The Pujaris and Bhojkis

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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.

The Pujaris and Bhojkis

Caste No. 120

Pujari means really no thing but an officiating priest at a temple or shrine, and in the majority of cases would be a Brahman or faqir. But the Pujaris of the shrines in the Kangra and Simla hills have grown into a distinct caste, composed originally, it is said, of a mixed collection of Nais, Brahmans, Rajputs, and Jogis, who all intermarried. Those of the great shrines, such as Jawalamukhi and Bawan, are called Bhojkis ; and I have included under the head Pujari 1,274 persons returned as Bhojkis, of whom the distribution is shown in the margin. They are all priests of Devi, and their name is said to be a corruption of Pujki.

The Bhojkis are said by Mr. Barnes to be not Brahmans, though they are the hereditary priests of these celebrated temples. They all wear the sacred thread ; they intermarry among themselves alone, eat flesh, drink wine and are a debauched and profligate set ; the men are constantly in the Courts involved in litigation, and the women are notorious for their loose morality.'-' Colonel Jenkins of Kangra writes of them as follows : —

The Bhojkis are perhaps a unique feature of this district. They are attached to the great •' temples at Kangra and Jawalamukhi and are supported by the income. They claim to be Sarsnt Brahmins ; but if so, have certainly sunk in the social scale, as no ordinary Brahmins would eat ' kachi rasoi ' with them. They appear to occupy much the same position as the Ganga Putras of Benares, and the probability is that they are' mere ' Jogis ' who have obtained a retlccted sanctity from the goddesses whose service they have entered The word is evidently connected with the Sanskrit root 'bhoj ' to feed, and is'taken from the nature of their duties. They intermarry among themselves and with a class of Jogis called ' Bodha Pandits.' They are very quarrelsome, litigious, and profligate, and may be well characterized by the famous epithet which, if I remember right, was translated * Early rising, base informing, sad litigious, plaguy fellows' Of the 3,931 Pujaris and Bhojkis shown in Table VIII A, 394 Pujaris are Mahomedan. These are almost certainly Bukhari or people, or perhaps Saiyads, of Bukhara, the words Pujari and Bukhiri being identical if written without dots. They are found only in Jalandhar, Lahore, and Amritsar, the three groat commercial towns.