Nai
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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.
Nai
Nai, Nao, Mhali, Hajjam, Bhandari, Mangrala
Theoccupational caste of barbers. The name is said to be
derived from the Sanskrit ndpita, according to some a corruption of sndpitri, one who bathes. In Bundelkhand he is also known as Khawas, which was a title for the attendant on a grandee ; and Birtiya, or ' He that gets his maintenance iyritti) from his constituents.' ^ Mhali is the Marathi name for the caste, Bhandari the Uriya name and Mangala the Telugu name. The caste numbered nearly 1 90,000 persons in the Central Provinces in 191 1, being distributed over all Districts. Various legends of the usual type are related of its origin, but, as Sir. H. Risley observes, it is no doubt wholly of a functional character.
The subcastes in the Central Provinces entirely bear out this view, as they are ' This article is compiled from First Assistant Master, Sironcha, papers by Mr. Chatteiji, retired Chanda ; and from the Central E.A.C., Jubbulpore ; Professor Sadii- Provinces District Gazetteers, shiva Jairam, M.A., Hislop College, '^ Mr. Crooke's Tribes and Castes, Nagpur ; and Mr. C. Shrinivas Naidu, art. Nai.
very numerous and principally of the territorial type
Telange of the Telugu country, Marathe, Pardeshi or northerners, Jharia or those of the forest country of the Wainganga Valley, Bandhaiya or those of Bandhogarh, Barade of Berar, Bundelkhandi, Marwari, Mathuria from Mathura, Gadhwaria from Garha near Jubbulpore, Lanjia from Lanji in Balaghat, Malwi from Malwa, Nimari from Nimar, Deccanc, Gujarati, and so on.
Twenty-six divisions in all are given. The exogamous groups are also of different types, some of them being named after Brahman saints, as Gautam, Kashyap, Kosil, Sandil and Bharadwaj ; others after Rajput clans as Surajvansi, Jaduvansi, Solanki and Panwar ; while others are titular or totemistic, as Naik, leader ; Seth, banker; Rawat, chief; Nagesh, cobra ; Bagh, a tiger ; Bhadrawa, a fish. The exogamous groups are known as kJiero or kid, and 2. Marmarriage between members of the same group is prohibited, oth^r^" Girls are usually wedded between the ages of eight and customs, twelve and boys between fifteen and twenty.
A girl who goes wrong before marriage is finally expelled from the caste. The wedding ceremony follows the ritual prevalent in the locality as described in the articles on Kurmi and Kunbi. At an ordinary wedding the expenses on the girl's side amount to about Rs. 150, and on the boy's to Rs. 200. The remarriage of widows is permitted. In the northern Districts the widow may wed the younger brother of her deceased husband, but in the Maratha country she may not be married to any of his relatives.
Divorce may be effected at the instance of the husband before the caste committee, and a divorced woman is at liberty to marry again. The Nais worship all the ordinary Hindu deities. On the Dasahra and Diwali festivals they wash and revere their implements, the razor, scissors and nail-pruners. They pay regard to omens. It is unpropitious to sneeze or hear the report of a gun when about to commence any business ; and when a man is starting on a journey, if a cat, a squirrel, a hare or a snake should cross the road in front of him he will give it up and return home. The bodies of the dead are usually burnt.
In Chhattisgarh the poor throw the corpses of their dead into the Mahanadi. and the bodies of children
dying under one year of age were until recently buried in the courtyard of the house. The period of mourning for adults is ten days and for children three days. The chief mourner must take only one meal a day, which he cooks himself until the ceremony of the tenth day is perform.ed. 3. Occupa- " The barber's trade," Mr. Crooke states,^ " is undoubtedly tion. Q^ great antiquity. In the Veda we read, ' Sharpen us like the razor in the hands of the barber '
- and again, ' Driven
by the wind, Agni shaves the hair of the earth like the barber shaving a beard.' " In early times they must have enjoyed considerable dignity ; Upali the barber was the first propounder of the law of the Buddhist church.
The village barber's leather bag contains a small mirror {drst), a pair of iron pincers {chiinta), a leather strap, a comb {kattght), a piece of cloth about a yard square and some oil in a phial. He shaves the faces, heads and armpits of his customers, and cuts the nails of both their hands and feet. He uses cold water in summer and hot in winter, but no soap, though this has now been introduced in towns. For the poorer cultivators he does a rapid scrape, and this process is called ' asudJiaV or a ' tearful shave,' because the person undergoing it is often constrained to weep.
The barber acquires the knowledge of his art by practice on the more obliging of his customers, hence the proverb, ' The barber's son learns his trade on the heads of fools.' The village barber is usually paid by a contribution of grain from the cultivators, calculated in some cases according to the number of ploughs of land possessed by each, in others according to the number of adult males in the family.
In Saugor he receives 20 lbs. of grain annually for each adult male or 22!- lbs. per plough of land, besides presents of a basket of grain at seed-time and a sheaf at harvest. Cultivators are usually shaved about once a fortnight. In towns the barber's fee may vary from a pice to two annas for a shave, which is, as has been seen, a much more protracted operation with a Hindu than with a European. It is said that Berfir is now so rich that even ordinary cultivators can afford to pay the barber two annas (2d.) for a single shave, or the same price as in the suburbs of London. ' Tribes and Castes, art. Nai, para. 5-
After he has shaved a client the barber pinches and rubs 4. Other his arms, presses his fingers together and cracks the joints ^'^"='^^- of each finger, this last action being perhaps meant to avert evil spirits. He also does massage, a very favourite method of treatment in India, and also inexpensive as compared with Europe.
For one rupee a month in towns the barber will come and rub a man's legs five or ten minutes every day. Cultivators have their legs rubbed in the sowing season, when the labour is intensely hard owing to the necessity of sowing all the land in a short period. If a man is well-to-do he may have his whole head and body rubbed with scented oil. Landowners have often a barber as a family servant, the office descending from father to son. Such a man will light his master's diilain (pipe-bowl) or huqqa (water-pipe), clean and light lamps, prepare his bed, tell his master stories to send him to sleep, act as escort for the women of the family Vv-hen they go on a journey and arrange matches for the children.
The barber's wife attends on women in child-birth after the days of pollution are over, and rubs oil on the bodies of her clients, pares their nails and paints their feet with red dye at marriages and on other festival occasions. The barber has also numerous and important duties ^ in 5. Duties connection with marriages and other festival occasions. He \2^^ acts as the Brahman's assistant, and to the lower castes, who cannot employ a Brahman, he is himself the matrimonial priest.
The important part which he plays in marriage ceremonies has led to his becoming the matchmaker among all respectable castes. He searches for a suitable bride or bridegroom, and is often sent to inspect the other party to a match and report his or her defects to his clients. He may arrange the price or dowry, distribute the invitations and carry the presents from one house to the other.
He supplies the leaf-plates and cups which are used at weddings, as the family's stock of metal vessels is usually quite inadequate for the number of guests. The price of these is about 4 annas (4d.) a hundred. He also provides the torans or strings of leaves which are hung over the door of ^ The following account is largely taken from Mr. Nesfield's Brief View of the Caste System, pp. 42, 43.
the house and round the marriage-shed. At the feast the barber is present to hand to the guests water, betel-leaf and pipes as they may desire. He also partakes of the food, seated at a short distance from the guests, in the intervals of his service.
He lights the lamps and carries the torches during the ceremony. Hence he was known as Masalchi or torch-bearer, a name now applied by Europeans to a menial servant who lights and cleans the lamps and washes the plates after meals. The barber and his wife act as prompters to the bride and bridegroom, and guide them through the complicated ritual of the wedding ceremony, taking the couple on their knees if they are children, and otherwise sitting behind them.
The barber has a prescriptive right to receive the clothes in which the bridegroom goes to the bride's house, as on the latter's arrival he is always presented with new clothes by the bride's father. As the bridegroom's clothes may be an ancestral heirloom, a compact is often made to buy them back from the barber, and he may receive as much as Rs. 50 in lieu of them. When the first son is born in a family the barber takes a long bamboo stick, wraps it round with cloth and puts an earthen pot over it and carries this round to the relatives, telling them the good news. He receives a small present from each household.
6. The The barber also cleans the ears of his clients and cuts
their nails, and is the village surgeon in a small way. He
cups and bleeds his patients, applies leeches, takes out
teeth and lances boils. In this capacity he is the counterpart
of the barber-surgeon of mediaeval Europe. The Hindu
physicians are called Baid, and are, as a rule, a class of
Brahmans.
They derive their knowledge from ancient Sanskrit treatises on medicine, which are considered to have divine authority. Consequently they think it unnecessary to acquire fresh knowledge by experiment and observation, as they suppose the perfect science of medicine to be contained in their sacred books. As these books probably do not describe surgical operations, of which little or nothing was known at the time when they were written, and as surgery involves contact with blood and other impure substances, the Baids do not practise it, and the villagers barbersurgeon.
are left to get on as best they can with the ministrations of the barber. It is interesting to note that a similar state of things appears to have prevailed in Europe. The monks were the early practitioners of medicine and were forbidden to practise surgery, which was thus left to the barberchirurgeon. The status of the surgeon was thus for long much below that of the physician.^ The mediaeval barber of Europe kept a bottle of blood in his window, to indicate that he undertook bleeding and the application of leeches, and the coloured bottles in the chemist's window may have been derived from this.
It is also said that the barber's pole originally served as a support for the patient to lean on while he was being bled, and those barbers who did the work of bleeding patients painted their poles in variegated red and white stripes to show it. Perhaps the most successful barber known to Indian 7. a history was not a Hindu at all, but a Peninsular and Oriental j^^'j^^'" Company's cabin-boy, who became the barber of one of the court last kings of Oudh, NasIr-ud-Din, in the early part of the nineteenth century, and rose to the position of a favourite courtier. He was entrusted with the supply of every European article used at court, and by degrees became a regular guest at the royal table, and sat down to take dinner with the king as a matter of right ; nor would his majesty taste a bottle of wine opened by any other hands than the barber's." This was, however, a wise precaution as it turned out, since after he had finally been forced to part with the barber the king was poisoned by his own relatives.
The barber was also made keeper of the royal menagerie, for which he supplied the animals and their food, and made enormous profits. The following is an account of the presentation of the barber's monthly bill of expenses : ^ "It was after tiffin, or lunch, when we usually retired from the palace until dinner-time at nine o'clock, that the favourite entered with a roll of paper in his hand. In India, long documents, legal and commercial, are usually written, not in books or on successive sheets, but on a long roll, strip ^ Eighteenth Centiny Middle-Class - Private Life of an Eastern King, Life, by C. S. Torres, in the Nine- p. 17. teenth Century and After, Sept. 1910. ^ Lbidem, \x 107.
8. Character and position of the barber. being joined to strip for that purpose, and the whole rolled up like a map. " ' Ha, Khan ! ' said the king, observing him ; ' the monthly bill, is it ? ' " ' It is, your majesty,' was the smiling reply. " ' Come, out with it ; let us see the extent. Unrol it, Khan.' " The king was in a playful humour ; and the barber was always in the same mood as the king. He held the end of the roll in his hand, and threw the rest along the floor, allowing it to unrol itself as it retreated. It reached to the other side of the long apartment— a goodly array of items and figures, closely written too. The king wanted it measured. A measure was brought and the bill was found to be four yards and a half long. I glanced at the amount ; it was upwards of Rs. 90,000, or
- ^9000 !
" The barber, however, encouraged the king in every form of dissipation and excess, until the state of the Oudh court became such a scandal that the king was forced by the British Government to dismiss him.^ He retired, it was said, with a fortune of ^^240,000.
The barber is also, Mr. Low writes,^ the scandal-bearer
and gossip-monger of the village. His cunning is proverbial,
and he is known as Chliattisa from the saying
—
Nai hat chJiattisa
Khai an ka pisa,
or * A barber has thirty-six talents by which he eats at the
expense of others.' His loquacity is shown in the proverb,
' As the crow among birds so the barber among men.' The
barber and the professional Brahman are considered to be
jealous of their perquisites and unwilling to share with their
caste-fellows, and this is exemplified in the proverb, " The
barber, the dog and the Brahman, these three snarl at
meeting one of their own kind." The joint association of
the Brahman priest and the barber with marriages and
other ceremonies has led to the saying, " As there are
' Private Life of an Eastern King,
P- 330.
2 In the Baldghi'it District Gazetteer.
always reeds in a river so there is always a barber with a Brrihman." The barber's astuteness is alluded to in the saying, ' Nine barbers are equal to seventy -two tailors.' The fact that it is the barber's duty to carry the lights in marriage processions has led to the proverb, " At the barber's wedding all arc gentlemen and it is awkward to have to ask somebody to carry the torch." The point of this is clear, though no English equivalent occurs to the mind. And a similar idea is expressed by ' The barber washes the feet of others but is ashamed to wash his own.' It would appear from these proverbs that the Nai is considered to enjoy a social position somewhat above his deserts. Owing to the nature of his duties, which make him a familiar inmate of the household and bring him into contact with the persons of his high-caste clients, the caste of the Nai is necessarily considered to be a pure one and Brahmans will take water from his hands.
But, on the other hand, his calling is that of a village menial and has also some elements of impurity, as in cupping which involves contact with blood, and in cutting the nails and hair of the corpse before cremation. He is thus looked down upon as a menial and also considered as to some extent impure. No member of a cultivating caste would salute a barber first or look upon him as an equal, though Brahmans put them on the same level of ceremonial purity by taking water from both.
The barber's loquacity and assurance have been made famous by the Arabian Nights, but they have perhaps been affected by the more strenuous character of life, and his conversation does not flow so freely as it did. Often he now confines himself to approving and adding emphasis to any remarks of the patron and greeting any of his little witticisms with bursts of obsequious laughter. In Madras, Mr. Pandian states, the village barber, like the washerman, is known as the son of the village. If a customer does not pay him his dues, he lies low, and when he has begun to shave the defaulter engages him in a dispute and says something to excite his anger. The latter will then become abusive to the barber, whom he regards as a menial, and perhaps strike him, and this gives the barber an opportunity to stop shaving him and rush off to lay a complaint at the village court-house,
leaving his enemy to proceed home with half his head shaved and thus exposed to general ridicule.^ 9. Beliefs Numerous customs appear to indicate that the hair was about bair. j-gg^rded as the special seat of bodily strength.
The Rajput warriors formerly wore their hair long and never cut it, but trained it in locks over their shoulders. Similarly the Maratha soldiers wore their hair long. The Hatkars, a class of Maratha spearmen, might never cut their hair while engaged on military service. A Sikh writer states of Guru Govind, the founder of the militant Sikh confederacy : " He appeared as the tenth Avatar (incarnation of Vishnu). He established the Khalsa, his own sect, and by exhibiting singular energy, leaving the hair on his head, and seizing the scimitar, he smote every wicked person." " As is well known, no Sikh may cut his hair, and one of the five marks of the Sikh is the kajiga or comb, which he must always carry in order to keep his hair in proper order. A proverb states that ' The origin of a Sikh is in his hair.' ^ The following story, related by Sir J. Malcolm, shows the vital importance attached by the Sikh to his hair and beard : " Three inferior agents of Sikh chiefs were one day in my tent. I was laughing and joking with one of them, a Khalsa Sikh, who said he had been ordered to attend me to Calcutta.
Among other subjects of our mirth I rallied him -on trusting himself so much in my power. ' Why, what is the worst,' he said, ' that you can do to me ? ' I passed my hand across my chin, imitating the act of shaving. The man's face was in an instant distorted with rage and his sword half-drawn. ' You are ignorant,' he said to me, ' of the offence you have given ; I cannot strike you who are above me, and the friend of my master and the state ; but no power,' he added, indicating the Khalsa Sikhs, ' shall save these fellows who dared to smile at your action.' It was with the greatest difficulty and only by the good offices of some Sikh Chiefs that I was able to pacify his wounded honour." * These instances appear to show ' D. B. Pandian, Indian Village ^ Quoted in Sir D. Ibbetson's Life, under Barber. account of the Sikhs in Punjab Census ^ Quoted in Malcohii's Sketch of Report {x^Zi). the Sikhs, Asiatic Researches, vol. .\i., • Sketch of the Sikhs, ibidem, pp. 1810, p. 289. 284, 285.
clearly that the Sikhs considered their hair of vital importance
- and as fighting was their object in life, it seems
most probable that they thought their strength in war was bound up in it. Similarly when the ancient Spartans were on a military expedition purple garments were worn and their hair was carefully decked with wreaths, a thing which was never done at home.^ And when Leonidas and his three hundred were holding the pass of Thermopylae, and Xerxes sent scouts to ascertain what the Greeks were doing in their camp, the report was that some of them were engaged in gymnastics and warlike exercises, while others were merely sitting and combing their long hair.
If the hypothesis already suggested is correct, the Spartan youths so engaged were perhaps not merely adorning themselves for death, but, as they thought, obtaining their full strength for battle. " The custom of keeping the hair unshorn during a dangerous expedition appears to have been observed, at least occasionally, by the Romans. Achilles kept unshorn his yellow hair, because his father had vowed to offer it to the river Sperchius if ever his son came home from the wars beyond the sea." " When the Bhils turned out to fight they let down their long hair prior to beginning the conflict with their bows and arrows.^ The pirates of Surat, before boarding a ship, drank bhang and hemp-liquor, and when they wore their long hair loose they gave no quarter.^ The Mundas appear to have formerly worn their hair long and some still do. Those who are converted to Christianity must cut their hair, but a non-Christian Munda must always keep the cJmndi or pigtail.
If the cJiundi is very long it is sometimes tied up in a knot.^ Similarly the Oraons wore their hair long like women, gathered in a knot behind, with a wooden or iron comb in it. Those who are Christians can be recognised by the fact that they have cut off their pigtails. A man of the low Pardhi caste of hunters must never have his hair touched by a razor after he has once killed a deer.
As already seen, every orthodox Hindu wore till recently a 1 Professor Bliimners, Home Life of J.A.S.B. vol. xxxiv., 1S75, P- S^^- the Ancient Greeks, translation, p. 455. * Bombay Gazetteer, Hindus of 2 Golden Bough, 2nd ed. vol. iii. Gujarat, p. 528. p. 370. ^ S. C. Roy, The Mundas and
- Hendley, Account of the Bhils, their Country, p. 369.
dioti or scalp-lock, which should theoretically be as long as a cow's tail. Perhaps the idea was that for those who were not warriors it was sufficient to retain this and have the rest of the head shaved. The cJioti was never shaved off in mourning for any one but a father. The lower castes of Muhammadans, if they have lost several children, will allow the scalp-lock to grow on the heads of those subsequently born, dedicating it to one of their Muhammadan saints.
The Kanjars relate of their heroic ancestor Mana that
after he had plunged a bow so deeply into the ground that
no one could withdraw it, he was set by the Emperor of
Delhi to wrestle against the two most famous Imperial
wrestlers. These could not overcome him fairly, so they
made a stratagem, and while one provoked him in front
the other secretly took hold of his choti behind.
When Mana started forward his choti was thus left in the wrestler's hands, and though he conquered the other wrestler, showing him the sky as it is said, the loss of his choti deprived him for ever after of his virtue as a Hindu and in no small degree of his renown as an ancestor.^ Thus it seems clear that a special virtue attaches to the choti.
Before every warlike expedition the people of Minahassa in Celebes used to take the locks of hair of a slain foe and dabble them in boiling water to extract the courage ; this infusion of bravery was then drunk by the warriors.^ In a modern Greek folk-tale a man's strength lies in three golden hairs on his head. When his mother plucks them out, he grows weak and timid and is slain by his enemies.^
The Red Indian custom of taking the scalp of a slain enemy and sometimes wearing the scalps at the waist-belt may be due to the same relief. In Ceram the hair might not be cut because it was the seat of a man's strength ; and the Gaboon negroes for the same reason would not allow any of their hair to pass into the possession of a stranger,'* lo. Hair If thc hair was considered to be the special source of and'"^^ strength and hence frequently of life, that of the kings and priests. priests, in whose existence the primitive tribe believed its > W. Kirkpatrick mJ.A.S.B., July ^ g^ q^ jj-d ed., Balder the BeatUi- 191 1, ]). 438. fill, vol. ii. p. 103. ^ Golden Bough, 3rd cd. vol. viii. ^ Dr. Jevons, Introduction to the p. 153. History of Religion, p. 45. < o Cd O K LU I 1-
own communal life to be bound up, would naturally be a
matter of peculiar concern. That it was so has been
shown in the Golden Bough. Two hundred years ago the
hair and nails of the Mikado of Japan could only be cut
when he was asleep.^ The hair of the Flamcn Dialis at Rome
could be cut only by a freeman and with a bronze knife,
and his hair and nails when cut had to be buried under
a lucky tree." The Prankish kings were never allowed to
crop their hair ; from their childhood upwards they had to
keep it unshorn.
The hair of the Aztec priests hung down to their hams so that the weight of it became very troublesome
- for they might never crop it so long as they lived, or
at least till they had been relieved from their office on the score of old age.^ In the Male Paharia tribe from the time that any one devoted himself to the profession of priest and augur his hair was allowed to grow like that of a Nazarite ; his power of divination entirely disappeared if he cut it.^ Among the Bawarias of India the Bhuva or priest of Devi may not cut or shave his hair under penalty of a fine of Rs. I o.
A Parsi priest or Mobed must never be bare-headed and never shave his head or face. Professor Robertson Smith states : " As a diadem is in its origin nothing more than a fillet to confine hair that is worn long, I apprehend that in old times the hair of Hebrew princes like that of a Maori chief, was taboo, and that Absalom's long locks (2 Sam. xiv. 26) were the mark of his political pretensions and not of his vanity. When the hair of a Maori chief was cut, it was collected and buried in a sacred place or hung on a tree ; and it is noteworthy that Absalom's hair was cut annually at the end of the year, in the sacred season of pilgrimage, and that it was collected and weighed." ^
The importance attached by other races to the hair of n. The
the head seems among the Muhammadans to have been concentrated
specially in the beard. The veneration displayed
for the beard in this community is well known. The Prophet
ordained that the minimum length of the beard should be
1 Golden Bough, 2x\<kti\.yo\.\.'p.2Tfi\. ^ Bombay Gazetteer, Barsis of
2 Ibidem, vol. i. p. 242. Gujarat, p. 226.
^ Ibidem, vol. i. pp. 368, 369. ^ Beh'gion of the Semites, note i. pp.
- Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, p. 483, 484.
270. VOL. IV T beard.
the breadth of five fingers. When the beard is turning grey they usually dye it with henna and sometimes with indigo ; it may be thought that a grey beard is a sign of weakness. The Prophet said, ' Change the whiteness of your hair, but not with anything black.' It is not clear why black was prohibited. It is said that the first Caliph Abu Bakar was accustomed to dye his beard red with henna, and hence
this practice has been adopted by Muhammadans.^ The custom of shaving the chin is now being adopted by young Muhammadans, but as they get older they still let the beard grow. A very favourite Muhammadan oath is, ' By the beard of the Prophet ' ; and in Persia if a man thinks another is mocking him he says, ' Do you laugh at my beard ? ' Neither Hindus nor Muhammadans have any objection to becoming bald, as the head is always covered by the turban in society. But when a man wishes to grow a beard it is a serious drawback if he is unable to do it; and he will then sometimes pluck the young wheat-ears and rub the juice over his cheeks and chin so that he may grow bearded like the wheat. Among the Hindus, Rajputs and Marathas, as well as the Sikhs, commonly wore beards, all of these being military castes. Both the beard and hair were considered to impart an aspect of ferocity to the countenance, and when the Rajputs and Muhammadans were going into battle they combed the hair and" trained the beard to project sideways from the face.
When a Muhammadan wears a beard he must have hair in
the centre of his chin, whereas a Hindu shaves this part.
A Muhammadan must have his moustache short so that it
may not touch and defile food entering the mouth. It is
related that a certain Kazi had a small head and a very long
beard ; and he had a dream that a man with a small head
and a long beard must be a fool. When he woke up he
thought this was applicable to himself As he could not
make his head larger he decided to make his beard smaller,
and looked for scissors to cut part of it off.
But he could not find any scissors, and being in a hurry to shorten his beard he decided to burn away part of it, and set it alight. But the fire consumed the whole of his beard before he could put it out, and he then realised the truth of the dream. ' Bombay Gazetteer, Muhainiiiadans of Gujarat, p. 52,
If the hair was considered to be the source of a man's 12. Signistrength and vigour, the removal of it would involve the renio'^^°of loss of this and might be considered esi^ecially to debar him the hair from fighting or governing. The instances given from the j^g the Golden Bough have shown the fear felt by many people of head, the consequences of the removal of their hair. The custom of shaving the head might also betoken the renunciation of the world and of the pursuit of arms.
This may be the reason why monks shaved the head, a practice which was followed by Buddhist as well as Christian monks. A very clear case is also given by Sir James Frazer : " When the wicked brothers Clptaire and Childebert coveted the kingdom of their dead brother Clodomir, they inveigled into their power their little nephews, the two sons of Clodomir ; and having done so, they sent a messenger bearing scissors and a naked sword to the children's grandmother, Queen Clotilde, at Paris.
The envoy showed the scissors and the sword to Clotilde, and bade her choose whether the children should be shorn and live, or remain unshorn and die. The proud queen replied that if her grandchildren were not to come to the throne she would rather see them dead than shorn. And murdered they were by their ruthless uncle Clotaire with his own hand." ^ In this case it appears that if their hair was shorn the children could not come to the throne but would be destined to become monks. Similarly, in speaking of the Georgians, Marco Polo remarks that they cut their hair short like churchmen." When a member of the religious order of the Manbhaos is initiated his head is shaved clean by the village barber, and the scalp-lock and moustache must be cut off by his guru or preceptor, this being perhaps the special mark of his renunciation of the world.
The scalp-locks are preserved and made into ropes which some of them fasten round their loins. Members of the Hindu orders generally shave their scalp-locks and the head on initiation, probably for the same reason as the Manbhaos. But afterwards they often let the whole of their hair grow long. These men imagine that by the force of their austerities they will obtain divine power, so ^ Golden Bough, 2nd ed. vol. i. p. 2 Yule's ed. i. 50, quoted in Bombay 368. Gazetteer, Hindus of Gujarat, p. 470.
their religious character appears to be of a different order from monasticism. Perhaps, therefore, they wear their hair long in order to increase their spiritual potency. They themselves now say that they do it in imitation of the god Siva and the ancient ascetics who had long matted locks. The common Hindu practice of shaving the heads of widows may thus be interpreted as a symbol of their complete renunciation of the world and of any idea of remarriage.
It was accompanied by numerous other rules designed to make a widow's life a continual penance. This barbarous custom was formerly fairly general, at least among the higher castes, but is rapidly being abandoned except by one or two of the stricter sections of Brahmans. Shaving the head might also be imposed as a punishment. Thus in the time of the reign of the Emperor Chandraguptra Maurya in the fourth century B.C. it is stated that ordinary wounding by mutilation was punished by the corresponding mutilation of the offender, in addition to the amputation of his hand. The crime of giving false evidence was visited with mutilation of the extremities ; and in certain unspecified/ cases, serious offences were punished by the shaving of the offender's hair, a penalty regarded as specially infamous.^
The cutting off of some or all of the hair is at the present time a common punishment for caste offences. Among the Korkus a man and woman caught in adultery have each a lock of hair cut off. If a Chamar man and woman are detected in the same offence, the heads of both are shaved clean of hair. A Dhlmar girl who goes wrong before marriage has a lock of her hair cut off as a penalty, the same being done in several other castes.
13. Shav- The exact significance which is to be attached to the
head by
I'cmoval by mourners of their hair after a death is perhaps
mourners, doubtful. Sir James Frazer shows that the Australian
aborigines are accustomed to let their own blood flow on to
the corpse of a dead kinsman and to place their cut hair on
the corpse. He suggests that in both cases the object is to
strengthen the feeble spirit within the corpse and sustain its
life, in order that it may be born again. As a development
' Mr. V. A. Smith, Early History of India, 2nd ed. p. 128.
of such a rile the hair might have become an offering to the dead, and later still its removal might become a sacrifice and indication of grief. In this manner the common custom of tearing the hair in token of grief and mourning for the dead would be accounted for. • Whether the Hindu custom of shaving the heads of mourners was also originally a sacrifice and offering appears to be uncertain. Professor Robertson Smith considered ^ that in this case the hair is shaved off as a means of removing impurity, and quotes instances from the Bible where lepers and persons defiled by contact with the dead are purified by shaving the hair.^ As the father of a child is also shaved after its birth, and the shaving must here apparently be a rite of purification, it probably has the same significance in the case of mourners ; it is not clear whether any element of sacrifice is also involved.
The degree to which the Hindu mourner parts with his hair varies to some extent with the nearness of the relationship, and for females or distant relatives they do not always shave. The mourners are shaved on the last day of the impurity, when presents are given to the Maha-Brahman, and the latter, representing the dead man, is also shaved with them. When a Hindu is at the point of death, before he makes the gifts for the good of his soul the head is shaved with the exception of his cJioti or scalp-lock, the chin and upper lip. Often the corpse is also shaved after death.
Another case of the hair offering is that made in fulfil- 14. Hair ment of a vow or at a temple. In this case the hair appears °ff'2"gs. to be a gift-offering which is made to the god as representing the life and strength of the donor ; owing to the importance attached to the hair as the source of life and strength, it was a verj^ precious sacrifice. Sir James Frazer also suggests that the hair so given would impart life and strength to the god, of which he stood in need, just as he needed food to nourish him. Among the Hindus it is a common practice to take a child to some well-known temple to have its hair cut for the first time, and to offer the clippings of hair to the deity. If they cannot go to the temple to have the hair cut they have it cut at home, 1 Religion 0/ the Sernites, p. 33. - Lev. xiv. 9 and Deut. xxi. 12.
and either preserve the whole hair or a lock of it, until an opportunity occurs to offer it at the temple. In some castes a Brahman is invited at the first cutting of a child's hair, and he repeats texts and blesses the child ; the first lock of hair is then cut by the child's maternal uncle, and its head is shaved by the barber.
A child's hair is cut in the first, third or fifth year after birth, but not in the second or fourth year. Among the Muhammadans when a child's hair is cut for the first time, or at least on one occasion in its life, the hair should be weighed against silver or gold and the amount distributed in charity. In these cases also it would appear that the hair as a valuable part of the child is offered to the god to obtain his protection for the life of the child. If a woman has no child and desires one, or if she has had children and lost them, she will vow her next child's hair to some god or temple. A small patch known as chench is then left unshorn on the child's head until it can be taken to the temple.
15. Keep- It was also the custom to keep the hair unshorn during unshorn "^^^ performance of a vow. " While his vow lasted a during Nazarite might not have his hair cut : ' All the days of the vow of his separation there shall no razor come upon his head.'^ The Egyptians on a journey kept their hair" uncut till they returned home." Among the Chatti tribe of the ancient Germans the young warriors never clipped their hair or their beard till they had slain an enemy. Six thousand Saxons once swore that they would not clip their hair nor shave their beards until they had taken vengeance on their enemies." ^ Similarly, Hindu religious mendicants keep their hair long while they are journeying on a pilgrimage, and when they arrive at the temple which is their goal they shave it all off and offer it to the god. In this case, as the hair is vowed as an offering, it clearly cannot be cut during the performance of the vow, but must be preserved intact.
When the task to be accomplished for the fulfilment of a vow is a journey or the slaying of enemies, the retention of the hair is probably also 1 Golden Bough, 2nd ed. vol. i. p. ^ Ibidem, 2nd ed. vol. i. p. 370. 37^- •' Ibidem, 2nd ed. vol. i. p. 371. a vow.
meant to support and increase the wearer's strength for the accomj)h'shment of his purpose. If the hair contained a part of the wearer's Hfe and 16. Disstrength its disposal would be a matter of great importance, cmtia^r because, according to primitive belief, these qualities would and nails. remain in it after it had been severed. Hence, if an enemyobtained it, by destroying the hair or some analogous action he might injure or destroy the life and strength of the person to whom it belonged.
The Hindus usually wrap up a child's first hair in a ball of dough and throw it into a running stream, with the cuttings of his nails. Well-to-do people also place a rupee in the ball, so that it is now regarded as an offering. The same course is sometimes followed with the hair and nails cut ceremoniously at a wedding, and possibly on one or two other occasions, such as the investiture with the sacred thread ; but the belief is decaying, and ordinarily no care is taken of the shorn hair.
In Berar when the Hindus cut a child's hair for the first
time they sometimes bury it under a water-pot where the
ground is damp, perhaps with the idea that the child's
hair will grow thickly and plentifully like grass in a
damp place. It is a common belief that if a barren
woman gets hold of a child's first hair and wears it round
her waist the fertility of the child's mother will be transferred
to her. The Sarwaria Brahmans shave a child's
hair in its third year.
A small silver razor is made specially for the occasion, costing a rupee and a quarter, and the barber first touches the child's hair with this and then shaves it ceremoniously with his own razor.^ The Halbas think that the severed clippings of hair are of no use for magic, but if a witch can cut a lock of hair from a man's head she can use it to work magic on him. In making an image of a person with intent to injure or destroy him, it was customary to put a little of his hair into the image, by* which means his life and strength were conveyed to it. A few years ago a London newspaper mentioned the case of an Essex man entering a hairdresser's and requesting the barber to procure for him a piece of a certain customer's hair. When asked the reason for this curious demand, he 1 Mr. Crooke's Tribes and Castes, art. Sarwaria.
stated that the customer had injured him and he wished tc
' work a spell ' against him.^ In the Parsi Zend-Avesta
it is stated that if the clippings of hair or nails are allowed
to fall in the ground or ditches, evil spirits spring up frcm
them and devour grain and clothing in the house. It was
therefore ordained for the Parsis through their prophet
Zarathustra that the cuttings of hair or nails should be buried
in a deep hole ten paces from a dwelling, twenty paces
from fire, and fifty paces from the sacred bundles called
baresmdn.
Texts should be said over them and the hole filled in. Many Parsis still bury their cut hair and nails four inches under ground, and an extracted tooth is disposed of in the same manner.^ Some Hindus think that the nailparings should always be thrown into a frequented place, where they will be destroyed by the traffic. If they are thrown on to damp earth they will grow into a plant which will ruin the person from whose body they came. It is said that about twenty years ago a man in Nagpur was ruined by the growth of a piece of finger-nail, which had accidentally dropped into a flower-pot in his house.
Apparently in this case the nail is supposed to contain
a portion of the life and strength of the person to whom it
belonged, and if the nail grows it gradually absorbs more
and more of his life and strength, and he consequently
becomes weaker and weaker through being deprived of it.
The Hindu superstition against shaving the head appears to
find a parallel regarding the nails in the old English saying :
Cut no horn
On the Sabbath morn.
Among some Hindus it is said that the toe-nails should not
be cut at all until a child is married, when they are cut
ceremoniously by the barber.
17. Super-- Since the removal of the hair is held to involve a certain
aborn^ ^'^^^ °^ strength and power, it should only be effected at
shaving certain seasons and not on auspicious days. A man who
has male children should not have his head shaved on
Monday, as this may cause his children to die.
On the • Occult Review, October 1909. Gazetteer, Parsis of Gujarat, p. '^ Orphitis, p. 99, and Bombay 220. n SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT SHAVING THE HAIR 281 other hand, a man who has no cliiUlrcn will fast on Sunday in the hope of gettini^ them, and therefore he will neither shave his head nor visit his wife on that day. A Hindu must not be shaved on Thursday, because this is the day of the planet Jupiter, which is also known as Guru, and his act would be disrespectful to his own guric or preceptor.
Tuesday is Devi's day, and a man will not get shaved on that
day ; nor on Saturday, because it is Hanuman's day.^ On
Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays he may be shaved, but
not if the day happens to be the new moon, full moon, or
the Ashtami or Ekadashi, that is the eighth or eleventh
day of the fortnight. He should not shave on the day that
he is going on a journey. If all these rules were strictly
observed there would be very few days on which one could
get shaved but many of them are necessarily more honoured
in the breach.
Wednesdays and Fridays are the best days for shaving, and by shaving on these days a man will see old age. Debtors are shaved on Wednesdays, as they think that this will help them to pay off their debts. Some Brahmans are not shaved during the month of Shrawan (July), when the crops are growing, nor during the nine days of the months of Kunwar (September) and Chait (March), when a fast is observed and the jazvaras " are sown. After they have been shaved high-caste Hindus consider themselves impure till they have bathed. They touch no person or thing in the house, and sometimes have the water thrown on them by a servant so as to avoid contact with the vessels.
They will also neither eat, drink nor smoke until they have bathed. Sometimes they throw so much water over the head in order to purify themselves as to catch a bad cold. In this case, apparently, the impurity accrues from the loss of the hair, and the man feels that virtue has gone out of him. Women never shave their hair with a razor, as they think that to do so would make the body so heavy after death that it could not be carried to the place of cremation. They carefully pluck out the hair under the armpits and the pubic hair with a pair of pincers.
A ^ Hanuman is worshipped on this ^ pots in which wheat -stalks are day in order to counteract the evil sown and tended for nine days, correinfluence of the planet Saturn, whose sponding to the Gardens of Adonis, day it really is.
hair may be cut with scissors, but not after she is ten years old or is married. Sometimes a girl's hair is not cut at all, but her father will take a pearl and entwine it into her hair, where it is left until she is married. It is considered very auspicious to give away a girl in marriage with hair which has never been cut, and a pearl in it. After marriage she will take out the pearl and wear it in an ornament. 18. The above evidence appears to indicate that the belief Reasons ^f ^ man's strength and vigour being contained in his hair wh)' the == ^ , . hair was is by uo means confined to the legend of Samson, but is considered gpj-g^d all over the world. This has been pointed out by the source ^ ^ •' of strength.
Profcssof Robcrtsou Smith, Professor Wilken and others. Sir J. G. Frazer also adduces several instances in the Golden Bough to show that the life or soul was believed to be contained in the hair. This may well have been the case, but the hair was also specialised, so to speak, as the seat of bodily vigour and strength. The same idea appears to have applied in a minor measure to the nails and teeth. The rules for disposing of the cut hair usually apply to the parings of nails, and the first teeth are also deposited in a rat's hole or on the roof of the house.
As suggested by Professor Robertson Smith it seems likely that the strength and vigour of the body was believed to be located in th^ hair, and also to a less extent in the nails and teeth, because they grew more visibly and quickly than the body and continued to do so after it had attained to maturity. The hair and nails continue to grow all through life, and though the teeth do not grow when fully formed, the second teeth appear when the body is considerably developed and the wisdom teeth after it is fully developed.
The hair grows much more palpably and vigorously than the nails and teeth, and hence might be considered especially the source of strength. Other considerations which might confirm the idea are that men have more hair on their bodies than women, and strongly built men often have a large quantity of hair. Some of the stronger wild animals have long hair, as the lion, bear and wild boar ; and the horse, often considered the embodiment of strength, has a 1 Religion of the Semites, p. 324.
long mane. And when anger is excited the hair sometimes appears to rise, as it were, from the skin. The nails and teeth were formerly used on occasion as weapons of offence, and hence might be considered to contain part of the strength and vigour of the body. Finally, it may be suggested as a possibility that the Roundheads cut their hair short as a protest against the superstition that a soldier's hair must be long, which originated in the idea that strength is located in the hair and may have still been current in their time.
We know that the Puritans strove vainly against the veneration of the Maypole as the spirit of the new vegetation,' and against the old nature -rites observed at Christmas, the veneration of fire as the preserver of life against cold, and the veneration of the evergreen plants, the fir tree, the holly, and the mistletoe, which retained their foliage through the long night of the northern winter, and were thus a pledge to man of the return of warmth and the renewal of vegetation in the spring. And it therefore seems not altogether improbable that the Puritans may have similarly contended against the superstition as to the wearing of long hair.
