manvar surname caste in gujarat

Sometimes a division could even be a self-contained endogamous unit. He stated: hereditary specialization together with hierarchical organization sinks into the background in East Africa (293). At the other end were castes in which the principle of division had free play and the role of the principle of hierarchy was limited. The hypergamous tendency was never as sharp, pervasive and regular among the Vania divisions as among the Rajputs, Leva Kanbis, Anavils and Khedawals. rogers outage brampton today; levelland, tx obituaries. Finally, while an increasing number of marriages are taking place even across the boundaries of first-order divisions, as for example, between Brahmans and Vanias, and between Vanias and Patidars, such marriages even now form an extremely small proportion of the total number of marriages. 3.8K subscribers in the gujarat community. Although the number of inter-ekda marriages has been increasing, even now the majority of marriages take place within an ekda. endobj Data need to be collected over large areas by methods other than those used in village studies, castes need to be compared in the regional setting, and a new general approach, analytical framework, and conceptual apparatus need to be developed. The following 157 pages are in this category, out of 157 total. Both Borradaile and Campbell were probably mixing up small endogamous units of various kinds. Second, there used to be intense intra-ekda politics, and tads were formed as a result of some continuing conflict among ekda leaders and over the trial of violation of ekda rules. The lowest stratum among the Khedawals tried to cope with the problem of scarcity of brides mainly by practising ignominious exchange marriage and by restricting marriage of sons in a family to the younger sons, if not to only the youngest. A great deal of discussion of the role of the king in the caste system, based mainly on Indological literature, does not take these facts into account and therefore tends to be unrealistic. New Jersey had the highest population of Mehta families in 1920. endobj The arrival of the East India Company, however sounded the death knell for the Indian textile industry. These linkages played an important role in the traditional social structure as well as in the processes of change in modern India. Radhvanaj Rajputs were clearly distinguished from, and ranked much above local Kolis. To obtain a clear understanding of the second-order divisions with the Koli division, it is necessary first of all to find a way through the maze of their divisional names. All this trade encouraged development of trading and commercial towns in the rest of Gujarat, even in the highland area. Typically, a village consists of the sections of various castes, ranging from those with just one household to those with over u hundred. This tendency reaches its culmination in the world of Dumont. They were found in almost every village in plains Gujarat and in many villages in Saurashtra and Kachchh. Weaving and cloth trading communities of Western India particularly of Gujarat are called Vankar/Wankar/Vaniya. At one end there were castes in which the principle of hierarchy had free play and the role of the principle of division was limited. This does not solve the problem if there are four orders of divisions of the kind found in Gujarat. The Kolis in such an area may not even be concerned about a second-order divisional name and may be known simply as Kolis. Moreover, the king himself belonged to some caste (not just to the Kshatriya Varna) and frequently a number of kings belonged to the same caste (e.g., Rajput). The fact that Mahatma Gandhi came from a small third-order division in the Modh Vania division in a town in Saurashtra does not seem to be an accident. For example, among the Vanias the most general rule was that a marriage of a boy could be arranged with any girl who was bhane khapati, i.e., with whom he was permitted to have commensal relations (roti vyavahar). I have done field work in two contiguous parts of Gujarat: central Gujarat (Kheda district and parts of Ahmedabad and Baroda districts) and eastern Gujarat (Panchmahals district). The existence of flexibility at both the levels was made possible by the flexibility of the category Rajput. It will readily be agreed that the sociological study of Indian towns and cities has not made as much progress as has the study of Indian villages. In addition, they carried on overland trade with many towns in central and north India. As a consequence, the continuities of social institutions and the potentiality of endogenous elements for bringing about change are overlooked (for a discussion of some other difficulties with these paradigms, see Lynch 1977). According to the Rajputs I know in central Gujarat, the highest stratum among them consisted of the royal families of large and powerful kingdoms in Gujarat and neighbouring Rajasthan, such as those of Bhavnagar, Jamnagar, Kachchh, Porbandar, Bikaner, Idar, Jaipur, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, Udaipur, and so on. The associations activities in the field of marriage, such as reform to customs, rituals and ceremonies, and encouragement of inter-divisional marriages, are also seen by the members as a service to the nationas the castes method of creating a casteless modern society. How many sub-divisions existed in the various divisions of the various orders is a matter of empirical investigation. Together they provide a slice of Gujarati society from the sea- coast to the bordering highlands. The co-residence of people belonging to two or more divisions of a lower order within a division of a higher order has been a prominent feature of caste in towns and cities. There was a continuous process of formation and disintegration of such units. Both were recognized as Brahman but as degraded ones. The Kayasthas and Brahma-Kshatriyas, the so- called writer castes, employed mainly in the bureaucracy, and the Vahivancha Barots, genealogists and mythographers, were almost exclusively urban castes. Marco Polo a Venetian merchant on his visit to India in 13th century Gujarat observed that "brocading art of Gujarat weavers is par excellent". Castes pervaded by divisive tendencies had small populations confined to small areas separated from each other by considerable gaps. 3 0 obj The existence of ekdas or gols, however, does not mean that the divisiveness of caste ended there or that the ekdas and gols were always the definitive units of endogamy. Thus, the result was the spread of the population of a caste division towards its fringes. But the hypergamous tendency was so powerful that each such endogamous unit could not be perfectly endogamous even at the height of its integration. After the commercial revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, Gujarat had a large number of tradition towns on its long sea-coast. While we do get evidence of fission of caste divisions of a higher order into two or more divisions of a lower order, the mere existence of divisions of a lower order should not be taken as evidence of fission in a division of a higher order. That the role of the two principles could vary at different levels within a first-order division has also been seen. There was also a tendency among bachelors past marriageable age to establish liaisons with lower-caste women, which usually led the couple to flee and settle down in a distant village. While some of the divisions of a lower order might be the result of fission, some others might be a result of fusion. This does not, however, help describe caste divisions adequately. One important first-order division, namely, Rajput, does not seem to have had any second-order division at all. But there were also others who did not wield any power. Because of these two major factors, one economic and the other political, Gujarat at the beginning of the 19th century had a large urban population, distributed over a large number of small towns. When the rural population began to be drawn towards the new opportunities, the first to take advantage of them were the rural sections of the rural-cum-urban castes. A block printed and resist-dyed fabric, whose origin is from Gujarat was found in the tombs of Fostat, Egypt. That the sociological study of urban areas in India has not received as much attention as that of rural areas is well known, and the studies made so far have paid little attention to caste in urban areas. The prohibition of inter-division marriage was much more important than the rules of purity and pollution in the maintenance of boundaries between the lower-order divisions. Indian textiles especially of Gujarat have been praised in several accounts by explorers and historians, from Megasthenes to Herodotus. Many of them claimed that they were Brahmans but this claim was not accepted by most established Brahmans. Broach, Cambay and Surat were the largest, but there were also a number of smaller ones. The tad thus represented the fourth and last order of caste divisions. I do not propose to review the literature on caste here; my aim is to point out the direction towards which a few facts from Gujarat lead us. <> It owned corporate property, usually in the form of vadis (large buildings used for holding feasts and festivals, accommodating wedding guests, and holding meetings), huge utensils for cooking feasts, and money received as fees and fines. Vankar is described as a caste as well as a community. More common was an ekda or tad having its population residing either in a few neighbouring villages, or in a few neighbouring towns, or in both. Although the people of one tad would talk about their superiority over those of another tad in an ekda, and the people of one ekda over those of another in a higher-order division, particularly in large towns where two or more tads and ekdas would be found living together, there was no articulate ranking and hypergamy among them. They are divided into two main sub-castes: Leuva Patels and Kadva Patels, who claim to be descendants of Ram's twins Luv and Kush respectively. It seems the highland Bhils (and possibly also other tribes) provided brides to lower Rajputs in Gujarat. He does not give importance to this possibility probably because, as he goes on to state, what is sought here is a universal formula, a rule without exceptions (ibid.). For example, if they belonged to two different second-order divisions, such as Shrimali and Modh, the punishment would be greater than if they belonged to two different ekdas within the Shrimali or the Modh division. State Id State Name Castecode Caste Subcaste 4 GUJARAT 4001 AHIR SORATHA 4 GUJARAT 4002 AHIR 4 GUJARAT 4003 ANSARI 4 GUJARAT 4004 ANVIL BRAHMIN 4 GUJARAT 4005 ATIT BAYAJI BAKSHI PANCH 4 GUJARAT 4006 BAJANIYA 4 GUJARAT 4007 BAJIR . : 11-15, 57-75). (Frequently, such models are constructed a priori rather than based on historical evidence, but that is another story). The marital alliances of the royal families forming part of the Maratha confederacy, and of the royal families of Mysore in south India and of Kashmir and Nepal in the north with the royal families of Gujarat and Rajasthan show, among other things, how there was room for flexibility and how the rule of caste endogamy could be violated in an acceptable manner at the highest level. The highest stratum among the Leva Kanbi tried to maintain its position by practising polygyny and female infanticide, among other customs and institutions, as did the highest stratum among the Rajput. I have, therefore, considered them a first-order division and not a second-order one among Brahmans (for a fuller discussion of the status of Anavils, see Joshi, 1966; Van der Veen 1972; Shah, 1979). He stresses repeatedly the primacy of the principle of hierarchy-epitomized in the title of his book. Although caste was found in both village and town, did it possess any special characteristics in the latter? Dowry not only continues to be a symbol of status in the new hierarchy but is gradually replacing bride price wherever it existed, and dowry amounts are now reaching astronomical heights. In many villages in Gujarat, particularly in larger villages, one or two first-order divisions would be represented by more than one second-order division. Another major factor in the growth of urban centres in Gujarat was political. The institutions of both bride and bridegroom price (the latter also called dowry) were rampant in castes with continuous internal hierarchydowry mainly at the upper levels, bride price mainly at the lower levels, and both dowry and bride price among status-seeking middle level families. Hypergamy tended to be associated with this hierarchy. Since after expansion of British textile markets and decline of Indian textile industry Vankars suffered a lot. Frequently, marriages were arranged in contravention of a particular rule after obtaining the permission of the council of leaders and paying a penalty in advance. The guiding ideas were samaj sudharo (social reform) and samaj seva (social service). Bougies repulsion) rather than on hierarchy was a feature of caste in certain contexts and situations in traditional India, and increasing emphasis on division in urban Indian in modern times is an accentuation of what existed in the past. The Khedawals, numbering 15,000 to 20,000 in 1931 were basically priests but many of them were also landowners, government officials, and traders. The main thrust of Pococks paper is that greater emphasis on difference rather than on hierarchy is a feature of caste among overseas Indians and in modern urban India. The Brahmans were divided into such divisions as Audich, Bhargav, Disawal, Khadayata, Khedawal, Mewada, Modh, Nagar, Shrigaud, Shrimali, Valam, Vayada, and Zarola. Caste divisions of the first-order can be classified broadly into three categories. They married their daughters into higher Rajput lineages in the local area who in turn married their daughters into still higher nearly royal rajput lineages in Saurashtra and Kachchh. I describe here three prominent units of the latter type, namely, Anavil, Leva Kanbi, and Khedawal Brahman. Real Estate Software Dubai > blog > manvar surname caste in gujarat. In the second kind of area, indigenous Kolis live side-by-side with immigrant Kolis from an adjoining area. Many of these names were also based on place names. But many Rajput men of Radhvanaj got wives from people in distant villages who were recognized there as Kolisthose Kolis who had more land and power than the generality of Kolis had tried to acquire some of the traditional Rajput symbols in dress manners and customs and had been claiming to be Rajputs. Village studies, as far as caste is a part of them, have been, there fore, concerned with the interrelations between sections of various castes in the local context. But this is not enough. 2 0 obj With the exclusion of caste (except scheduled caste) from the census since 1951 (practically since 1941, because the census of that year did not result in much reporting), writings on castes as horizontal units greatly declined. window.__mirage2 = {petok:"uGhRfiuY26l2oZgRlfZRFSp4BWPIIt7Gh61sQC1XrRU-3600-0"}; The very low Brahmans such as Kayatias and Tapodhans were invited but made to eat separately from the rest of the Brahmans. In central Gujarat, at least from about the middle of the 18th century, the population of the wealthy and powerful Patidar section of the Kanbis also lived in townsan extremely interesting development of rich villages into towns, which I will not describe here. In no other nation has something as basic as one's clothing or an act as simple as spinning cotton become so intertwined with a national movement. The lowest stratum in all the three divisions had to face the problem of scarcity of brides. In an area of the first kind there are no immigrant Kolis from elsewhere, and therefore, there is no question of their having second-order divisions. The castes of the three categoriesprimarily urban, primarily rural, and rural-cum-urbanformed an intricate network spread over the rural and urban communities in the region. Such a description not only overlooks the diversity and complexity of caste divisions and the rural-urban Link- ages in them but also leads to placing them in the same category as Muslims, Christians, Parsis, Jains, Buddhists, and so on. When divisions are found within a jati, the word sub-jati or sub-caste is used. For describing the divisions of the remaining two orders, it would be necessary to go on adding the prefix sub but this would make the description extremely clumsy, if not meaningless. In some parts of Gujarat they formed 30 to 35 per cent of the population. The most important of them was the Koli division, which was, the largest division and mainly included small landholders, tenants and labourers. Similarly, the Khedawal Brahmans were divided into Baj and Bhitra, the Nagar Brahmans into Grihastha and Bhikshuk, the Anavils into Desai and Bhathela, and the Kanbis into Kanbi and Patidar. Castes which did not sit together at public feasts, let alone at meals in homes, only 15 or 20 years ago, now freely sit together even at meals in homes. [CDATA[ The small ekda or tad with its entire population residing in a single town was, of course, not a widespread phenomenon. This last name is predominantly found in Asia, where 93 percent of Limbachiya reside; 92 percent reside in South Asia and 92 percent reside in Indo-South Asia. The migrants, many of whom came from heterogeneous urban centres of Gujarat, became part of an even more heterogeneous environment in Bombay. There was also a third category called Pancha, derived from the word punch (meaning 5) and denoting extremely low Vania. Indeed, a major achievement of Indian sociology during the last thirty years or so has been deeper understanding of caste in the village context in particular and of its hierarchical dimension in general. Sometimes a division corresponding to a division among Brahmans and Vanias was found in a third first-order division also. It is not easy to find out if the tads became ekdas in course of time and if the process of formation of ekdas was the same as that of the formation of tads. It has been pointed out earlier that an emphasis on the principle of division existed in the caste system in urban centres in traditional India. Limitations of the holistic view of caste, based as it is mainly on the study of the village, should be realized in the light of urban experience. In 1931, the Rajputs of all strata in Gujarat had together a population of about 35,000 forming nearly 5 per cent of the total population of Gujarat. There are thus a few excellent studies of castes as horizontal units. That there was room for flexibility and that the rule of caste endogamy could be violated at the highest level among the Rajputs was pointed out earlier. Gujarat (along with Bombay) has perhaps the largest number of caste associations and they are also more active and wealthy compared to those in other regions. They then spread to towns in the homeland and among all castes. This list may not reflect recent changes. In 1920 there were 2 Mehta families living in New Jersey. However, on the basis of the meagre information I have, I am able to make a few points. Moreover, a single division belonging to any one of the orders may have more than one association, and an association may be uni-purpose or multi-purpose. Hindu society is usually described as divided into a number of castes the boundaries of which are maintained by the rule of caste endogamy. This was dramatized at huge feasts called chorasi (literally, eighty-four) when Brahmans belonging to all the traditional 84 second-order divisions sat together to eat food cooked at the same kitchen. The degree of contravention is highest if the couple belong to two different first-order divisions. While some hypergamous and hierarchical tendency, however weak, did exist between tads within an ekda and between ekdas within a second- order division, it was practically non-existent among the forty or so second-order divisions, such as Modh, Porwad, Shrimali, Khadayata and so on, among the Vanias. Systematic study of small caste divisions in villages as well as in towns still awaits the attention of sociologists and anthropologists. Image Guidelines 5. The two considered themselves different and separateof course, within the Kanbi foldwhere they happened to live together in the villages in the merger zone between north and central Gujarat and in towns. The chiefly families constituted a tiny proportion of the total population of any second-order division among the Kolis. Kolis were the largest first-order division in Gujarat. I know some ekdas, and tads composed of only 150 to 200 households. From the 15th century onwards we find historical references to political activities of Koli chieftains. ///ExtGState<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB/ImageC/ImageI] >>/Annots[ 9 0 R] /MediaBox[ 0 0 612 792] /Contents 4 0 R/Group<>/Tabs/S/StructParents 0>> The Rajputs relationship with the Kolis penetrated every second-order division among them, i.e., Talapada, Pardeshi, Chumvalia, Palia, and so on. Almost all the myths about the latter are enshrined in the puranas (for an analysis of a few of them, see Das 1968 and 1977). The primarily urban castes and the urban sections of the rural-cum- urban castes were the first to take advantage of the new opportunities that developed in industry, commerce, administration, the professions and education in urban centres. All of this information supports the point emerging from the above analysis, that frequently there was relatively little concern for ritual status between the second-order divisions within a first- order division than there was between the first-order divisions.