Panjab Castes: 03-Some types of caste
This article is an extract from PANJAB CASTES SIR DENZIL CHARLES JELF IBBETSON, K.C. S.I. Being a reprint of the chapter on Lahore : Printed by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab, 1916. |
The trades-guild type of caste
The second type which I have included together with castes proper and the western tribes in my caste tables, is almost precisely the trades-guild of Europe in the middle ages. And it again owes its existence very largely to the prevalence of Mahomedan ideas. It is found chiefly in the larger cities, and is almost always known by a Persian or Arabic name. The class of Darzis or tailors is a good example of what I mean. Here the caste organisation, the regulations of the fraternity, and the government by common council or panchayat are as complete as among the true castes. But there is no longer even the fiction of common origin_, and the only bond which unites the members of the guild is that of common occupation — a bond which is severed when the occupation is aban doned and renewed when it is resumed. I have already said that I am not at all sure whether this is not the case with the artisan castes in general in a far greater degree than is commonly supposed. It appears to me that in the case of the menial and artisan classes the real caste is what I have already noticed, and shall presently describe more particularly, under the name of the section ; and that the caste name is often merely a generic term used to include all who follow the same occupation. If the numerous agricultural tribes of the Indus who are included under the generic term Jat observed caste distinctions and refused to eat together and intermarry, we should have a state of things corre sponding exactly with what we find throughout the Province among the industrial classes^ where each so-called caste comprises under a common occupational term a number of sections of different geographical origin and of different habits, who refuse to hold communion with one another, and are for all practical purposes separate castes. But even here the distinction is often based upon minor differences in the occupation or in the mode of following it ; and community of origin in the remote past is often^ though by no means always, admitted. And even if my suggestion be well-founded, there is still this cardinal distinction, that in the case of the caste or section of the caste the basis of the organisation is hereditary, and the stranger is admitted voluntarily and deliberately ; whereas in the case of the guild there is no pretence to com munity of blood, and anybody following the craft is admitted almost as a matter of right. To this class probably belong the Mallah, the Qassâb, the Sabzi-farosh, the Mâshqi when not a Jhînwar, the Nûngar, and many of those quasi-castes of whom I have to say that I cannot tell whether the name signifies anything more than the occupation of the people included under it. Somewhat similar to these are the followers of divers occupations which are almost If not altogether confined, in the east of the Province at least, to the members of a single caste of which the chapter on artisan and menial castes furnishes so many examples. The Bharbhûnja is almost always, I believe, a Jhinwar ; the Jarrâh is almost always a Nai ; but it would not have been safe to claPs them as Jhinwar and Nai respectively, and so I have shown them separately in my tallies. Yet another form of quasi-caste is afforded by the religious and ascetic orders of fakirs which, in the absence of all pretence of community of blood and the purely voluntary nature of their association, are somewhat analogous to the trades-guild. These men abandon caste properly so called on entering the order to which they belong ; but it would have been absurd to omit them altogether or to show them under Miscellaneous,^' and I have therefore ranked them in my tables as castes. Many of them are sub ject to some form of authority which is exercised by the order in its corporate capacity ; but many of them are absolutely free from restrictions of any kind, and the word caste is not really applicable to these classes.
Different types included in the caste-table
Thus the figures of my tables of tribes and castes include groups formed upon several very distinct types. There is the true caste in the Brahminical sense of the term, the Brahman, Rajput, Banya, and so forth ; the tribe or race based upon common blood, such as the Pathan, Biloch, Kâthia; there is the colony of foreigners like the Purbi and Kashmiri, or of believers in a strange creed like the Bishnoi ; there is the true occupational caste such as the Nai, the Chamar, and the Chuhra; there is the common trades-guild like the Darzi and the Qassab; there is the occupation pure and simple as the Jarrah and Gharami; there is the ascetic order as the Gosain and Nirmala ; and besides these there are all possible intermediate stages. Moreover, the name which is applied to a time caste or race in one part of the Panjab, in another merely signifies an occupa tion; of which fact Arain and Biloch are two notable examples, the first meaning nothing more than a market-gardener in the Salt-range Tract, the latter little more than a camelman in the centre of the Province, and each in either case including an indefinite number of castes or tribes with nothing but community of occupation to connect them.
