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This article is an extract from <br/>

PANJAB CASTES <br/>

SIR DENZIL CHARLES JELF IBBETSON, K.C. S.I. <br/>

Being a reprint of the chapter on <br/>
The Races, Castes and Tribes of <br/>
the People in the Report on the <br/>
Census of the Panjab published <br/>
in ''' 1883 ''' by the late Sir Denzil <br/>
Ibbetson, KCSI <br/>

Lahore : <br/>

Printed  by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab, <br/>

1916. <br/>
''Indpaedia is an archive. It neither agrees nor disagrees ''<br/> 
''with the contents of this article.''
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[[Category:India|P]]
[[Category:Communities|P]]

==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.