Koli
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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.
Koli
A primitive tribe akin to the Bhlls, who are notice of residents of the western Satpura hills. They have the the C3.St6 honorific title of Naik. They numbered 36,000 persons in 1911, nearly all of whom belong to Berar, with the exception of some 2000 odd, who live in the Nimar District. These have hitherto been confused with the Kori caste. The Koris or weavers are also known as Koli, but in Nimar they have the designation of Khangar Koli to distinguish them from the tribe of the same name.
The Kolis proper are found in the Burhanpur tahsll, where most villages are said to possess one or two families, and on the southern Satpura hills adjoining Berar. They are usually village servants, their duties being to wait on Government officers, cleaning their cooking-vessels and collecting carts and provisions. The duties of village watchman or kotwar were formerly divided between two officials, and while the Koli did the most respectable part of the work, the Mahar or Balahi carried baggage, went messages, and made the prescribed reports to the police. In Berar the Kolis acted for a time as guardians of the hill passes.
A chain of outposts or watch towers ran along the Satpura hills to the north of Berar, and these were held by Kolis and Bhlls, whose duties were to restrain the predatory inroads of their own tribesmen, in the same manner as the Khyber Rifles now guard the passes on the North-West Frontier. And
again along the Ajanta hills to the south of the Berar valley a tribe of Kolis under their Naiks had charge of the ghats or gates of the ridge, and acted as a kind of local militia paid by assignments of land in the villages. 1 In Nimar the Kolis, like the Bhlls, made a trade of plunder and dacoity during the unsettled times of the eighteenth century, and the phrase ' Nahal, Bhll, Koli ' is commonly used in old Marathi documents to designate the hill- robbers as a class.
The priest of a Muhammadan tomb in Burhanpur still exhibits an imperial Parwana or intimation from Delhi announcing the dispatch of a force for the sup- pression of the Kolis, dated A.D. 1637. In the Bombay Presidency, so late as 1 804, Colonel Walker wrote : " Most Kolis are thieves by profession, and embrace every oppor- tunity of plundering either public or private property." 2 The tribe are important in Bombay, where their numbers amount to more than 1^- million.
It is supposed that the common term ' coolie ' is a corruption of Koli,3 because the Kolis were usually employed as porters and carriers in western India, as ' slave ' comes from Slav. The tribe have also given their name to Colaba.4 Various derivations have been given of the meaning of the word Koli,5 and according to one account the Kolis and Mairs were originally the same tribe and came from Sind, while the Mairs were the same as the Meyds or Mihiras who entered India in the fifth century as one of the branches of the great White Hun horde.
" Again, since the settlement of the Mairs in Gujarat," the writer of the Gujarat Gazetteer continues, " reverses of fortune, especially the depression of the Rajputs under the yoke of the Muhammadans in the fourteenth century, did much to draw close the bond between the higher and middle grades of the warrior class. Then many Rajputs sought shelter among the Kolis and married with them, leaving descendants who still claim a Rajput descent and bear the names of Rajput families. Apart from this, and probably as the result of an original sameness of race, in some parts of Gujarat and Kathiawar 1 Lyall's Berar Gazetteer, pp. 103-5. 4 Bombay City Census Report (1901) 2 Kathiazvar Gazetteer, p. 140. (Edwards). 3 Crooke's edition of Hobson-Jobson, ° Gujarat Gazetteer, p. 238. art. Koli.
intermarriage goes on between the daughters of Talabda Kolis and the sons of Rajputs." Thus the Thakur of Talpuri Mahi Kantha in Bombay calls himself a Pramara Koli, and explains the term by saying that his ancestor, who was a Pramara or Panwar Rajput, took water at a Koli's house. 1 As regards the origin of the Kolis, however, whom the author of the Gujarat Gazetteer derives from the White Huns, stating them to be immigrants from Sind, another and perhaps more probable theory is that they are simply a western outpost of the great Kol or Munda tribe, to which the Korkus and Nahals and perhaps the Bhlls may also belong. Mr. Hlra Lai suggests that it is a common custom in Marathi to add or alter so as to make names end in i. Thus Halbi for Halba, Koshti for Koshta, Patwi for Patwa, Wanjari for Banjara, Gowari for Goala ; and in the same manner Koli from Kol.
This supposition appears a very reasonable one, though there is little direct evidence. The Nimar Kolis have no tradition of their origin beyond the saying — Siva ki jholi Us men ka Koli, or ' The Koli was born from Siva's wallet' In the Central Provinces the tribe have the five sub- divisions of Surajvansi, Malhar, Bhilaophod, Singade, and the Muhammadan Kolis.
The Surajvansi or ' descendants of the sun ' claim to be Rajputs. The Malhar or Panbhari sub- tribe are named from their deity Malhari Deo, while the alternative name of Panbhari means water-carrier. The Bhilaophod extract the oil from bhilwa 2 nuts like the Nahals, and the Singade {sing, horn, and gadna, to bury) are so called because when their buffaloes die they bury the horns in their compounds. As with several other castes in Burhanpur and Berar, a number of Kolis embraced Islam at the time of the Muhammadan domination and form a separate subcaste. In Berar the principal group is that of the Mahadeo Kolis, whose name may be derived from the Mahadeo or Pachmarhi hills.
This would tend to connect them with the Korkus, and through them with the Kols. They are divided 1 Golden Book of India, s.v. 2 Semecarpus anacardium, the marking-nut tree. divisions.
into the Bhas or pure and the Akaramase or impure Kolis. 1 In Akola most of the Kolis are stated to belong to the Kshatriya group, while other divisions are the Naiks or soldiers, the begging Kolis, and the Watandars who are probably hereditary holders of the post of village watchman.2 The tribe have exogamous septs of the usual nature, but 3. Exo- they have forgotten the meaning of the names, and they |f™°onS . cannot be explained.
In Bombay their family names are the same as the Maratha surnames, and the writer of the Ahmadnagar Gazetteer 3 considers that some connection exists between the two classes. A man must not marry a girl of his own sept nor the daughter of his maternal uncle. Girls are usually married at an early age. A Brahman is employed to conduct the marriage ceremony, which takes place at sunset : a cloth is held between the couple, and as the sun disappears it is removed and they join hands amid the clapping of the assembled guests. Afterwards they march seven times round a stone slab surrounded by four plough-yokes.
Among the Rewa Kantha Kolis the boy's father must not proceed on his journey to find a bride for his son until on leaving his house he sees a small bird called devi on his right hand ; and consequently he is sometimes kept waiting for weeks, or even for months. When the be- trothal is arranged the bridegroom and his father are invited to a feast at the bride's house, and on leaving the father must stumble over the threshold of the girl's door ; without this omen no wedding can prosper.4 The remarriage of widows is permitted, and the ceremony 4 . widow- consists simply in tying a knot in the clothes of the couple ; ^"J^rce. in Ahmadabad all they need do is to sit on the ground while the bridegroom's father knocks their heads together. 5 Divorce is allowed for a wife's misconduct, and if she marries her fellow delinquent he must repay to the husband the expenses incurred by him on his wedding. Otherwise the caste committee may inflict a fine of Rs. 100 on him and put him out of caste for twelve years in default of payment, and order one side of his moustache to be shaved. In Gujarat 1 Kitts, Berar Census Report ( 1 88 1 ), s I'- 1 97- p. 131. 4 Hindus of Gujarat, I.e. 2 Akola Gazetteer (Mr. C. Brown), 6 Indian Antiquary, vol. iii. p. p. 116. 236.
a married woman who has an intrigue with another man is called savdsan, and it is said that a practice exists, or did exist, for her lover to pay her husband a price for the woman and marry her, though it is held neither respectable nor safe.
In Ahmadabad, if one Koli runs away with another's wife, leaving his own wife behind him, the caste committee sometimes order the offender's relatives to supply the bereaved husband with a fresh wife. They produce one or more women, and he selects one and is quite content with her.
5. Reii- The Kolis of Nimar chiefly revere the goddess Bhawani, §lon - and almost every family has a silver image of her. An im- portant shrine of the goddess is situated in Ichhapur, ten or twelve miles from Burhanpur, and here members of the tribe were accustomed to perform the hook-swinging rite in honour of the goddess. Since this has been forbidden they have an imitation ceremony of swinging a bundle of bamboos covered with cloth in lieu of a human being. 6. Disposal The Kolis both bury and burn the dead, but the former practice is more common.
They place the body in the grave with head to the south and face to the north. On the third day after the funeral they perform the ceremony called Kandhe kanchJina or ' rubbing the shoulder.' The four bearers of the corpse come to the house of the deceased and stand as if they were carrying the bier. His widow smears a little glii (butter) on each man's shoulder and rubs the place with a small cake which she afterwards gives to him. The men go to a river or tank and throw the cakes into it, afterwards bathing in the water. This ceremony is clearly designed to sever the connection established by the contact of the bier with their shoulders, which they imagine might otherwise render them likely to require the use of a bier themselves.
On the eleventh day a Brahman is called in, who seats eleven friends of the deceased in a row and applies sandal -paste to their foreheads. All the women whose husbands are alive then have turmeric rubbed on their foreheads, and a caste feast follows. 7. Social The Kolis eat flesh, including fowls and pork, and drink rules. 1 Bombay Gazetteer, Hindus of ~ Indian Antiqtiary, vol. iii. p. Gujarat, p. 250. 236. of the dead.
liquor. They will not eat beef, but have no special reverence for the cow. They will not remove the carcase of a dead cow or a dead horse. The social status of the tribe is low, but they are not considered as impure, and Gujars, Kunbis, and even some Rajputs will take water from them. Children are named on the twelfth day after birth. Their hair is shaved in the month of Magh following the birth, and on the first day of the next month, Phagun, a little oil is applied to the child's ear, after which it may be pierced at any time that is convenient.
