Writer castes: Sholapur
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Writer castes: Sholapur
This is an extract from a British Raj gazetteer pertaining to Sholapur. It seems |
Writer
Writers include two classes with a strength of 184. Of these 111 (males 51, females 60) were Kayasth Prabhus, and 73 (males 31 females 42) were Mudliars.
Kayasth Prabhus
Ka'yasth Prabhus are returned as numbering 111 and as found over the whole district except in Malsiras. They claim to be Kshatriyas and to be descended from Chandrasen an early king of Oudh. Some of their surnames are Randive, Tamhane, and Vaidya. They are middle sized, slightly built and fair, and their women are graceful. They speak Marathi and are clean neat and hardworking. Most of them are writers. They live in substantial buildings with walls of mud and stone and flat roofs. They eat fish and flesh and drink liquor, but very stealthily. On the birth of a child they hold the family impure for ten days. On the sixth day they worship the goddess Satvai and on the twelfth cradle and name the child. They gird their boys with the sacred thread before they are ten years old and marry them before they come to manhood. They marry their girls before they are ten, and spend £20 to £100 (Rs. 200 -1000) on a child's marriage. They burn their dead, forbid widow marriage and practise polygamy, polyandry is unknown. They worship all Brahmanic gods and goddesses, but so greatly prefer to worship goddesses that they are known as devibhakts or goddess worshippers. Their priests are Deshasth Brahmans and they keep the usual fasts and festivals. They go on pilgrimage to Benares, Nasik, and Pandharpur, and believe in witchcraft and soothsaying and consult oracles. They settle social disputes at meetings of the castemen. They send their children both boys and girls to school and keep their girls at school till they are about twelve years old. In spite of their small numbers and of the keen competition for clerkship they hold their own against Brahman and other non-writer classes whom they term intruders. They are decidedly well-to-do.
Mudliars
Mudlia'rs literally South-easters also called Madrasis are returned as numbering 73 and as found in Barsi, Karmala, and Sholapur. They are said to have come to the district from the Madras Presidency twenty-five or thirty years ago in search of work. They are divided into Mudliars, Pilles, and Telangs, who eat together but do not intermarry. They have only two family stocks or gotras Shiv and Vishnu, and families bearing the same stock name cannot intermarry. They have no surnames. The names in common use among menare Armu, Jagannath, Khamaya, Madhavrav, Narhariaya, Pulaya, and Tandrav. The mode of writing their names is to write the initial letter of their native town, then the person's name, his father's name, and lastly the name of the subdivision or caste; thus Tanjor Madhavrav Jagannath Pille or T. M. Jagannath Pille, or simply T. Madhavrav. The women's names are Bhagirthi, Ganga, Manakbai, and Sonubai. They are very dark with regular features, and the men are rough and hardy. Their home tongue is Telugu, but with others they speak Marathi or Hindustani. They live in neat and clean one-storeyed middle class houses with mud and stone walls and flat roofs. Their house goods include boxes, cots, bedding carpets, and mats, copper and brass vessels, tables, chairs, glass hanging globes, framed pictures, and sometimes silver ware. They keep servants and their pet animals are cows, bullocks, buffaloes, dogs, cats, and parrots. Their staple food includes rice, millet, pulse, and vegetables, and they are very fond of chatnis. They also eat fish and the flesh of goats deer and rabbits and call a muttonless dinner insipid. They drink liquor, eat opium, smoke tobacco and hemp, and drink hemp water. They give dinners in honour of births, marriages, first pregnancies, and deaths. The men wear the topknot moustache and whiskers, but not the beard. They dress in a doubled waistcloth, a long native or a short European coat, falling below the knee or reaching the waist. They arrange the headscarf so that the outer folds cross exactly in the middle of the forehead. They carry a red handkerchief in their hands, and from their ear lobes hang gold worked rudraksh beads. The women tie their long oily black hair in a knot on one side behind the ear. They are fond of rubbing the hair with cocoa oil to keep it glossy and prevent baldness, which is rare among them. The women wear a robe but do not pass the skirt back between the feet. They draw the upper end across the chest, and passing it across the back, tuck it in at the waist. Their bodice is the same as the Maratha bodice. They buy their clothes from the local market except their costly robes and headscarfs which come from Madras. The men are clean in their habits, and always wear clothes washed by a washerman. They are hardworking, even-tempered, hospitable, thrifty, polite, and orderly. Their women are not so neat or clean as the men. They delight in soaking their hair in cocoa oil, and anointing their bodies especially their faces. They are clerks and writers, contractors, moneylenders, landholders letting fields to husbandmen on the crop-share system, tobacconists selling cigarettes and cheroots, and country and European liquor sellers. Their women do not help them in their calling. They are a well-to-do people generally free from debt, and have good credit being able to borrow up to £100 (Rs. 1000) without interest. They claim to be Vaishyas and take food from Brahmans.
The Mudliars are religious. Their family gods are Mahadev, Maruti, Ram, Vithoba, and Vyankoba. Their priests are Dravidian or Telugu Brahmans who officiate at their houses and are greatly respected. They fast on Saturdays and the lunar elevenths or Ekadashis and keep the ordinary Hindu fasts and festivals. Their spiritual head is a member of their own community who lives in the Madras Presidency. They believe in sorcery, witchcraft, soothsaying, omens, and in lucky and unlucky days, and consult oracles. When a child is born the mother is washed in hot water and laid on the cot. The midwife cuts the child's navel cord and buries it with the afterbirth outside of the house. The child is bathed in hot water and laid on the cot beside the mother. For three days the child is fed on castor oil and honey, and, on the fourth day the mother bathes and then suckles it. During the first two days the mother fasts and from the third to the tenth day is fed on rice and butter. The family is considered impure for nine days. On the tenth the house is cowdunged, the clothes are washed, and the whole family bathes. On the twelfth a party of women come, cradle the child, and the father's mother or other elderly female relation whispers a name in its right ear. The cradle is rocked, a song is sung, and after the guests have presented the child and its mother with clothes, they are feasted and retire with packets of betelnut and leaves. When a child, whether a boy or a girl is one to three years old, its hair is clipped by the family barber. They marry their girls between ten and sixteen and their boys between fifteen and twenty-five. The girl's father has to find her a husband. When a boy is found, on a lucky day his parents with relations and friends go to the girl's and present her with a robe, a bodice, and ornaments. A couple of days before the marriage, booths are made at both houses, and a marriage altar is built at the girl's. On each of the four sides of the altar is set an earthen jar striped with yellow and red lines and filled with cold water, and near each jar is set a lighted brass lamp. On the marriage morning the earthen jars are worshipped and a lucky post or muhurtmedh is set in front of the house to the top of which are tied a bundle of hay, two cocoanuts, bunches of wheat plants, and a piece of yellow cloth with a couple of turmeric roots in it. On the marriage day the bridegroom with music and accompanied by his parents relations and friends goes to the girl's riding on horseback. At the girl's her mother waves five wheat cakes round the boy's head and throws them on one side. He dismounts and takes his seat on a low wooden stool set on the altar. He worships Ganpati and a water pot or Varun. He puts off his waistcloth and puts on a loincloth and a sacred thread and resumes his seat. The priest mutters some verses and throws grains of rice over the boy's head. The girl's father presents him with a new waistcloth which he puts on, and again takes his seat. The boy's father presents the girl with a new robe and bodice which she puts on, and takes her seat on the altar close to the boy on a low wooden stool. A gold not a tinsel marriage ornament is tied round the boy's brow, and a member of the girl's family sets in front of the boy a brass plate with red rice a cocoanut and a necklace of black glass beads. The plate is shown to each guest, who takes a pinch of rice in his hands and with his fingers touches the cocoanut and the necklace. After all have touched the cocoanut and the necklace the priest lays the plate in front of the boy and girl, repeats verses, places the cocoanut in the boy's hands, and ties the necklace round the girl's neck. The guests throw the rice over the couple's head and the verse-repeating is over.
The priest kindles a sacred fire on the altar in front of the boy and girl who feed it with butter, dry dates, and dry cocoa-kernel. He takes two pieces of cotton yarn and makes five folds of each, and, tying a turmeric root to each, fastens them round the boy's and the girl's right wrists. A dinner to all present-ends the day's proceedings and the guests retire. For two days the bridegroom remains at the bride's, and, on the morning of the third, the pair are bathed and dressed in fresh clothes and seated on two low wooden stools on the altar. In front of them is set an earthen jar filled with a mixture of turmeric powder and lime and water, and in it are dropped a gold finger ring and a conch shell and the pair are told to pick them out. They struggle hard, for whoever gets the ring is. cheered and whoever gets the shell is jeered. If the bridegroom gets the ring, his friends are delighted; if the girl gets the ring her friends lament that so fit a girl should have got so feeble a husband. If the girl gets the ring her father presents it to the boy and sprinkles the guests with turmeric and lime from the ring jar which by this time has turned red. The boy and girl are seated on a horse and taken to the boy's accompanied by male and female relations and friends. They are feasted and the marriage festival is over. When a girl comes of age she is seated by herself for three days. On the fourth she is presented with a new robe and bodice, and goes to live with her husband. After death the body is anointed with oil and bathed in hot water on the spot where the dead breathed his last. The body is carried out laid on a bamboo bier, covered with a sheet, and tied all round with twine and coloured cotton. It is borne on the shoulders of four men, the chief mourner walking in front carrying an earthen jar containing live coal. A near relation carries in his hands a winnowing fan with parched grain, betelnuts dyed yellow with turmeric, and sugar cakes or batasas, walks throwing them over the bier for a short distance, and then returning to the deceased's house, lays the fan in front of the house and rejoins the procession. When the procession has gone half way, the chief mourner throws a few copper coins over the body and the bier, and they again go on. At the burning ground the mourners busy themselves raising a pile of cowdung cakes and fuel, and the chief mourner, sitting near the corpse's feet, has his face shaved and his head except the topknot. He bathes, the body is laid on the pile, and with the help of the other mourners the chief mourner sets fire to it. To make it burn fiercer kerosine oil is poured over the pyre. When the body is consumed the mourners bathe and going to the deceased's house, look at the lamp which is kept burning on the spot where he breathed his last, and go to their houses. The mourning family is impure for fifteen days. On the second day the chief mourner with a few near relations, goes to the burning ground, bathes, and sprinkles over the ashes, milk, curds, and cow's urine, and with the help of the other mourners gathers the ashes and throws them into water. He lays sweetmeats on the place where the body was burnt, bathes, and all return to the mourner's house. On the sixteenth day the mourning family bathe, the house is cowdunged, and the married male members put on fresh sacred threads. A feast is given during the day, and in the evening the chief mourner is presented with a white turban and taken to the nearest temple. After this the mourner is free to go out and the mourning is over. They are bound together by a strong caste feeling, and settle social disputes at meetings of the castemen. They send their boys and their girls to school, and keep the girls at school till their twelfth year. They readily take to any new calling and are well-to-do. TRADERS.
