Holia
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.
Holia
1—A low caste of drummers and leather-workers who claim to be degraded Golars or Telugu Ahlrs, under which caste most of the Holias seem to have returned themselves in 1 90 1. 2 The Holias relate the following story of their origin. Once upon a time two brothers, Golar by caste, set out in search of service, having with them a bullock. On the way the elder brother went to worship his tutelary deity Holiari Deva ; but while he was doing so the bullock acci- dentally died, and the ceremony could not be proceeded with until the carcase was removed.
Neither a Chamar nor any- body else could be got to do this, so at length the younger brother was prevailed upon by the elder one to take away the body. When he returned, the elder brother would not touch him, saying that he had lost his caste. The younger brother resigned himself to his fate and called himself Holu, after the god whom he had been worshipping at the time he lost his caste. His descendants were named Holias. But he prayed to the god to avenge him for the treachery of his brother, and from that moment misfortunes commenced to shower upon the Golar until he repented and made what reparation he could ; and in memory of this, whenever a Golar dies, the Holias are feasted by the other Golars to the present day. The story indicates a connection between the 1 This article is compiled from a returned as against more than 4000 in paper by Mr. Babu Rao, Deputy In- 1891; but, on the other hand, in 1901 spector of Schools, Seoni District. the number of Golars was double that 2 In this year only 33 Holias were of the previous census.
castes, and it is highly probable that the Holias are a degraded class of Golars who took to the trade of tanning and leather- working. When a Holia goes to a Golar's house he must be asked to come in and sit down or the Golar will be put out of caste ; and when a Golar dies the house must be purified by a Holia. The caste is a very numerous one in Madras. Here the Holia is superior only to the Madiga or Chamar.1 In the Central Provinces they are held to be impure and to rank below the Mahars, and they live on the outskirts of the village.
Their caste customs resemble generally those of the Golars. They believe their traditional occupation to be the playing of leathern drums, and they still follow this trade, and also make slippers and leather thongs for agricultural purposes. But they must not make or mend shoes on pain of excommunication from caste. They are of middle stature, dark in colour, and very dirty in their person and habits. Like the Golars, the Holias speak a dialect of Canarese, which is known as Golari, Holia or Komtau. Mr.
Thurston gives the following interesting particulars about the Holias : 2 " If a man of another caste enters the house of a Mysore Holia, the owner takes care to tear the intruder's cloth, and turn him out. This will avert any evil which might have befallen him. It is said that Brahmans consider great luck will wait upon them if they can manage to pass through a Holia village unmolested. Should a Brahman attempt to enter their quarters, the Holias turn him out, and slipper him, in former times it is said to death