Kanaujiya Brahmans

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This article is an extract from

THE TRIBES and CASTES of BENGAL. By H.H. RISLEY, INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE, OFFICIER D'ACADÉMIE FRANÇAISE. Ethnographic Glossary. CALCUTTA: Printed at the Bengal Secretariat Press. 1891. .

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Kanaujiya Brahmans

There are only ten or twelve houses in Dacca occupied by this Hindustani tribe, but several families having settled in Bengal, are styled Khonta, and been excommunicated. Finding a difficulty in obtaining wives, these outcasts have intermarried with the inferior Bengal tribes, and will eventually become merged in the ranks of the Srotriya.

Of the sixteen denominations of the Kanaujiya subdivision of Brahmans the most common in Dacca are Dube, Tiwari, and Sukul. These Brahmans are employed as Dafa'dars, constables, and Barkandazs; but in former days they held important posts under the Nawabs, and their descendants still proudly wear the "Sarmai," or cold weather embroidered cap, of the Muhammadan aristocracy. A Dube, named Natu Singh, was Nazir of the Provincial Court of Appeal last century, and to him Dacca owes the erection of the two hideous towers, called "Nazir-Ka-maths," on the spot where the bodies of his father and mother were burned.

At the present day the most famous Kanaujiya of Dacca is a Tiwari from Baiswara, who has raised himself into notoriety by his skill in telling fortunes and casting horoscopes. He is styled "the Brahman," the Pandit, or Jyotishi, by the Hindus; and Rammal, or Nujum, by the Muhammadans. His services are as indispensable at the birth and naming of a Muhammadan as of a Hindu child.