The Taga

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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.

Caste No. 86

The Tagas of the Jamna Khadir of Dehli and Karnal, the only part of the Province in which they are found, are said to be Gaur Brahmans by origin, and to have acquired their present name because they abandoned {tag dena) priestly functions and took to agriculture. Their origin is discussed at great length in Vol. I of Elliott's Races of the N orth-W est provinces, pages 106 to 115 ; and they are there identified with the Takkas, a possilily Scythian race who had the snake for their totem, and whose destruction by Raja. Janamajaya is supposed to 1)e commemorated in the tradition of that monareh's holoeaust of serpents.

The difficulty felt by Sir H. Elliott in accounting for their tracing their origin to Hariana is perhaps explained by the fact that they give Safidon in Jind on the border of Hariana as the place where the holocaust took place ; and the name of tht3 town is not impro1:)ably connected with sdvj.p or snake. The Tagas are probably the oldest inhalutants of the upper Jamna Khadir, holding villages which have been untouched hj changes in the course of the stream for a far longer period than most of their neighbours. They are of superior social standing and seclude their women, but are bad cultivators, especially the Mahomedans. About three-fourths of the total number have adopted Islam and ceased to wear the sacred thread. The Hindus still wear it, but Brahmans do not intermarry with them, and they employ Brahmans to officiate for them in the usual manner. They are poor agriculturists. They must be carefully distin guished from the Tagus or criminal Brahmans of the same tract discussed in section .586.

See The Meo