Latest revision as of 13:11, 10 November 2017

(From People of India/ National Series Volume VIII. Readers who wish to share additional information/ photographs may please send them as messages to the Facebook community, Indpaedia.com. All information used will be gratefully acknowledged in your name.)

[edit] Surahiya

Synonyms: Sahni, Soprahiya, Suraiya [Bihar and/or Jharkhand] Groups/subgroups: Khilaut, Surahiya [Bihar and/or Jharkhand] Surnames: Mahaldar, Sahni, Singh [Bihar and/or Jharkhand] Exogamous units/clans (gotra): Kashyap, Nisad [Bihar and/or Jharkhand]

[edit] Notes

This class of boatmen1 properly belongs to Maldah and Tirhut, but a few families have been long settled in Dacca, and being a small colony wives are with difficulty procured.

The Surahiya are enterprising and hardy sailors, often met with in Eastern Bengal during the cold season in large trading vessels laden with grain, pulse, or fuller's earth, which is sold to Mahajans, and a cargo of rice shipped for the return voyage. In Ghazipur the Surahiyas are cultivators, who readily engage themselves as boatmen. They are very muscular and large boned, offering a striking contrast to the average Bengali "Manjhis."

Their origin, like that of other boatmen, is traced to the fabulous hero Nikhad. There is a shadowy connection between the Surahiya and Chain. The former use the water vessels and huqqas of the latter; but the Chain, assuming a higher rank, will smoke, but neither eat nor intermarry, with the Suraiya.

"Kalwat Mallah" is given as another name for this caste; "Jal-Chhatri" as the ordinary title; and Kasyapa as the common gotra.

The Panch Piriya creed is that usually followed, but like other boatmen, Koila Baba is worshipped on the Dashara, and various superstitious rites are observed in fulfilment of vows, and to ensure good fortune.2

1 Buchanan calls them "Suriya Malas" (i, 172), and in Bihar they are included among the Mallahs.

2 Walter Hamilton (i, 111) mentions that in consequence of the great famine of 1770, many Hindus, from eating food cooked by unclean hands, were outcasted, and subsequently joined a caste called Saryuriya, "because in 60 years a famine, or some other great calamity, is supposed to occur in the year Saryuriya."

The year 1770, according to Hindu calculations, was known as Sarvari, the thirty-fourth of the Vrihas-pati, or sycle of 60 years, on which the natives looked for a recurrence of calamities.

Can the outcasted Saryuriya have any connection with the Suraiya boat-men?

stories among Bengalis, and how the Saha becomes a butt for the wit and sarcasm of his neighbours.

According to the census of 1872 there were 430,582 persons belonging to this caste in Bengal, of whom 63,511 resided in Dacca, and 225,558, or fifty-two per cent, of the whole Sunri population, in the nine eastern districts.