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From The Tribes And Castes Of The Central Provinces Of India

By R. V. Russell

Of The Indian Civil Service

Superintendent Of Ethnography, Central Provinces

Assisted By Rai Bahadur Hira Lal, Extra Assistant Commissioner

Macmillan And Co., Limited, London, 1916.

NOTE 1: The 'Central Provinces' have since been renamed Madhya Pradesh.

NOTE 2: While reading please keep in mind that all articles in this series have been scanned from the original book. Therefore, footnotes have got inserted into the main text of the article, interrupting the flow. Readers who spot these footnotes gone astray might like to shift them to their correct place.

Bania: Maheshri

This important subcaste of Banias numbered about 14,000 persons in the Central Provinces in 191 1, of whom 8000 belonged to the Berar Districts, and the remainder principally to Hoshangabad, Nimar, Wardha and Nagpur. The name is said to be derived from Maheshwar, an ancient town on the Nerbudda, near Indore, and one of the earliest Rajput settlements. But some of them say that their original home is in Bikanir, and tell a story to 1 See separate article on Jangam.

the effect that their ancestor was a Raja who was turned into stone with his seventy-two followers by some ascetics whose devotions they had interrupted in the forest. But when their wives came to commit sati by the stone figures the god Siva intervened and brought them to life again. He told them to give up the profession of arms and take to trade. So the seventy-two followers were the ancestors of the seventy-two gotras or sections of the Maheshris, and the Raja became their tribal Blidt or genealogist, and they were called Maheshri or Maheswari, from Mahesh, a name of Siva. In Gujarat the term Maheshri or Meshri appears to be used for all Banias who are not Jains, including the other important Hindu subcastes.

This is somewhat peculiar, and perhaps tends to show that several of the local subcastes are of recent formation. But though they profess to be named after Siva, the Maheshris, like practically all other Hindu Banias, are Vaishnava by sect, and wear the kiniti or necklace of beads of basil. A small minority are Jains. It is to be noticed that both the place of their origin, an early Rajput settlement of the Yadava clan, and their own legend tend to show that they were derived from the Rajput caste ; for as their ancestors were attendants on a Raja and followed the profession of arms, which they were told to abandon, they could be none other than Rajpiits.

The Maheshris also have the Rajput custom of sending a cocoa- nut as a symbol of a proposal of marriage. In Nimar the Maheshri Banias say they belong to the Dhakar subcaste, a name which usually means illegitimate, though they themselves explain that it is derived from a place called Dhakargarh, from which they migrated. As already stated they are divided into seventy-two exogamous clans, the names of which appear to be titular or territorial. It is said that at their weddings when the bridegroom gets to the door of the marriage-shed, the bride's mother ties a scarf round his neck and takes hold of his nose and drags him into the shed. Sometimes they make the bridegroom kneel down and pay reverence to a shoe as a joke. They do not observe the custom of the pangat or formal festal assembly, which is usual among Hindu castes ; according to this, none ^ Bombay Gazetteer, Hindus of Gujarat, p. 70.

can begin to eat until all the guests have assembled, when they all sit down at once. Among the Maheshris the guests sit down as they come in, and are served and take their food and go. They only have the pajtgat feast on very rare occasions. The Maheshris are one of the richest, most enterprising and influential classes of Banias. They are intelligent, of high-bred appearance, cleanly habits and courteous manners. The great bankers, Sir Kasturchand Daga of Kamptee, of the firm of Bansi Lai Ablrchand, and Rai Bahadur Seth Jiwan Das and Diwan Bahadur Seth Ballabh Das, of Jubbulpore, belong to this subcaste.