Читать книгу: «The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 3», страница 56
3. Marriage
At a Koshti wedding in Nāgpur, the bride and bridegroom with their parents sit in a circle, and round them a long hempen rope is drawn seven times; the bride’s mother then holds a lamp, while the bridegroom’s mother pours water from a vessel on to the floor. The Sālewārs perform the wedding ceremony at the bridegroom’s house, to which the bride is brought at midnight for this purpose. A display of fireworks is held and the thūn or log of wood belonging to the loom is laid on the ground between the couple and covered with a black blanket. The bridegroom stands facing the east and places his right foot on the thūn, and the bride stands opposite to him with her left foot upon it. A Brāhman holds a curtain between them and they throw rice upon each other’s heads five times and then sit on the log. The bride’s father washes the feet of the bridegroom and gives him a cloth and bows down before him. The wedding party then proceed with music and a display of fireworks to the bridegroom’s house and a round of feasts is given continuously for five days.
The remarriage of widows is freely permitted. In Chānda if the widow is living with her father he receives Rs. 40 from the second husband, but if with her father-in-law no price is given. On the day fixed for the wedding he fills her lap with nuts, cocoanuts, dates and rice, and applies vermilion to her forehead. During the night she proceeds to her new husband’s house, and, emptying the fruit from her lap into a dish which he holds, falls at his feet. The wedding is completed the next day by a feast to the caste-fellows. The procedure appears to have some symbolical idea of transferring the fruit of her womb to her new husband. Divorce is allowed, but is very rare, a wife being too valuable a helper in the Koshti’s industry to be put away except as a last resort. For a Koshti who is in business on his own account it is essential to have a number of women to assist in sizing the thread and fixing it on the loom. A wife is really a factory-hand and a well-to-do Koshti will buy or occasionally steal as many women as he can. In Bhandāra a recent case is known where a man bought a girl and married her to his son and eight months afterwards sold her to another family for an increased price. In another case a man mortgaged his wife as security for a debt and in lieu of interest, and she lived with his creditor until he paid off the principal. Quarrels over women not infrequently result in cases of assault and riot.
4. Funeral customs
Members of the Lingāyat and Kabīrpanthi sects bury their dead and the others cremate them. With the Tirmendār Koshtis on the fifth day the Ayawār priest goes to the cremation-ground accompanied by the deceased’s family and worships the image of Vishnu and the Tulsi or basil upon the grave; and after this the whole party take their food at the place. Mourning is observed during five days for married and three for unmarried persons; and when a woman has lost her husband she is taken on the fifth day to the bank of some river or tank and her bangles are broken, her bead necklace is taken off, the vermilion is rubbed off her forehead, and her foot ornaments are removed; and these things she must not wear again while she is a widow. On the fourth day the Panch or caste elders come and place a new turban on the head of the chief mourner or deceased’s heir; they then take him round the bazār and seat him at his loom, where he weaves a little. After this he goes and sits with the Panch and they take food together. This ceremony indicates that the impurity caused by the death is removed, and the mourners return to common life. The caste do not perform the shrāddh ceremony, but on the Akhātīj day or commencement of the agricultural year a family which has lost a male member will invite a man from some other family of the caste, and one which has lost a female member a woman, and will feed the guest with good food in the name of the dead. In Chhindwāra during the fortnight of Pitripaksh or the worship of ancestors, a Koshti family will have a feast and invite guests of the caste. Then the host stands in the doorway with a pestle and as the guest comes he bars his entrance, saying: ‘Are you one of my ancestors; this feast is for my ancestors?’ To which the guest will reply: ‘Yes, I am your great-grandfather; take away the pestle.’ By this ingenious device the resourceful Koshti combines the difficult filial duty of the feeding of his ancestors with the entertainment of his friends.
5. Religion
The principal deity of the Koshtis is Gajānand or Ganpati, whom they revere on the festival of Ganesh Chathurthi or the fourth day of the month of Bhādon (August). They clean all their weaving implements and worship them and make an image of Ganpati in cowdung to which they make offerings of flowers, rice and turmeric. On this day they do not work and fast till evening, when the image of Ganpati is thrown into a tank and they return home and eat delicacies. Some of them observe the Tīj or third day of every month as a fast for Ganpati, and when the moon of the fourth day rises they eat cakes of dough roasted on a cowdung fire and mixed with butter and sugar, and offer these to Ganpati. Some of the Sālewārs are Vaishnavas and others Lingāyats: the former employ Ayawārs for their gurus or spiritual preceptors and are sometimes known as Tirmendār; while the Lingāyats, who are also called Woheda, have Jangams as their priests. In Bālāghāt and Chhattīsgarh many of the Koshtis belong to the Kabīrpanthi sect, and these revere the special priests of the sect and abstain from the use of flesh and liquor. They are also known as Ghātibandhia, from the ghāt or string of beads of basil-wool (tulsi) which they tie round their necks. In Mandla the Kabīrpanthi Koshtis eat flesh and will intermarry with the others, who are known distinctively as Saktaha. The Gurmukhis are a special sect of the Nāgpur country and are the followers of a saint named Koliba Bāba, who lived at Dhāpewāra near Kalmeshwar. He is said to have fed five hundred persons with food which was sufficient for ten and to have raised a Brāhman from the dead in Umrer. Some Brāhmans wished to test him and told him to perform a miracle, so he had a lot of brass pots filled with water and put a cloth over them, and when he withdrew it the water had changed into curded milk. The Gurmukhis have a descendant of Koliba Bāba for their preceptor, and each of them keeps a cocoanut in his house, which may represent Koliba Bāba or else the unseen deity. To this he makes offerings of sandalwood, rice and flowers. The Gurmukhis are forbidden to venerate any of the ordinary Hindu deities, but they cannot refrain from making offerings to Māta Mai when smallpox breaks out, and if any person has the disease in his house they refrain from worshipping the cocoanut so long as it lasts, because they think that this would be to offer a slight to the smallpox goddess who is sojourning with them. Another sect is that of the Matwāles who worship Vishnu as Nārāyan, as well as Siva and Sakti. They are so called because they drink liquor at their religious feasts. They have a small platform on which fresh cowdung is spread every day, and they bow to this before taking their food. Once in four or five years after a wedding offerings are made to Nārāyan Deo on the bank of a tank outside the village; chickens and goats are killed and the more extreme of them sacrifice a pig, but the majority will not join with these. Offerings of liquor are also made and must be drunk by the worshippers. Mehras and other low castes also belong to this sect, but the Koshtis will not eat with them. But in Chhindwāra it is said that on the day after the Pola festival in August, when insects are prevalent and the season of disease begins, the Koshtis and Māngs go out together to look for the nārbod shrub,619 and here they break a small piece of bread and eat it together. In Bhandāra the Koshtis worship the spirit of one Kadu, patel or headman of the village of Mohali, who was imprisoned in the fort of Ambāgarh under an accusation of sorcery in Marātha times and died there. He is known as Ambagarhia Deo, and the people offer goats and fowls to him in order to be cured of diseases. The above notice indicates that the caste are somewhat especially inclined to religious feeling and readily welcome reformers striving against Hindu polytheism and Brāhman supremacy. This is probably due in part to the social stigma which attaches to the weaving industry among the Hindus and is resented as an injustice by the Koshtis, and in part also to the nature of their calling, which leaves the mind free for thought during long hours while the fingers are playing on the loom; and with the uneducated serious reflection must almost necessarily be of a religious character. In this respect the Koshti may be said to resemble his fellow-weavers of Thrums. In Nāgpur District the Koshtis observe the Muharram festival, and many of them go out begging on the first day with a green thread tied round their body and a beggar’s wallet. They cook the grain which is given to them on the tenth day of the festival, giving a little to the Muhammadan priest and eating the rest. This observance of a Muhammadan rite is no doubt due to their long association with followers of that religion in Berār.
6. Superstitions
Before beginning work for the day the Sālewār makes obeisance to his loom and implements, nor may he touch them without having washed his face and hands. A woman must not approach the loom during her periodical impurity, and if anybody sneezes as work is about to be begun, they wait a little time to let the ill luck pass off. In Nāgpur they believe that the posts to which the ends of the loom are fastened have magical powers, and if any one touches them with his leg he will get ulcers up to the knee. If a woman steps on the kūchi or loom-brush she is put out of caste and a feast has to be given to the community before she is readmitted. To cure inflammation in the eyes they take a piece of plaited grass and wrap it round with cotton soaked in oil. Then it is held before the sufferer’s eyes and set on fire and the drops of oil are allowed to fall into water, and as they get cold and congeal the inflammation is believed to abate. Among some classes of Koshtis the killing of a cat is a very serious offence, almost equivalent to killing a cow. Even if a man touches a dead cat he has to give two feasts and be fully purified. The sanctity of the cat among Hindus is sometimes explained on the ground that it kills rats, which attract snakes into the house. But the real reason is probably that primitive people regard all domestic animals as sacred. The Koshti also reveres the dog and jackal.
7. Clothes, etc
The Sālewārs of the Godāvari tract wrap a short rectangular piece of cloth round their head as a turban. Formerly, Mr. Raghunāth Wāman states, the caste had a distinctive form of turban by which it could be recognised, but under British administration these rules of dress are falling into abeyance. A few of the Sālewārs put on the sacred thread, but it is not generally worn. Sālewār women have a device representing a half-moon tattooed on the forehead between the ends of the eyebrows; the cheeks are marked with a small dot and the arms adorned with a representation of the sacred tulsi or basil.
8. Social rules and status
The caste eat flesh and fish and drink liquor, and in the Marātha Districts they will eat chickens like most castes of this country. In Mandla they have recently prohibited the keeping of fowls, under pain of temporary expulsion. Those who took food in charity-kitchens during the famine of 1900 were readmitted to the community with the penalty of shaving the beard and moustaches in the case of a man, and cutting a few hairs from the head in that of a woman. In Berār the Lād, Jain and Katghar Koshtis are all strict vegetarians. The Koshtis employ Brāhmans for their ceremonies, but their social status is about on a level with the village menials, below the cultivating castes. This, however, is a very good position for weavers, as most of the weaving castes are stigmatised as impure. But the Koshtis live in towns and not in villages and weave the finer kinds of cloth for which considerable skill is required, while in former times their work also yielded a good remuneration. These facts probably account for their higher status; similarly the Tāntis or weavers of Bengal who produce the fine muslins of Dacca, so famous in Mughal times, have obtained such a high rank there that Brāhmans will take water from their hands;620 while the few Tāntis who are found in the Central Provinces are regarded as impure and are not touched. The caste are of a turbulent disposition, perhaps on account of their comparatively light work, which does not tire their bodies like cultivation and other manual labour. One or two serious riots have been caused by the Koshtis in recent years.
9. Occupation
The standard occupation of the caste is the weaving of the fine silk-bordered cloths which are universally worn on the body by Brāhmans and other well-to-do persons of the Marātha country. The cloth is usually white with borders of red silk. They dye their own thread with lac or the flowers of the palās tree (Butea frondosa). The price of a pair of loin-cloths of this kind is Rs. 14, and of a pair of dupattas or shoulder-cloths Rs. 10, while women’s sāris also are made. Each colony of Koshtis in a separate town usually only weave one kind of cloth of the size for which their looms are made. The silk-bordered loin-cloths of Umrer and Pauni are well known and are sent all over India. The export of hand-woven cloth from all towns of the Nāgpur plain has been estimated at Rs. 5 lakhs a year. The rich sometimes have the cloths made with gold lace borders. The following account of the caste is given in Sir R. Craddock’s Nāgpur Settlement Report: “The Koshti is an inveterate grumbler, and indeed from his point of view he has a great deal to complain of. On the one hand the price of raw cotton and the cost of his living have increased very largely; on the other hand, the product of his loom commands no higher price than it did before, and he cannot rely on selling it when the market is slack. He cannot adapt himself to the altered environment and clings to his loom. He dislikes rough manual labour and alleges, no doubt with truth, that it deprives him of the delicacy of touch needed in weaving the finer cloths. If prices rise he is the first to be distressed, and on relief works he cannot perform the requisite task and has to be treated with special indulgence. The mills have been established many years in Nāgpur, but very few of the older weavers have sought employment there. They have begun to send their children, but work at home themselves, though they really all use machine-spun yarn. The Koshtis are quarrelsome and addicted to drink, and they have generally been the chief instigators of grain riots when prices rise. They often marry several wives and their houses swarm with a proportionate number of children. But although the poorer members of the community are in struggling circumstances and are put to great straits when prices of food rise, those who turn out the fine silk-bordered work are fairly prosperous in ordinary times.”
