Sansia: Uria
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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 a book. During scanning some errors are bound to occur. Some letters get garbled. Footnotes get inserted into the main text of the article, interrupting the flow. Readers who spot errors might like to correct them, and shift footnotes gone astray to their rightful place.
Sansia: Uria
A caste of masons and navvies of the Uriy-a country. The Sansias are really a branch of the great migratory Ud or Odde caste of earth-workers, whose name has been corrupted into various forms."* Thus in Chanda they are known as Wadewar or Waddar. The term Uria is here a corruption of Odde, and it is the one by which the caste prefer to be known, but they are generally called Sansia by outsiders.
The caste sometimes class the Sansias as a subcaste of Urias, the others being Benatia Urias and Khandait Urias. Since the Uriya tract has been transferred to Bengal, and subsequently to Bihar and Orissa, there remain only about looo Sansias in the Chhattisgarh Districts and States. Although it is possible that the name 1 Cri»iinal C/asscs in Ihe Bombay Presii/encv ; Sansias and Berias. 2 Mr. Gayer, Central Provinces Police Lectures, p. 68. ^ This article is mainly based on a paper by Mr. Rama Prasad Bohidar, Assistant Master, Sambalpur High School.
^ See article Beldar for a notice of
the different groups of earth-workers.
of the caste may have been derived from some past connection, the Sansias of the Uriya country have at present no affinities with the outcaste and criminal tribe of Saiisis or Sansias of northern India. They enjoy a fairly high position in Sambalpur, and Brahmans will take water from them.
They are divided into two subcastes, the Benetia and
Khandait. The Benetia are the higher and look down on
the Khandaits, because, it is said, these latter have accepted
service as foot-soldiers, and this is considered a menial occupation.
Perhaps in the households of the Uriya Rajas the
tribal militia had also to perform personal services, and this
may have been considered derogatory.
In Orissa, on the other hand, the Khandaits have become landholders and occupy a high position next to Rajputs. The Benetia Sansias practise hypergamy with the Khandait Sansias, taking their daughters in marriage, but not giving daughters to them. When a Benetia is marrying a Khandait girl his party will not take food with the bride's relatives, but only partake of some sugar and curds and depart with the bride. The Sansias have totemistic exogamous septs, usually derived from the names of sacred objects, as Kachhap, tortoise, Sankh, the conch-shell, Tulsi, basil, and so on.
Girls are married between seven and ten, and after she 2- Maris
twelve years old a girl cannot go through the proper customs,
ceremony, but can only be wedded by a simple rite used
for widows, in which vermilion is rubbed on her forehead
and some grains of rice stuck on it. The marriage procession,
as described by Mr. Rama Prasad Bohidar, is a gorgeous
affair : " The drummers, all drunk, head the procession,
beating their drums to the tune set by the piper.
Next in order are placed dancing-boys between two rows of lights carried on poles adorned with festoons of paper flowers. Rockets and fireworks have their proper share in the procession, and last of all comes the bridegroom in his wedding apparel, mounted on a horse. His person is studded with various kinds of gold necklaces borrowed for the occasion, and the fingers of his right hand are covered with rings. Bangles and chains of silver shine on his wrists and arms. His forehead is beautifull)' painted with ground sandalwood divided in the centre by a streak of vermilion. VOL. IV 2 K
His head carries a crown of palm-leaves overlaid with bright paper of various colours. A network of mdlti flowers hangs loosely from the head over the back and covers a portion of the loins of the steed. The eyes are painted with collyrium and the feet with red dye. The lips and teeth are also reddened by the betel-leaf, which the bridegroom chews in profusion.
A silk cloth does the work of a belt, in which is fixed a dagger on the right side." Here the red colour which predominates in the bridegroom's decorations is lucky for the reasons given in the article on Lakhera ; the blacking of the eyes is also considered to keep off evil spirits ; betelleaf is itself a powerful agent of magic and averter of spirits, and to the same end the bridegroom carries iron in the shape of the dagger.
The ceremony is of the customary Uriya type. On the seventh day of the wedding the husband and wife go to the river and bathe, throwing away the sacred threads worn at the time of marriage, and also those which have been tied round their wrists. On returning home the wife piles up seven brass vessels and seven stools one above the other and the husband kicks them over, this being repeated seven times.
The husband then washes his teeth with water brought from the river, breaks the vessel containing the water in the bride's house, and runs away, while the women of her family throw pailfuls of coloured water over him. On the ninth day the bride comes and smears a mixture of curds and sugar on the forehead of each member of the bridegroom's family, probably as a sign of her admission to their clan, and returns home. Divorce and the remarriage of widows are permitted.
3. Reii- The caste worship Viswakarma, the celestial architect, gion and ^^^ ^j-j i^^^^ principal festivals they revere their trade-impleworship of JT 1 J 1 ancestors, ments and the book on architecture, by which they work. At Dasahra a pumpkin is offered to these articles in lieu of a goat. They observe the shraddJi ceremony, and first make two offerings to the spirits of ancestors who have died a violent death or have committed suicide, and to those of relatives who died unmarried, for fear lest these unclean and malignant spirits should seize and defile the offerings to the beneficent ancestors.
Thereafter phidas or sacrificial cakes arc offered to three male and three female ancestors both on
the father's and mother's side, twelve cakes being offered in all. The Sansias eat the flesh of clean animals, but the consumption of liquor is strictly forbidden, on pain, it is said, of permanent exclusion from caste.
In Sambalpur the caste are usually stone -workers, 4- Occupamaking
cups, mortars, images of idols and other articles.
They also build tanks and wander from place to place for
this purpose in large companies. It is related that on one
occasion they came to dig a tank in Drug, and the Raja of
that place, while watching their work, took a fancy to one
of the Odnis, as their women were called, and wanted her
to marry him. But as she was already married, and was
a virtuous woman, she refused.
The Raja persisted in his demand, on which the whole body of Sansias from Chhattlsgarh, numbering, it is said, nine lakhs of persons, left their work and proceeded to Wararbandh, near Raj- Nandgaon. Here they dug the great tank of Wararbandh ^ in one night to obtain a supply of water for themselves.
But the Raja followed them, and as they could not resist
him by force, the woman whom he was pursuing burnt
herself alive, and thus earned undying fame in the caste.
This legend is perpetuated in the Odni Git, a popular folksong
in Chhattlsgarh. But it is a traditional story of the
Sansias in connection with large tanks, and in another
version the scene is laid in Gujarat."
1 Said to be derived from their - Story of Jasnia Odni in Sati Charita
name Waddar. Sangrah.
