly differentiated internal hierarchy and practising hypergamy as an accepted norm. 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. Systematic study of small caste divisions in villages as well as in towns still awaits the attention of sociologists and anthropologists. [CDATA[ 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.). No one knows when and how they came into existence and what they meant socially. The population of certain first-order divisions lived mainly in villages. As for the size of other castes, I shall make mainly relative statements. Hence started farming and small scale business in the British Raj to thrive better conditions ahead to maintain their livelihood. 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. In addition, they carried on overland trade with many towns in central and north India. The two areas merge gradually, and my field work covered most of the spectrum. The census operations, in particular, spread as they were over large areas, gave a great impetus to writings on what Srinivas has called the horizontal dimension of caste (1952: 31f;1966: 9,44,92,98-100,114-17). The following 157 pages are in this category, out of 157 total. A large number of priestly, artisan and service castes also lived in both villages and towns: Bramhans, barbers, carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers, leather-workers, scavenges, water-carriers, palanquin-bearers, and so on. Whatever the internal organization of a second-order division, the relationship between most of the Brahman second-order divisions was marked by great emphasis on being different and separate than on being higher and lower. The Rajputs, in association with Kolis, Bhils, and such other castes and tribes, provide an extreme example of such castes. They were thus not of the same status as most other second-order divisions among Brahmans. In the village strict prohibition of inter-division marriage as well as the rules of purity and pollution and other mechanisms, of which the students of Indian village communities are well aware since the 1950s, maintained the boundaries of these divisions. Within each of these divisions, small endogamous units (ekdas, gols, bandhos) were organized from time to time to get relief from the difficulties inherent in hypergamy. Gujarat did not have anything like the non-Brahmin movement of South India and Maharashtra before 1947. Broach, Cambay and Surat were the largest, but there were also a number of smaller ones. 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. In 1920 there were 2 Mehta families living in New Jersey. 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). The Kayatias main occupation was to perform a ritual on the eleventh day after death, during which they took away offerings made to ghosts: this was the main cause of their extremely low status among Brahmans. 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. Many of these names were also based on place names. More of them were located in the plains, than in the bordering highlands. //
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