Halwai
Contents |
Halwai
This article was written in 1916 when conditions were different. Even in Readers will be able to edit existing articles and post new articles directly |
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.
The occupational caste of confectioners, numbering about 3000 persons in the Central Provinces and Berar in 191 1. The Halwai takes his name from hakua, a sweet made of flour, clarified butter and sugar, coloured with
saffron and flavoured with almonds, raisins and pistachio- nuts. 1 The caste gives no account of its origin in northern India, but it is clearly a functional group composed of members of respectable middle-class castes who adopted the profession of sweetmeat-making. The Halwais are also called Mithaihas, or preparers of sweets, and in the Uriya country are known as Guria from gur or unrefined sugar.
The caste has several subdivisions with territorial names, generally derived from places in northern India, as Kanaujia from Kanauj, and Jaunpuria from Jaunpur ; others are Kandu, a grain-parcher, and Dubisya, meaning two score. One of the Guria subdivisions is named Haldia from haldi, turmeric, and members of this subcaste are employed to pre- pare the inahap}'asdd or cooked rice which is served at the temple of Jagannath and which is eaten by all castes together without scruple. The Gurias have exogamous divisions or bargas, the names of which are generally functional, as Darban, door-keeper ; Saraf, treasurer ; Bhitarya, one who looks to household affairs, and others. Marriage within the barga is forbidden, but the union of first cousins is not pro- hibited. Marriage may be infant or adult. A girl who has a liaison with a man of the caste may be wedded #to him by the form used for the remarriage of a widow, but if she goes wrong with an outsider she is finally expelled. Widow- marriage is allowed, and divorce may be effected for mis- conduct on the part of the wife. The social standing of the Halwai is respectable. " His art," says Mr. Nesfield,2 " implies rather an advanced state of culture, and hence his rank in the social scale is a high one. There is no caste in India which considers itself too pure to eat what a confectioner has made. In marriage banquets it is he who supplies a large part of the feast, and at all times and seasons the sweetmeat is a favourite food to a Hindu requiring a temporary refreshment. There is a kind of bread called pnri, consisting of wheaten dough fried in melted butter, which is taken as a substitute for the diapati or wheaten pancake by travellers and others who happen to be unable to have their bread cooked at their own fire, and is made by the Halwais." 1 Crooke, ii. 481. 2 Brief View, p. 31.
The real reason why the Halvvai occupies a good position perhaps simply results from the necessity that other castes should be able to take cakes from him. Among the higher castes food cooked with water should not be eaten except at the hearth after this has been specially cleansed and spread with cowdung, and those who are to eat have bathed and otherwise purified themselves. But as the need continuously arises for travellers and others to take a meal abroad where they cannot cook it for themselves, sweetmeats and cakes made without water are permitted to be eaten in this way, and the Halwai, as the purveyor of these, has been given the position of a pure caste from whose hands a Brahman can take water.
In a similar manner, water may be taken from the hands of the Dhlmar who is a household servant, the Kahar or palanquin -bearer, the Barai or betel -leaf seller, and the Bharbhunja or rice-parcher, although some of these castes have a very low origin and occupy the humble posi- tion of menial servants.
The Halwai's shop is one of the most familiar in an Indian bazar, and in towns a whole row of them may be seen together, this arrangement being doubtless adopted for the social convenience of the caste-fellows, though it might be expected to decrease the custom that they receive. His wares consist of trays full of white and yellow-coloured sweetmeats and cakes of flour and sugar, very unappetising to a European eye, though Hindu boys show no lack of appreciation of them. The Hindus are very fond of sweet things, which is perhaps a common trait of an uneducated palate. Hindu children will say that such sweets as choco- late almonds are too bitter, and their favourite drink, sherbet, is simply a mixture of sugar and water with some flavouring, and seems scarcely calculated to quench the thirst pro- duced by an Indian hot weather. Similarly their tea is so sweetened with sugar and spices as to be distasteful to a European. The ingredients of a Halwai's sweets are wheat and gram-flour, milk and country sugar. Those called batasJias consist merely of syrup of sugar boiled with a little flour, which is taken out in spoonfuls and allowed to cool. They are very easy to make and are commonly distributed to schoolbo} r s on any occasion of importance, and are some- thing like a meringue in composition. The kind called barafi or ice is made from thick boiled milk mixed with sugar, and is more expensive and considered more of a treat than batdshas.
Laddus are made from gram-flour which is mixed with water and dropped into boiling butter, when it hardens into lumps. These are taken out and dipped in syrup of sugar and allowed to cool. Pheni is a thin strip of dough of fine wheat-flour fried in butter and then dipped in syrup of sugar. Other sweets are made from the flour of singdra or water-nut and from chironji, the kernel of the acJidr 1 nut, coated with sugar. Of ordinary sweets the cheaper kinds cost 8 annas a seer of 2 lb. and the more expensive ones 10 or 12 annas. Sweets prepared by Bengali confectioners are considered the best of all. The Halwai sits on a board in his shop surrounded by wooden trays of the different kinds of sweets. These are often covered with crowds of flies and in some places with a variety of formidable-looking hornets. The latter do not appear to be vicious, however, and when he wishes to take sweets off a tray the Halwai whisks them off with a palm-leaf brush. Only if one of them gets into his cloth, or he unguardedly pushes his hand down into a heap of sweets and encounters a hornet, he may receive a sting of which the mark remains for some time. The better-class confectioners now imitate English sweets, and at fairs when they retail boiled grain and gJil they provide spoons and little basins for their customers.
Halwai
This section has been extracted from THE TRIBES and CASTES of BENGAL. Ethnographic Glossary. Printed at the Bengal Secretariat Press. 1891. . |
NOTE 1: Indpaedia neither agrees nor disagrees with the contents of this article. Readers who wish to add fresh information can create a Part II of this article. The general rule is that if we have nothing nice to say about communities other than our own it is best to say nothing at all.
NOTE 2: While reading please keep in mind that all posts in this series have been scanned from a very old book. Therefore, footnotes have got inserted into the main text of the article, interrupting the flow. Readers who spot scanning errors are requested to report the correct spelling to the Facebook page, Indpaedia.com. All information used will be gratefully acknowledged in your name.
Origin
Mithiya, the confeotioner caste of Behar, often con¬founded with the Kandu, who is properly a grain-parcher, though he also deals in sweet¬meats. The two castes, however, are entirely distinct, and do not intermarry with one another. The name Ralwai is derived from halwa, a sweetmeat made of flour, olarified butter, and sugar, coloured with saffron and flavoured with almonds, raisins, and pistachio nuts.
Internal structure
The sub-castes and sections of Halwais are shown in Appendix I.They give no clue to the origin of the caste, which is clearly a functional group composed of members of respectable middle-class castes who adopted the profession of sweetmeat-making. The sections, which are very numerous, seem to be of the territorial type, and ben.r no traces of either totemism or eponymy. The rule of exogamy is carefully observed. A man may not marry a woman of his own seetion, or of the sections to which his mother and his paternal grand•mother belong. These sections, moreover, are taken into account on both sides; so that if the proposed bride's mother belonged to the same section as the bridegroom's paternal grand-mother, no marriage can take place, although the parties themselves belong to different sections. Prohibited degrees are reckoned by the standard' formula calculated to seven generations in the descending line.
Marriage
As a general rule Halwais marry their daughters as infants, but they do not take an extreme view of the neccessty of doing so, and no alur attached to a man who from poverty or any other reason is unable to get his daughter married before she attains the age of puberty. In fact some Halwais of the Kanaujia sub-caste have assured me that they do not think it right to get their daughters married under eleven or twelve years of age. The marriage ceremony in vogue does not differ materially from that used by other Behar castes of about the same social standing. SindU1'dri,n, or the smearing of vermilion on the bride's forehead and the parting of her hair, is deemed to be the binding portion of the ritual. Polygamy is permitted when the first wife is barren, but in no case maya man have more than two wives. A widow may marry again by the sagai form. She is free to choose anyone she will for her second husband, provided that the prohibited degrees are observed; and she is not required. to marry her late husband's younger brother or cousin, as is the custom in some castes. In practice, however, it often happens that she does marry the next brother, as he in any oase oan claim the custody of the ohildren she may have had by her first husband. A very singular custom is
observed when a baohelor marries a widow. The ceremony takes place, as is the usual praotice, in the widow's house, but 'before going there the bridegroom is formally married in his own house to a sword or a piece of iron, which he bedaubs with vermilion as if it were his bride. With this may be compared the usage common among the Kandu caste of marrying to a sword a daughter .who by reason of some physical defect is not oonsidered likely to find a husband. The theory seems to be that the full marriage ceremony is' a sort of sacrament, which must be partaken of by everyone at least once in life. On the question of divorce there is some difference of practice among the sub-castes. The Kanaujia and Paohimi¬Madhesia do not recognise the authority of the pancMyat as between husband and wife, and if a woman proves faithless turn her out of the house without further ceremony. In the Magahiya and Purbiya¬Madhesia sub-castes a charge of unchastity on the part or the wife or of persistent ill-treatment on the part oBhe husband is laid before the panchayat or caste council, who, after taking evidence and hearing what both parties have to say, may dissolve the marriage, either party being at liberty to marry again.
Religion
The majority of the caste are Vaishnavas, and compaloatively . few adherents of other sects are found among . them. For religious and oeremonial purposes they employ Maithil Brahmans, who are received on equal terms by all other members of the sacred order, except by those who regard it as unworthy of a Brahman to serve any man as priests. The minor god Ghaninath is worshipped on Saturdays with offerings of rice, fruit, and sweetmeats, which are afterwards eaten by the members of the household. At marriages a fee of one anna is paid by the bride, and two annas by the bridegroom for the worship of this deity. The members of the caste also hold in honoUl' Bandi, Goraiya, and other minor gods of Behar, and many of them are adherents of the Panch Piriya sect. Ealwais burn their dead and perform the ceremony of sraddh on the thirty-first day after death.
Social status
The sooial standing of the Halwai is respectable, and Brahmans will take water from his hands. "His art,"says Mr. Nesfield, "implies rather an advanced stage of cl.llture, and hence his rank in the social scale is a high one. There is no caste in India which is too pure to eat what a confectioner bas made. In marriage banquets it is be who supplies a large part of the feast, and at all times and seasons the sweetmeat is a favourite viand to a Hindu requiring temporary refreshment. There is a kind of bread called pta'i, which contains no sugary element, but yet it is specially prepared by men of the confectioner caste. It consists of wheaten dough fried in melted butter, and is taken as a substitute for the ch({pati or wheaten pancake by travellers and others who happen to be unable to have their bread cooked at their own fire. With the exception of Brahmans, there is no class of men in India which deolines to eat a buttered pancake prepared by the Halwai; and considering the immense amount of fuss (involving even forfeiture of caste) which is attached to the domestic fire-place, this says much for the respect in which the Halwai is held.
As in the case of the Bari, the caste which makes leaf-plates for all cladses of the community, considerations of general convenience bave no doubt contributed something to the social respectability of the confectioner caste." The rules of the caste regard¬ing their own diet are much the same as those followed by other Hindus of about the same standing. N one of them will eat the leavings of the higher castes, even of the Brahmans who serve them as priests; and members of the Madhesia sub-caste profess to abstain from wine.
Occupation
Only a small proportion of the caste have taken to agriculture, and those are mostly occupancy raiyats. Men of the Magahia and Bantiria sub-castes are often servants or petty shop-keepers, and many Magahia Halwais combine grain-parching with the characteristic business of their caste. The Mahomedan Halwais found in most districts of Bengal are an entirely distinct class, and there is no reason to suppose that they are recruited by conversion from among the ranks of the Hindu confectioners. According to Dr. Wise, the art of preserving fruits in sugar or vinegar is unknown to the Hindus, and all the preserves procurable in the bazars of the East are made by the Musalman Halwai, who, however, destroys by too many spices and by excess of sugar the natural flavour of tha fruit. The Halwai prepares jams of mango, cocoanut, ginger, and ltJl, and candies oranges, citrons, and bel fruit.
The pickles (achaT), consumed in large quantitie~ by all Muhammadans, are of three kinds, prepared with vinegar, mustard oil, or salt. The Halwai likewise makes his own vinegar with sugar, molasses, and water, and with it preserves vegetables and fruits of all kinds. Mangoes and limes are, however, often preserved in mus~ard oil to which pounded mustard seed has been added. Jaraka, or fruit in brine, is bighly recommended as an aid to digestion when eaten as dessert. Arab pedlars bring the best to Bengal, but in Dacca the aromatic lime, known as kdglwsi, from the fineness of its rind, is usually preserved III this way.
The following statement shows the number and distribution of Halwais in l H72 and 1881 :¬
Halwai
(From People of India/ National Series Volume VIII. Readers who wish to share additional information/ photographs may please send them as messages to the Facebook community, Indpaedia.com. All information used will be gratefully acknowledged in your name.)
Synonyms: Madhya Deshiya, Vaishya [Bihar and/or Jhar khand] Groups/subgroups: Kannaujia, Kannujia, Madhesia, Ma dhesiya [Bihar and/or Jharkhand]
- Subcastes: Balamtiria, Bantiria, Bhojpuria, Chhamu
lia, Kannaujia, Koranch, Madheria, Madhyesia, Magah iya, Maltaria, Pachhainya, Purbiya Madhyesia [H.H. Risle y] Ablapuriya, Ahalpuriya, Ajudhyabasi, Akhpuriya, Ala mnagari, Alipuriya, Amalpuriya, Amangabadi, Amritpu riya, Asodpuriya, Audhiya, Balipuriya, Bargpuriya, Bharas iya (Mirzapur), Bhikhpuriya, Bilupuriya, Chamasiya, Chandpuriya, Drigpuriya, Dubepuriya, Gondhiya (Gond a), Islampuriya, Jagatpuriya, Jaiswar (Faizabad), Jajapuriya, Janakpuriya, Jaunpuriya, Ja ypuriya Kaithiya (Cannpur), Kaithiya (Farrukhabad), Kanaujiya, Katriya (Shahjanpur), Khairabadi, Khurasani, Mahaba di, Mainpuriya, Makhdumpuriya, Maqsudabadi, Misrikha, Muhammadabadi, Muradabadi Naurangbadi, Nimkhar, Pac hhwahan (Bahraich), Pachhwan, Purabiya, Rajauriya, Ramnagari, Rasulpuriya, etc., mangalpuriya [W. Crooke] Titles: Agarwal [Madhya Pradesh and/or Chhattisgarh] Chaudhri, Das, Modi, Sahu [H.H. Risley] Surnames: Gupta, Sah, Sahu, Saw [Bihar and/or Jhark hand] Agarwal [Madhya Pradesh and/or Chhattisgarh] Gupta, Halwai, Kanya Kumbiya, Kanyakubja Vaishya, Mo danwal, Shah, Vaishya, Yagyasemi, Yagyaseni [Uttar Pradesh] Exogamous units/clans: Bansal, Bindal, Dhawan, Garg,Gonan, Goyal, Jindal, Kachewal, Kansil, Mangal, Mittal, Nagal, Singal, Taram, Tungal [Madhya Pradesh and/or Chhattisgarh] Gotra: Kashyap [Bihar and/or Jharkhand]
- Sections (mul): Ajer, Akhanbari, Arnghat, Ami, Ana
r, Anokanwar, Anrua, Asarmalla, Asarmaura, Badabast i, Baksar, Bakulari, Banebanaras, Baniaputhar, Bansahr, Basari a, Basdebpur, Bator, Bharauli Bharsahar, Bijaibanar as, Budambasti, Chanberia, Chanwar, Chilhar, Dadukli, D aharak, Dariapar, Dehadbanaras, Deoghat, Dhakait, Ohameswar, Dhanantia, Ohanej, Dharkia, Dhema, Dighw ara Doem, Don, Dumri, Gahunagaona, Gangapali, Gangautia, Gauli, Gauthaha, Harsahar, Hatser, Indri, Jabalia, Jawala, Jirabasti, Kachua, Kachwar, Kada, Kahinwar, Kaladib, Kalasidh, Kandar Kandwar, Kangkol, Kani, K ara, Karandanauta, Karar, Karariha, Karkado, Kami, Karb, Karpakar, Kasiaon, Katari, Kathej, Kausar, Kesaur, Khirkatora, Khonta, Khopriha, Kondeil, Korsa, Kotsa Kurisar, Kusarparki, Kusmoulia, Lakhansaria, Laraudi, Laskor ia, Lolutra, Lukathia, Madesia, Mahepura, Mail, Manimanaras, Marar, Marua, Mohar, Nageswar, Nagneswar, Naknesa, Naoragkhia Narauni, Ninghian, Pachattar, Pachopat, Paiharware, Palwar, Panthpakar, Pator, Phuli, Pindw al, Purbiya, Sakarwar, Santop [H.H. Risley]
Notes
The art of preserving fruits in sugar, or vinegar, being unknown to the Hindus, all the preserves procurable in the Bazars of the East are made by the Mussulman Halwai, who, however, destroys, by too many spices and by excess of sugar, the natural flavour of the fruit. It is astonishing how fond the lower classes of Muhammadans are of sweets, consuming heaps of the common confectionery without hesitation and without injury, whilst a surfeit of them never makes the least difference in the quantity of food afterwards taken. The Halwai is an especial favourite with youths, who are as fond of spending a few coppers on a holiday in his shop as any English schoolboy.
"Halwa," the sweetmeat from which the confectioner derives his name, is made of flour, clarified butter, and sugar, coloured
wjth saffron, and flavoured with almonds, raisins, and pistachio nuts, being much inferior, however, to the Halwa brought from Kabul by Afghan traders, and said to be made with camels' milk.
The Halwai prepares jams of mangoe, cocoanut, ginger, and "bel;" and candies oranges, citrons, and bel fruit. The pickles (achar), consumed in large quantities by all Muhammadans, are of three kinds, prepared with vinegar, mustard-oil, or salt. The Halwai likewise makes his own vinegar with sugar, molasses, and water, and with it preserves vegetables and fruits of all kinds. Mangoes and limes are, however, often preserved in mustard-oil to which pounded mustard seed has been added. Jaraka, or fruit in brine, is highly recommended as an aid to digestion when eaten as dessert Arab pedlars bring the best to Bengal, but in Dacca the aromatic lime known as " Kaghazi," from the fineness of its rind, is usually preserved in this way.
