Jangam, Jangama
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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.
Jangam, Jangama
A Sivite order of wandering religious mendicants. The Jangams are the priests or gurus of the Sivite sect of Lingayats. They numbered 3500 persons in the Central Provinces and Berar in 191 1, and frequent the Maratha country. The Jangam is said to be so called because he wears a movable emblem of Siva (Jana gama, to come and go) in contradistinction to the Sthawar or fixed emblems found in temples. The Jangams discard many of the modern phases of Hinduism.
They reject the poems in honour of Vishnu, Rama and Krishna, such as the Bhagavad Glta and Ramayana ; they also deny the authority of Brahmans, the efficacy of pilgrimage and self-mortification, and the restrictions of caste ; while they revere principally the Vedas and the teaching of the great Sivite reformer Shankar Acharya.1 Like other religious orders, the Jangams have now become a caste, and are divided into two groups of celibate and married members. The Gharbaris (married members) celebrate their weddings in the usual Maratha fashion, except that they perform no horn or fire sacrifice. They permit the remarriage of widows. The Jangams wear ochre -coloured or badami clothes and long necklaces of seeds called rudraksha 2 beads, which resemble a nutmeg in size, in colour and nearly in shape ; 1 Sherring, Castes and Tribes, iii. p. 123. 2 The nut of Eleocarpus lanceolatus.
they besmear their forehead, arms and various other parts of the body with cowdung ashes. They wear the lingam or phallic sign of Siva either about the neck or loins in a little casket of gold, silver, copper or brass. As the lingam is supposed to represent the god and to be eternal, they are buried and not burnt after death, because the lingam must be buried with them and must not be destroyed in the fire. If any Jangam loses the lingam he or she must not eat or drink until it has been replaced by the guru or spiritual preceptor. It must be worshipped thrice a day, and ashes and del 1 leaves are offered to it, besides food when the owner is about to partake of this himself. The Jangams worship no deity other than Siva or Mahadeo, and their great festival is the Shivratri. Some of them make pilgrim- ages to Pachmarhi, to the Mahadeo hills.
Most of them subsist by begging and singing songs in praise of Mahadeo. Grant-Duff gives the Jangam as one of the twenty-four village servants in a Maratha village, perhaps as the priest of the local shrine of Siva, or as the caste priest of the Lingayats, who are numerous in some Districts of Bombay. He carries a wallet over the shoulder and a conch-shell and bell in the hand. On approaching the door of a house he rings his bell to bring out the occupant, and having received alms proceeds on his way, blowing his conch-shell, which is supposed to be a propitious act for the alms-giver, and to ensure his safe passage to heaven.
The wallet is meant to hold the grain given to him, and on returning home he never empties it completely, but leaves a little grain in it as its own share. The Jangams are strict vegetarians, and take food only from the hands of Lingayats. They bless their food before eating it and always finish it completely, and afterwards wash the dish with water and drink down the water. When a child is born, the priest is sent for and his feet are washed with water in a brass tray. The water is then rubbed over the bodies of those present, and a few drops sprinkled on the walls of the house as a ceremony of purification. The priest's great toes are then washed in a cup of water, and he dips the lingam he wears into this, and then sips a few drops of the water, each person present 1 Aegle marmelos.
doing the same. This is called karuna or sanctification. He then dips a new lingam into the holy water, and ties it round the child's neck for a minute or two, afterwards handing it to the mother to be kept till the child is old enough to wear it. The dead are buried in a sitting posture, the lingam being placed in the palm of the hand. On the third day a clay image of Mahadeo is carried to the grave, and food and flowers are offered to it, as well as any intoxi- cants to which the deceased person may have been addicted.
The following notice of the Jangams more than a century ago may be quoted from the Abb6 Dubois, though the custom described does not, so far as is known, prevail at present, at least in the Central Provinces : * " The gurus or priests of Siva, who are known in the Western Provinces by the name of Jangams, are for the most part celibates.
They have a custom which is peculiar to themselves, and curious enough to be worth remarking. When a guru travels about his district he lodges with some member of the sect, and the members contend among themselves for the honour of receiving him. When he has selected the house he wishes to stay in, the master and all the other male inmates are obliged, out of respect for him, to leave it and go and stay elsewhere.
The holy man remains there day and night with only the women of the house, whom he keeps to wait on him and cook for him, without creating any scandal or exciting the jealousy of the husbands. All the same, some scandal-mongers have remarked that the Jangams always take care to choose a house where the women are young." The Jangams are not given to austerities, and go about well clad. 1 Hindu Manners, Customs, and Ceremonies, 1897 ed. p. 118.
