The Pahari Mahajans

Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Bengali Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Khmer Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Marathi Nepali Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

This article is an extract from PANJAB CASTES SIR DENZIL CHARLES JELF IBBETSON, K.C. S.I. Being a reprint of the chapter on The Races, Castes and Tribes of the People in the Report on the Census of the Panjab published in 1883 by the late Sir Denzil Ibbetson, KCSI Lahore: Printed by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab, 1916. Indpaedia is an archive. It neither agrees nor disagrees with the contents of this article. Secondly, this has been scanned from a book. You can help by sending the corrected version to the Facebook page, Indpaedia.com. All information used will be duly acknowledged.

Pahari Mahajans

Caste No. 112

As I have just remarked, the Banyas and Bohras returned for the Hill States should probably be included with these people. They appear to be a mixed caste sprung from the intermarriage of immigrants from the plains belonging to the Banya and Knyath castes and are generally either traders or clerks. But the term is in the hills really occupational rather than the name of any caste ; and it appears that a Brahman shop-keeper would be called a Mahajan, while a Mahajan clerk would be called a Kayath. Thus Mr. Barnes says that the Kayath of the hills, unlike his namesake of the plains, belongs to the '* Vaisya or connnercial class and wears the janeo or sacred thread,^' and Major Wace writes of Hazara : The Hill Brahmans or Mahajans keep shops, cultivate, or take service, as well as act as priests.^ The true Banya of Hindustan, who is found in the hills only as a foreigner, will not intermarry with these Pahari Mahajans.

SeeThe Sud