Gurao
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From The Tribes And Castes Of The Central Provinces Of India
By R. V. Russell
Of The Indian Civil Service
Superintendent Of Ethnography, Central Provinces
Assisted By Rai Bahadur Hira Lal, Extra Assistant Commissioner
Macmillan And Co., Limited, London, 1916.
NOTE 1: The 'Central Provinces' have since been renamed Madhya Pradesh.
NOTE 2: While reading please keep in mind that all articles in this series have been scanned from the original book. Therefore, footnotes have got inserted into the main text of the article, interrupting the flow. Readers who spot these footnotes gone astray might like to shift them to their correct place.
Gurao
The Guraos say that they were formerly Brahmans and worshippers of Siva, but for some negligence or mistake in his ritual they were cursed by the god and degraded from the status of Brahmans, though subsequently the god relented and permitted them to worship him and take the offerings made to him. It is related that a certain Brahman, who was a votary of Siva, had to go on a journey. He left his son behind and strictly enjoined on him to perform the worship of the god at midday. The son had bathed and purified himself for this purpose, when shortly before midday his wife came to him and so importuned him to have conjugal intercourse with her that he was obliged to comply.
It was then midday and in his impure condition the son went to the shrine of the god to worship him. But Siva cursed him and said that his descendants should be degraded from the status of Brahmans, though he afterwards relented so far as to permit of their continuing to act as his priests ; and this was the origin of the Guraos. It seems doubtful,
1 This article is based partly on a Aduram Chaudhri of the Gazetteer paper by Mr. Abdus Subhan Khan, Office. Tahsildar, Hinganghat, and Mr.
however, whether the caste are really of Brahman origin. They were formerly village priests, and Grant-Duff gives the Gurao as one of the village menials in the Maratha villages. They have the privilege of taking the Naivedya or offerings of cooked food made to the god Mahadeo, which Brahmans will not accept. They also sell leaf-plates and flowers and bel leaves 1 which are offered at the temples of Mahadeo ; and on the festival of Shivratri and during the month of Shrawan (July) they take round the bel leaves which the cultivators require for their offerings and receive presents in return.
In Wardha the Guraos get small gifts of grain from the cultivators at seed-time and harvest. They also act as village musicians and blow the conch-shell, beat the drum and play other musical instruments for the morning and evening worship at the temple. They play on the cymbals and drums at the marriages of Brahmans and other high castes. In the Bombay Presidency 2 some are astrologers and fortune-tellers, and others make the basing or coronet of flowers which the bridegroom wears. Sometimes they play on the drum or fiddle for their spiritual followers, the dancing-girls or Kalavants.
When a dancing-girl became pregnant she worshipped the Gurao, and he, in return, placed the missi or tooth-powder made from myrobalans on her teeth. If this was not done before her child was born, a Kalavantin was put out of caste. In some localities the Guraos will take food from Kunbis. And further, as will be seen subsequently, the caste have no proper golras or exogamous sections, but in arranging their marriages they simply avoid persons having a common surname. All these considerations point to the fact that the caste is not of Brahmanical origin but belongs to a lower class of the population. Nevertheless in Wardha they are known as Shaiva Brahmans and rank above the Kunbis. They may study the Sama Veda only and not the others, and may repeat the Rudra Gayatri or sacred verse of Siva. Clearly the Brahmans could not accept the offerings of cooked food made at Siva's shrine ;. though the larger temples of this deity have Brahman priests. It seems uncertain whether 1 The trifoliate leaf of Aegle Marmelos. 2 Bombay Gazette,,-. v>! wiii. p. ?h>>.
Siva or Mahadco was first a village deity and was sub- sequently exalted to the position of a member of the supreme Hindu Trinity, or whether the opposite process took place and the Guraos obtained their priestly functions on his worship being popularised. But in any case it would appear that they were originally a class of village priests regarded as the servants of the cultivating com- munity, by whose gifts and offerings they were maintained. Grant- Duff in enumerating the village servants says : " Ninth, the Gurao, who is a Sudra employed to wash the ornaments and attend the idol in the village temples, and on occasions of feasting to prepare the patraolz or leaves which the Hindus substitute for plates. They are also trumpeters by profession and in this capacity arc much employed in Maratha armies."
1 The caste has several subdivisions which are principally 2. internal of a territorial nature, as Warade from Berar ; J hade, inhabit- structure - ants of the forest or rice country ; Telanga, of the Telugu country; Dakshne, from the Deccan ; Marwari, from Marwar, and so on. Other subcastes are the AhTr and Jain Guraos, of whom the former are apparently Ahlrs who have adopted the priestly profession, while the Jain Guraos are held in Bombay to be the descendants of Jain temple servants who entered the caste when their own deities were thrown out and their shrines annexed by the votaries of Siva.
2 In Bombay, Mr. Enthoven states " That the Koli and Maratha ministrants at the temples of Siva and other deities often describe themselves as Guraos, but they have not formed themselves into separate castes and are members of the general Koli or Maratha community. They cease to call themselves Guraos when they cease to minister at temples." 3 In the Central Provinces one of the subcastes is known as Vajantri because they act as village musicians. The caste have no regular exogamous sections, but a number of sur- names which answer the same purpose. These are of a pro- fessional type, as Lokhandes, an iron-dealer ; Phulzares, a maker of fireworks ; Sontake, a gold-merchant ; Gaikwad,
1 History of the Marathas, vol. i. 3 Bombay Ethnographic Survey, p. 26, footnote. Monograph on Gurao. - Bombay Gazetteer, vol. x. p. 119. VOL. Ill N
3. Mar- riage and ceremonies of adoles- cence.
4. Birth customs.
a cowherd ; Nakade, long - nosed, and so on. They say they all belong to the same gotra, Sankhiayan, named after Sankhiaya Rishi, the ancestor of the caste. Marriage is avoided between persons having the same surname and those within six degrees of descent from a common ancestor whether male or female. The marriage ceremony generally resembles that of the Brahmans. Before the wedding the bridegroom's father prepares an image of Siva from rice and til-seed,1 covers it with a cloth and sends it to the bride's house.
In return her mother prepares and sends back a similar image of Gauri, Siva's consort. Girls are married as infants, and when a woman arrives at adoles- cence the following ritual is observed : She goes to her husband's house and is there secluded for three or four days while her impurity lasts. On its termination she is bathed and clothed in a green dress and yellow choli or breast-cloth, and seated in a gaily decked wooden frame.
Her lap is filled with wheat and a cocoanut, and her female friends and relatives and father and father-in-law give her presents of sweets and clothes. This is known as the Shantik ceremony and is practised by the higher castes in the Maratha country. It may continue for as long as sixteen days.
Finally, on an auspicious day the bride and bridegroom are given delicate food and dressed in new clothes. The fire sacrifice is offered and they are taken into a room where a bed, the gift of the bride's parents, has been prepared for them, and left to con- summate the marriage. This is known as Garbhadhan. Next day the bride's parents give new clothes and a feast to the bridegroom's family ; this feast is known as Godai, and after giving it the bride's parents may eat at their daughter's house. A girl seduced by a man of the caste may be properly married to him after her parents have performed Prdyaschit or atonement. But if she has a child out of wedlock, he is relegated to the Vidur or illegitimate group.
Even if a girl be seduced by a stranger, provided he be of higher or equal caste, as the Kunbis and Marathas, she may be taken back into the community. If a child is born at an unlucky season, they take two winnowing-fans and tie the baby between them with a thread ] Sesamum.
wound many times round about. A cow is brought and made to lick the child, which is thus supposed to have been born again from it as a calf, the evil omen of the first birth being removed. The father performs the fire sacrifice, and a human figure is made from cooked rice and worshipped. A burning wick is placed in its stomach and it is taken out and left at cross-roads, this being probably a substitute for the member of the family whose death was presaged by the untimely birth of the child. Similarly if any one dies at the astronomical period known as Panchak, they make five figures of wheat-flour and burn or bury them with the body, as it is thought that otherwise five members of the family would die.
Boys are invested with the sacred thread at the age of 5. The five, seven or nine years, and until that time they are ^cre^ considered to be Sudras and not members of the caste. From a hundred to three hundred rupees may be spent on the investiture. On the day before the ceremony a Brahman and his wife are invited to take food, and a yellow thread with a mango leaf is tied round the boy's wrist. The spirits of other boys who died before their thread ceremony was performed and of women of the family who died before their husbands are invited to attend.
These are represented by young boys and married women of other families who come to the house and are bathed and anointed with turmeric and oil, and given presents of sugar and new clothes. Next day the initiate is seated on a platform in a shed erected for the purpose and puts on the sacred thread made of cotton and also a strip of the skin of the black-buck with a silk apron and cap. The boy's father takes him on his lap and whispers or, as the Hindus say, blows the Gayatri mantra or sacred text into his ear. A sacrifice is performed, and the friends and fellow-castemen of the family make presents to the boy of copper and silver coin. The amount thus given is not used by the parents, but is spent on the boy's education or on the purchase of an ornament for him. On the conclusion of the ceremony the boy mounts a wooden model of a horse and pretends to set out for Benares. His paternal uncle then says to him, ' Why are you going away ? ' And the boy replies, ' Because you have not married me.' His uncle customs.
then promises to find a bride for him and he gives up his project. The part played by the maternal uncle in this ceremony is probably a survival of the period of the matri- archate, when a man's property descended to his sister's son. He would thus naturally claim the boy as a husband for his own daughter, and such a marriage apparently became customary and in course of time acquired binding force. And although all recollection of the rule of inheritance through women has long been forgotten, the marriage of a brother's daughter to a sister's son is still considered peculiarly suitable, and the idea that it is the duty of the maternal uncle to find a bride for his nephew appears to be simply a development of this.
The above account also gives reason for supposing that the investiture with the sacred thread was originally a ceremony of puberty. 6. Funeral The dead are burnt and the ashes thrown into water or carried to the Ganges. A small piece of gold, two or three small pearls, and some basil leaves are put into the mouth, and flowers, red powder and betel leaves are spread over the corpse. The son or male heir of the deceased walks in front carrying fire in an earthen pot. At a small distance from the burning-ground, when the bearers change places, he picks up a stone, known as the life-stone or jivkhada. This is afterwards buried at the burning-ghat until the priest comes to effect the purification of the mourners on the tenth day. It is then dug up, set up and worshipped, and thrown into a well.
A man is burnt naked ; a woman in a robe and bodice. The heads of widows are not shaved as a rule, but on the tenth day after her husband's death a widow is asked whether she would like her head shaved ; if she refuses, the people conclude that she intends to marry again. But if the deceased left no male heir to carry behind his bier the burning wood with which the funeral pyre is to be kindled, then the widow must be shaved before the funeral starts and perform this duty. If there is no male relative and no widow, the pot containing fire is tied to the bier. When the corpse of a woman who has died in child -bed is being carried to the burning-ground various rites are observed to prevent her spirit from becoming a Churel and troubling the living.
- A lemon charmed by a magician is buried under the corpse and a man follows the body strewing the seeds of rata, while nails are driven into the threshold of the house. 1 The caste has now a fairly high social status and ranks 7. Social above the Kunbis.
They abstain from all flesh and from positlor liquor and will take food only from the hands of a Maratha Brahman, while Kunbis and other cultivating and serving castes will accept food from their hands. They worship Siva principally on Mondays, this day being sacred to the deity, who carries the moon as an ornament on his head, crowning the matted locks from which the Ganges flows. Of the Jain Guraos Mr. Enthoven quotes the following 8. The interesting description from the Bombay Gazetteer : " They Q^aos are mainly servants in village temples which, though dedicated to Brahmanic gods, have still by their sides broken remains of Jain images.
This, and the fact that most of the temple land-grants date from a time when Jainism was the State religion, support the theory that the Jain Guraos are probably Jain temple servants who have come under the influence partly of Lingayatism and partly of Brahmanism. A curious survival of their Jainism occurs at Dasahra, Shimga and other leading festivals, when the village deity is taken out of the temple and carried in procession. On these occasions, in front of the village god's palanquin, three, five or seven of the villagers, among whom the Gurao is always the leader, carry each a long, gaily-painted wooden pole resting against their right shoulder. At the top of the pole is fastened a silver mask or hand and round it is draped a rich silk robe. Of these poles, the chief one, carried by the Gurao, is called the Jain's pillar, Jainacha khamb" 1 Bombay Gazetteer, vol. xix. p. 101.
