Читать книгу The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 1 - Robert Vane Russell - Страница 51

The caste or subcaste forms the outer circle within which a man must marry. Inside it are a set of further subdivisions which prohibit the marriage of persons related through males. These are called exogamous groups or clans, and their name among the higher castes is gotra. The theory is that all persons belonging to the same gotra are descended from the same male ancestor, and so related. The relationship in the gotra now only goes by the father’s side; when a woman marries she is taken into the clan of her husband and her children belong to it. Marriage is not allowed within the clan and in the course of a few generations the marriage of persons related through males or agnates is prohibited within a very wide circle. But on the mother’s side the gotra does not serve as a bar to marriage and the union of first cousins would be possible, other than the children of two brothers. According to Hindu law, intermarriage is prohibited within four degrees between persons related through females. But generally the children of first cousins are allowed to marry, when related partly through females. And several castes allow the intermarriage of first cousins, that of a brother’s daughter to a sister’s son and in a less degree of a brother’s son to a sister’s daughter being specially favoured. One or two Madras castes allow a man to marry his niece, and the small Dhoba caste of Mandla permit the union of children of the same mother but different fathers.

Sir Herbert Risley classed the names of exogamous divisions as eponymous, territorial or local, titular and totemistic. In the body of this work the word clan is usually applied only to the large exogamous groups of the Rājpūts and one or two other military castes. The small local or titular groups of ordinary Hindu castes are called ‘section,’ and the totemic groups of the primitive tribes ‘sept.’ But perhaps it is simpler to use the word ‘clan’ throughout according to the practice of Sir J.G. Frazer. The vernacular designations of the clans or sections are gotra, which originally meant a stall or cow-pen; khero, a village; dih, a village site; baink, a title; mul or mur, literally a root, hence an origin; and kul or kuri, a family. The sections called eponymous are named after Rishis or saints mentioned in the Vedas and other scriptures and are found among the Brāhmans and a few of the higher castes, such as Vasishta, Garga, Bhāradwāj, Vishvamitra, Kashyap and so on. A few Rājpūt clans are named after kings or heroes, as the Rāghuvansis from king Rāghu of Ajodhia and the Tilokchandi Bais from a famous king of that name. The titular class of names comprise names of offices supposed to have been held by the founder of the clan, or titles and names referring to a personal defect or quality, and nicknames. Instances of the former are Kotwār (village watchman), Chaudhri, Meher or Māhto (caste headman), Bhagat (saint), Thākuria and Rawat (lord or prince), Vaidya (physician); and of titular names and nicknames: Kuldip (lamp of the family), Mohjaria (one with a burnt mouth), Jāchak (beggar), Garkata (cut-throat), Bhātpagar (one serving on a pittance of boiled rice), Kangāli (poor), Chīkat (dirty), Petdukh (stomach-ache), Ghunnere (worm-eater) and so on. A special class of names are those of offices held at the caste feasts; thus the clans of the Chitrakathi caste are the Atak or Mānkari, who furnish the headman of the caste panchāyat or committee; the Bhojin who serve the food at marriages and other ceremonies; the Kākra who arrange for the lighting; the Gothārya who keep the provisions, and the Ghorerao (ghora, a horse) who have the duty of looking after the horses and bullock-carts of the caste-men who assemble. Similarly the five principal clans of the small Turi caste are named after the five sons of Singhbonga or the sun: the eldest son was called Mailuar and his descendants are the leaders or headmen of the caste; the descendants of the second son, Chardhagia, purify and readmit offenders to caste intercourse; those of the third son, Suremār, conduct the ceremonial shaving of such offenders, and those of the fourth son bring water for the ceremony and are called Tirkuār. The youngest brother, Hasdagia, is said to have committed some caste offence, and the four other brothers took the parts which are still played by their descendants in his ceremony of purification. In many cases exogamous clans are named after other castes or subcastes. Many low castes have adopted the names of the Rājpūt clans, either from simple vanity as people may take an aristocratic surname, or because they were in the service of Rājpūts, and have adopted the names of their masters or are partly descended from them. Other names of castes found among exogamous groups probably indicate that an ancestor belonging to that caste was taken into the one in which the group is found. The Bhaina tribe have clans named after the Dhobi, Ahīr, Gond, Māli and Panka castes. The members of such clans pay respect to any man belonging to the caste after which they are named and avoid picking a quarrel with him; they also worship the family gods of the caste.

Territorial names are very common, and are taken from that of some town or village in which the ancestor of the clan or the members of the clan themselves resided.90 The names are frequently distorted, and it seems probable that the majority of the large number of clan names for which no meaning can be discovered were those of villages. These unknown names are probably more numerous than the total of all those classes of names to which a meaning can be assigned.