They co-existed in the highlands with tribes such as the Bhils, so much so that today frequently many high caste Gujaratis confuse them with Bhils, as did the earlier ethnographers. x[? -E$nvU 4V6_}\]}/yOu__}ww7oz[_z~?=|nNT=|qq{\//]/Ft>_tV}gjjn#TfOus_?~>/GbKc.>^\eu{[GE_>'x?M5i16|B;=}-)$G&w5uvb~o:3r3v GL3or}|Y~?3s_hO?qWWpn|1>9WS3^:wTU3bN{tz;T_}so/R95iLc_6Oo_'W7y; A recent tendency in sociological literature is to consider jatis as castes. Although the ekda or tad was the most effective unit for endogamy, each unit of the higher order was also significant for endogamy. Frequently, The ekdas or gols were each divided into groups called tads (split). Frequently, the urban population of such a division performed more specialized functions than did the rural one. [CDATA[ The Kolis in such an area may not even be concerned about a second-order divisional name and may be known simply as Kolis. The small endogamous units, on the other hand, did not practise either. However, it is well known that there were subtle arguments regarding the status of certain royal families being Rajput. We have analyzed the internal structure of two first-order divisions, Rajput and Anavil, which did not have any second-order divisions, and of several second-order divisionsTalapada and Pardeshi Koli, Khedawal Brahman, and Leva Kanbiwhich did not have any third-order divisions. The error is further compounded whenalthough this is less commonthe partial, rural model of traditional caste is compared with the present urban situation, and conclusions are drawn about overall change. The method is to remove first the barriers of the divisions of the lowest order and then gradually those of one higher order after another. In some other cases, mainly of urban artisans, craftsmen and specialized servants, such as Kansaras (copper and bronze smiths), Salvis (silk weavers), Kharadis (skilled carpenters and wood carvers), Chudgars (bangle-makers) and Vahivanchas genealogists and mythographers), the small populations were so small and confined to so few towns that they had few subdivisions and the boundaries of their horizontal units were fairly easy to define. For the sake of bravity and simplicity of presentation, I have not provided detailed documentation. 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. Kolis were the largest first-order division in Gujarat. The Kanbis (now called Patidars) had five divisions: Leva, Kadya, Anjana, Bhakta, and Matia. Tirgaar, Tirbanda. 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. Although the name of a Brahman or Vania division might be based on a place name, the division was not territorial in nature. Even the archaeological surveys and studies have indicated that the people of Dholavira, Surkotada. Apparently this upper boundary of the division was sharp and clear, especially when we remember that many of these royal families practised polygyny and female infanticide until middle of the 19th century (see Plunkett 1973; Viswa Nath 1969, 1976). The degree of contravention involved in an inter-divisional marriage, however, depends upon the order (i.e., first-order, second-order, etc.) so roamed around clueless. The number of tads in an ekda or go I might be two or more, and each of them might be an endogamous units. Category:Social groups of Gujarat - Wikipedia For example, the Khadayata Brahmans worked as priests at important rituals among Khadayata Vanias. The most important of them was the Koli division, which was, the largest division and mainly included small landholders, tenants and labourers. 2 0 obj This surname is most commonly held in India, where it is held by 2,496 people, or 1 in 307,318. The Rajputs, in association with Kolis, Bhils, and such other castes and tribes, provide an extreme example of such castes. The population of certain first-order divisions lived mainly in villages. [1], People of India Gujarat Volume XXI Part Three edited by R.B Lal, P.B.S.V Padmanabham, G Krishnan & M Azeez Mohideen pages 1126-1129, Last edited on 14 November 2022, at 23:04, Learn how and when to remove this template message, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vankar&oldid=1121933086, This page was last edited on 14 November 2022, at 23:04. Sometimes a division corresponding to a division among Brahmans and Vanias was found in a third first-order division also. In other words, it did not involve a big jump from one place to another distant place. Among the Kanbis, while there was hypergamy within the Leva division and possibly, similar hypergamy within the Kadva division, there was no hierarchy or hypergamy between the two second-order divisions. (Frequently, such models are constructed a priori rather than based on historical evidence, but that is another story). Sometimes a division could even be a self-contained endogamous unit. In these divisions an increasing number of marriages are taking place against the grain of traditional hierarchy, i.e., girls of traditionally higher strata marry boys of traditionally lower strata. Koli Patels are recognised as a Other Backward Class caste by Government of Gujarat. All associations originated in large towns, are more active in towns than in villages, and are led by prominent members in towns. 100 Most Popular Indian Last Names Or SurnamesWhy Don't Tamil People Have Last Names?-----A . Both Borradaile and Campbell were probably mixing up small endogamous units of various kinds. Another major factor in the growth of urban centres in Gujarat was political. In recent years, however, there has been a tendency to emphasize hierarchy as the primary principle encompassing the principle of division. They were thus not of the same status as most other second-order divisions among Brahmans. The Anavil, numbering 30,000 to 40,000 in 1931, were found mainly in south Gujarat. yorba linda football maxpreps; weiteste entfernung gerichtsbezirk; wyoming rockhounding locations google maps; Content Guidelines 2. Any one small caste may look insignificant in itself but all small castes put together become a large social block and a significant social phenomenon. In 1931, their total population was more than 1,700,000, nearly one-fourth of the total population of Gujarat. Many second-order divisions were further divided into two or three status categories. The boundaries of caste division were fairly clear in the village community. In contrast, there were horizontal units, the internal hierarchy and hypergamy of which were restricted to some extent by the formation of small endogamous units and which had discernible boundaries at the lowest level. Although caste was found in both village and town, did it possess any special characteristics in the latter? I have bits and pieces of information about relations between a considerable numbers of other lower-order divisions in their respective higher-order divisions. For example, among the Khadayata Vanias there are all-Khadayata associations as well as associations for the various ekdas and sometimes even for their tads (see Shah, Ragini 1978). Firstly, there were divisions whose population was found almost entirely in towns. 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. We need to formulate some idea of the nature of the Indian urban society and its relation with the rural society in the past, at least at the beginning of the 19th century. Vankar is described as a caste as well as a community. Although the number of inter-ekda marriages has been increasing, even now the majority of marriages take place within an ekda. Jun 12, 2022. The significant point, however, is that there were small endogamous units which were not, like ekdas and tads, part of any higher-order division. ), as contrasted with the horizontal unity of the caste. The complex was provided a certain coherence and integrityin the pre- industrial time of slow communicationby a number of oral and literate traditions cultivated by cultural specialists such as priests, bards, genealogists and mythographers (see in this connection Shah and Shroff 1958). They adopted Rajput customs and traditions, claimed Rajput status, and gave daughters in marriage to Rajputs in the lower rungs of Rajput hierarchy. 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. 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. 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. A new view of the whole, comprising the rural and the urban and the various orders of caste divisions, should be evolved. Division and hierarchy have always been stressed as the two basic principles of the caste system. There is enormous literature on these caste divisions from about the middle of the 19th century which includes census reports, gazetteers, castes-and- tribes volumes, ethnographic notes and monographs and scholarly treatises such as those by Baines, Blunt, Ghurye, Hocart, Hutton, Ibbet- son, OMalley, Risley, Senart, and others. In all there were thirty to forty such divisions. I describe here three prominent units of the latter type, namely, Anavil, Leva Kanbi, and Khedawal Brahman. They also continued to have marital relations with their own folk. 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 main point is that we do not completely lose sight of the lowest boundary among these three hypergamous divisions as we do among the Rajputs. This was about 22% of all the recorded Mehta's in USA. Almost every village in this area included at least some Leva population, and in many villages they formed a large, if not the largest, proportion of the population. While fission did occur, fusion could also occur. I have discussed above caste divisions in Gujarat mainly in the past, roughly in the middle of the 19th century. Whatever the internal organization of a second-order division, the relationship between most of the Brahman second-order divisions was marked by great emphasis on being different and separate than on being higher and lower. 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. 91. Jun 12, 2022 . Nevertheless, a breakdown of the population of Gujarat into major religious, caste and tribal groups according to the census of 1931 is presented in the following table to give a rough idea of the size of at least some castes. Castes pervaded by divisive tendencies had small populations confined to small areas separated from each other by considerable gaps. 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. The emphasis on being different and separate rather than on being higher and lower was even more marked in the relationship among the forty or so second-order divisions. 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. For example, among almost every Vania division there was a dual division into Visa and Dasa: Visa Nagar and Dasa Nagar, Visa Lad and Dasa Lad, Visa Modh and Dasa Modh, Visa Khadayata and Dasa Khadayata, and so on. Systematic because castes exist and are like each other in being different (298). In fact, inter-tad marriages have increased so much that the tads have more or less lost their identity and such marriages are no longer considered as violating the rule of tad endogamy. The handloom weavers of Gujarat, Maharastra and Bengal produced and exported some of the world's most desirable fabrics. * List of Scheduled Tribes in Gujarat; A. . Marco Polo a Venetian merchant on his visit to India in 13th century Gujarat observed that "brocading art of Gujarat weavers is par excellent". The most important example of primarily political caste association is the Gujarat Kshatriya Sabha. <>/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>> TOS 7. Literally, ekda meant unit, and gol circle, and both signified an endogamous unit. Leva Sheri and Kadva Sheri, named after the two major second-order divisions among the Kanbis. The Kolis seem to have had only two divisions in every part of Gujarat: for example, Talapada (indigenous) and Pardeshi (foreign) in central Gujarat and Palia and Baria in eastern Gujarat (significantly, one considered indigenous and the other outsider). There was also another kind of feast, called bhandaro, where Brahmans belonging to a lesser number of divisions (say, all the few in a small town) were invited. I shall first provide an analysis of caste in the past roughly during the middle of the 19th century, and then deal with changes in the modern times. Patidars or Patels claim themselves to be descendants of Lord Ram. Srinivas has called the unity of the village manifested in these interrelations the vertical unity of the village (1952: 31f. Hypergamy was accompanied by sanskritization of at least a section of the tribal population, their claim to the Kshatriya Varna and their economic and political symbiosis with the caste population. Britain's Industrial Revolution was built on the de-industrialisation of India - the destruction of Indian textiles and their replacement by manufacturing in England, using Indian raw materials and exporting the finished products back to India and even the rest of the world. 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. I know some ekdas, and tads composed of only 150 to 200 households. No sooner had the village studies begun that their limitations and the need for studying caste in its horizontal dimension were realized. The understanding of changes in caste is not likely to be advanced by clubbing such diverse groups together under the rubric of ethnic group. gujarati surnames castes Vankar is described as a caste as well as a community. 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. 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). Prohibited Content 3. 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.). The hypergamous tendency was never as sharp, pervasive and regular among the Vania divisions as among the Rajputs, Leva Kanbis, Anavils and Khedawals. 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. These divisions have, however, been kept out of the present analysis for reasons which have become well known to students of Hindu society since the 1950s. manvar surname caste in gujarat. 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. This was dramatized in many towns at the mahajan (guild) feasts when all the members of the guild of traders would eat together. A large proportion, if not the whole, of the population of many of such divisions lived in towns. A comment on the sociology of urban India would, therefore, be in order before we go ahead with the discussion of caste divisions. Similarly, the Vanias were divided into such divisions as Disawal, Kapol, Khadayata, Lad, Modh, Nagar, Nima, Porwad, Shirmali, Vayada, and Zarola. To take one sensitive area of purity/pollution behaviour, the concern for observance of rules of commensality has greatly declined not only in urban but also in rural areas. All this trade encouraged development of trading and commercial towns in the rest of Gujarat, even in the highland area. 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. 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 existence of flexibility at both the levels was made possible by the flexibility of the category Rajput. The Rajputs, in association with the Kolis, were probably the only horizontal unit which had continuous internal hierarchy, i.e., hypergamy unbroken by any endogamous subdivisions, and which did not have discernible boundaries at the lowest level. The Rajputs in Radhvanaj, the village I have studied in central Gujarat, had no great difficulty in establishing their claim to being Rajputs: they owned substantial amounts of land under a traditional Rajput tenure, dominated village politics and possessed certain other traditional Rajput symbols. The tribal groups in the highland area, such as the Bhils and Naikdas, also did not have any urban component. And how flexibility was normal at the lowest level has just been shown. The chiefly families constituted a tiny proportion of the total population of any second-order division among the Kolis. The members of a kings caste were thus found not only in his own kingdom but in other kingdoms as well. <> Nor were ekdas and tads entirely an urban phenomenon. Many primarily rural castes, such as Kolisthe largest castehave remained predominantly rural even today. Tapodhans were priests in Shiva temples. James Campbell (1901: xii), the compiler of gazetteers for the former Bombay presidency comprising several linguistic regions, wrote about Gujarat: In no part of India are the subdivisions so minute, one of them, the Rayakval Vanias, numbering only 47 persons in 1891. By the beginning of British rule in the early 19th century, a considerable number of these chieftains had succeeded in establishing petty chiefdoms, each composed of one, and occasionally more than one, village, in all parts of Gujarat. While certain first-order divisions were found mainly in towns, the population of certain other first-order divisions was dispersed in villages as well as in towns, the population of the rural and the urban sections differing from one division to another. There are thus a few excellent studies of castes as horizontal units. Third, although two or more new endogamous units came into existence and marriage between them was forbidden thereafter, a number of pre-existing kinship and affinal relationships continued to be operative between them. 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. Usually it consisted of wealthy and powerful lineages, distinguishing themselves by some appellation, such as Patidar among the Leva Kanbi, Desai among the Anavil, and Baj among the Khedawal. Content Filtrations 6. In any case, the population of any large caste was found in many kingdoms. The earliest caste associations were formed in Bombay in the middle of the 19th century among migrants belonging to the primarily urban and upper castes from Gujarat, such as Vanias, Bhatias and Lohanas (see Dobbin 1972: 74-76, 121-30, 227f, 259-61). Thus, finding any boundary between Rajputs and Kolis in the horizontal context was impossible, although there were sharp boundaries between the two in the narrow local context. The Kayatias main occupation was to perform a ritual on the eleventh day after death, during which they took away offerings made to ghosts: this was the main cause of their extremely low status among Brahmans. The Levas, Anavils and Khedawals provide examples of castes whose internal organization had a strong emphasis on the principle of hierarchy and a weak emphasis on that of division. The indigenous Kolis in the highland area of Pal in eastern Gujarat were called Palia, but there was another smaller population of KoUs, who were locally called Baria but were actually Talapada immigrants from central Gujarat. First, since the tads were formed relatively recently, it is easier to get information about their formation than about the formation of ekdas. A block printed and resist-dyed fabric, whose origin is from Gujarat was found in the tombs of Fostat, Egypt. The incidence of exchange marriages and of bachelors in the lowest stratum among the Anavils also was high. Report a Violation, Caste Stratification: Changing Rural Caste Stratification, Caste in Rural India: Specificities of Caste in Rural Society. There was not only no pyramid type of arrangement among the many ekdas in a second-order Vania divisionthe type of arrangement found in the Rajput, Leva Kanbi, Anavil and Khedawal divisions-but frequently there was no significant sign of hierarchical relation, except boastful talk, between two neighbouring ekdas. However, on the basis of the meagre information I have, I am able to make a few points. History. Not only that, there were also third-order divisions (i.e., ekdas) in one or more second-order divisions, and finally one or more fourth-order divisions (i.e., tads) in one or more third-order divisions. It is important to note that the more literate and learned Brahmans lived in towns, more particularly in capital and pilgrim towns, which were, indeed, the centres of higher Hindu culture and civilization. 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. Some ekdas did come into existence in almost the same way as did the tads, that is to say, by a process of fission of one ekda into two or more ekdas. endobj Created Date: From the 15th century onwards we find historical references to political activities of Koli chieftains. There are other sub-castes like Satpanthis, who are mainly centered in Kutch district and have some social customs akin to Muslims . 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. Pages in category "Social groups of Gujarat" The following 157 pages are in this category, out of 157 total. 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. Indian textiles especially of Gujarat have been praised in several accounts by explorers and historians, from Megasthenes to Herodotus. Limbachiya Surname Origin, Meaning & Last Name History - Forebears If this rule was violated, i.e., if he married a girl with whom the Vanias did not have commensal relations, the maximum punishment, namely, excommunication, was imposed. <>/Metadata 3086 0 R/ViewerPreferences 3087 0 R>> <> Similarly, in Saurashtra, the Talapadas were distinguished from the Chumvalias, immigrants from the Chumval tract in north Gujarat. The urban community included a large number of caste groups as well as social groups of other kinds which tended to be like communities with a great deal of internal cohesion. Many of them became the norm-setting elite for Gujaratis in the homeland. For example, the Patanwadia population was spread continuously from the Patan area to central Gujarat, and the Talapada population from central Gujarat to Pal. 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. Privacy Policy 8. In effect, the Vania population in a large town like Ahmedabad could have a considerable number of small endogamous units of the third or the fourth order, each with its entire population living and marrying within the town itself. The two together formed a single complex of continental dimension. The point is that there was nothing like the endogamous unit but there were only several units of various orders with defined roles in endogamy. In the city, on the other hand, the population was divided into a large number of castes and each of most of them had a large population, frequently subdivided up to the third or the fourth order. Caste associations have been formed on the lines of caste divisions. In some parts of Gujarat they formed 30 to 35 per cent of the population. There were about three hundred divisions of this order in the region as a whole. Significantly, a large number of social thinkers and workers who propagated against the hierarchical features of caste came from urban centres. It reflects, on the one hand, the political aspirations of Kolis guided by the importance of their numerical strength in electoral politics and on the other hand, the Rajputs attempt to regain power after the loss of their princely states and estates. to which the divisions of the marrying couple belong. Although it has been experiencing stresses and strains and has had ups and downs on account of the enormous diversity between the royal and the tribal ends, it has shown remarkable solidarity in recent years. The humble Charkha (spinning wheel) and khadi became a dominant symbol of self-reliance, self-determination and nationalist pride. These prefixes Visa and Dasa, were generally understood to be derived from the words for the numbers 20 (vis) and 10 (das), which suggested a descending order of status, but there is no definite evidence of such hierarchy in action. Plagiarism Prevention 4. The advance made in recent years is limited and much more needs to be done. The patterns of change in marriage and in caste associations are two of the many indications of the growing significance of the principle of division (or separation or difference) in caste in urban areas in Gujarat. % The primarily urban castes linked one town with another; the primarily rural linked one village with another; and the rural-cum-urban linked towns with villages in addition to linking both among themselves. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. The small town sections therefore separated themselves from the respective large town sections and formed a new ekda. We have seen how one second-order division among Brahmans, namely, Khedawal, was marked by continuous internal hierarchy and strong emphasis on hypergamy on the one hand and by absence of effective small endogamous units on the other. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Social_groups_of_Gujarat&oldid=1080951156, Social groups of India by state or union territory, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 4 April 2022, at 12:36. Census officials-turned-scholars, from Risley to Hutton, wrote many of the earlier general works on caste. If the marriage took place within the Vania fold but outside the tad or ekda, as the case may be, the punishment varied according to the social distance between the tads or ekdas of the bride and the groom. Division and Hierarchy: An Overview of Caste in Gujarat This tendency reaches its culmination in the world of Dumont. Nor do I claim to know the whole of Gujarat. Co-residence of people, belonging to two or more divisions of a lower order within a higher order was, however, a prominent feature of towns and cities rather than of villages. Far from it, I am only suggesting that its role had certain limitations and that the principle of division was also an important and competing principle. 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.
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