View source for Panjab Castes: 01- Preface

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This article is an extract from <br/>

PANJAB CASTES <br/>

SIR DENZIL CHARLES JELF IBBETSON, K.C. S.I. <br/>

Being a reprint of the chapter on <br/>
The Races, Castes and Tribes of <br/>
the People in the Report on the <br/>
Census of the Panjab published <br/>
in ''' 1883 ''' by the late Sir Denzil <br/>
Ibbetson, KCSI <br/>

Lahore : <br/>

Printed  by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab, <br/>

1916. <br/>
''Indpaedia is an archive. It neither agrees nor disagrees ''<br/> 
''with the contents of this article.''
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[[Category:India|P]]
[[Category:Communities|P]] 
 

=Introductory Note=

The Census of the Panjab Province was carried out in 1881 by Mr. 
(afterwards Sir) Denzil Ibbetson of the Indian Civil Service and his Report 
on the Census was published in 1883. The Report has always been recognised 
as one of the most remarkable official publications in India, and a work of 
the greatest value both from the administrative and from the literary and 
scientific point of view. It at once attracted widespread attention  more 
especially in view of the copious information which it provided regarding the 
people oF the Province, and a separate volume was issued in 1883, under the 
title of  ' Panjab Ethnography’ which contained a reprint of those portions 
of the Report which dealt with the Religions, the Languages, and the Races, 
Castes and Tribes of the people. The number of copies published, however, 
both of the Report and of the Ethnography, was comparatively small and they 
are now difficult to procure outside Indian official circles. There are at the same 
time indications of a continuing demand for the Report, and more especially for 
the ethnological portion of it, and to meet this demand the Punjab Government 
has determined to undertake the issue of the present volume. 

This volume reproduces a portion only, but that is the most important 
portion, of the original Report, namely the chapter on the Races, Castes and 
Tribes of the Panjab. The chapters on Religion and Language, which formed 
part of the Ethnography published in 1883, though valuable and interest
ing, have necessarily lost something of their original importance owing to the 
progress made in scientific enquiry during the last thirty years, but the chapter 
on the Races, Castes and Tribes still contains much valuable information that 
cannot be obtained elsewhere, and this chapter must always command attention 
and respect for its vigorous and comprehensive treatment of the subject. The 
figures are, of course, out of date and the territorial boundaries of the Province 
and districts with which the chapter deals are now considerably altered. There 
are also, no doubt, points on which later investigation suggests modification of 
the facts and opinions originally given, but it has been thought best to repro
duce the chapter as it stands, without any attempt to annotate it or bring it up 
to date. It is beheved that in this way the wishes of most readers will best be 
met, and it is felt that by this course the volume will best fulfil the further 
object which the Government of the Panjab has in view, namely, the per
petuation of the memory of the original writer. 

There are so many still alive to whom Sir Denzil Ibbetson was personally 
known that anything like a complete description of his career in this introduc
tion is unnecessary, but it may not be out of place to mention a few of its 
outstanding features. He was born on August 30th; 1847, and after being 
educated at St. Peter's College, Adelaide, and St. John's College, Cambridge, 
entered the Indian Civil Service in 1870. He was early in his service selected 
for the special posts of Settlement Officer of the Karnal District and Superin
tendent of Census Operations in the Panjab. He subsequently filled from time 
to time the appointments of Director of Public Instruction and Financial Com
missioner in the Panjab, Secretary to the Government of India in the Revenue 
and Agricultural Department, Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces, and 
Member of the Viceroy's Council. In 1907 he became Heutenant-Governor 
of the Panjab, but held that important post for all too short a time, succumbing 
to a fatal malady on the 21st of February 1908. 

No one to whom Sir Denzil Ibbetson was known can ever forg-et his 
personality : his tall and commanding presence, his vivacious and original 
conversation, his constant sense of humour, his quick indignation and his equally 
quick sympathy. For the thoroughness of his erudition in many directions he 
was unsurpassed in India and as an administrator there are not a few who hold 
him to have been the greatest Indian Civil Servant of our time. His character 
and career are admirably summed up in an inscription placed by the Viceroy 
on whose Council he served on the walls of the Simla Church which runs as 
follows : — 

'' Untiring in Administration, ''

'' Fearless in doing right, ''  

'' a scholar and a man of affairs, ''

'' Loyal in co-operation, devoted in friendship. ''

'' He gave to India his love ''

'' and his life. ''


==ORIGINAL PREFACE  TO THE REPORT ON THE CENSUS OF 1881 ==
In writing the accompanying report on the Panjab Census of 1881, I 
have steadily kept two main objects before me. Firstly I have attempted to 
produce a work which shall be useful to District officers as a handbook of 
reference on all the subjects dealt with in The Census Schedules, and which 
shall stand with regard to such subjects in a position somewhat similar 
to that occupied by the modern Settlement Report in respect of revenue 
matters. Secondly, I have endeavoured to record in some detail the experience 
gained at this Census, for guidance on the occasion of future enumerations. 
My pursuance of each of these objects has helped to swell the size of the 
report. 

It would have been easy to write a short notice of some of the more 
obvious conclusions to be drawn from the Census totals of the Province as a 
whole ; and such a notice would doubtless have technically sufficed as a report 
to Government upon the operations which I had superintended. But it would 
have been of small use for future reference, and would have served no purpose 
beyond that of furnishing the text for a Government resolution. A Census 
report is not meant merely for the information of the Secretariat; it is 
intended to be constantly referred to in every office of the Province. The 
mere results would ill serve this end in the absence of an interpreter. It is of 
but small advantage to cast voluminous tables of naked figures at the heads of 
District officers, without at the same time explaining what they represent, 
which can be done by no one but him who compiled them, and drawing from 
them the more important conclusions to which they lead, which few will draw 
but he whose special business it is to do so.

In the ordinary routine of district work, information is constantly needed 
regarding some feature or other of the society which we govern. That in
formation often exists in print ; but in India libraries are few and books scaree ; 
while where the latter are available, they are often too detailed or too learned 
for the practical purposes of the District officer. It has been my endeavour to 
furnish such a sketch of the sahent features of native society in the Panjab 
as will often supply the immediate need, and at the same time to indicate 
where, if anywhere, further details may be found. A Census report is not 

Much of the length of the report is due to the exceptionally large number of the administrative 
unite for which the separate figures had to be discussed. (See section 929, page 4'6S.) The Native 
States took great pains with the Census ; and, apart from the intrinsic value of the results, it would 
Have been ungracious to discuss their figures less fully than our own, 
light reading ; and men take it up, not to read it through, But to obtain from  
it information on some definite point. It is therefore more important that it 
should be complete than that it should be brief; and so long as its arrange
ment directs the student at once to the place where he will find what he wants, 
without compelling him to wade through irrelevant matter, the fuller the 
information which he there finds on the subject, the more valuable will the 
report be to him. I have therefore omitted nothing relevant that seemed to me 
to be interesting or useful, simply because it occupied space. 

The difficulty of an Indian Census springs mainly from two sources ; the 
infinite diversity of the material to be dealt with, and our own infinite ignor
ance of that material. The present Census was, as regards the Panjab and in 
respect of its minuteness and accuracy of detail, practically a first experiment ; 
and one of its most valuable results has been to show us where our chief 
difficulties he, and how and why we have on this occasion frequently failed to 
overcome them. If the present Census had been one for all time, nothing more 
would have been needed than such a brief account of the operations as would 
have explained to the student of the results how those results had been 
obtained. If, on the other hand, a Census were of annual recurrence, an 
office, with its permanent staff and traditions, would have taken the place of 
the record of the experience which I have attempted to frame. But the 
operations will be repeated after intervals of ten years. It has therefore been 
my endeavour to record the experience now gained in such detail as may enable 
us to avoid past errors on a future occasion, to point out every defect that 
the test of actual practice disclosed in the scheme, and to put forth every 
suggestion that my experience led me to think could be of use to my successor 
in 1891. 

Till now nothing of the sort has been attempted in the Panjab. The 
meagre report on the Census of 1868 affords no record of the experience of the 
past or suggestions for guidance in the future; while though Settlement 
reports and similar publications contain a vast mass of invaluable information 
regarding the people, it is scattered and fragmentary, and needed to be 
collected, compared, and consolidated. A Census recurs only after considerable 
intervals, and it will not be necessary on each subsequent occasion to rewrite 
the whole of the present report. Much will be added ; more will be corrected ; 
the new figures will be examined and compared with the present ones ; the old 
conclusions will be modified, and new ones drawn. But the main groundwork 
of the report will stand unaltered. 

I have not absolutely confined myself in the following pages to facts and 
figures which will be immediately useful for the actual purposes of administra
tion. I have not hesitated to enter occasionally into general discussions 
on certain subjects, such as religion and caste, and to express my own views on 
the matter. I venture to think that these digressions are not the least interest
ing portions of the volume ; and in a report which must of necessity consist 
for the most part of a dry discussion of figures, any passage of general interest 
is welcome, if only as a rehef. But my chief object in entering upon these 
discussions has been, to draw the attention of ray readers to the extraordinary 
interest of the material which hes in such abundance ready to the hand of all 
Indian officials,  and which would, if collected and recorded, be of such immense 
value to students of sociology. Our ignorance of the customs and behefs 
of the people among whom we dwell is surely in some respects a reproach 
to us ; for not only does that ignorance deprive European science of material 
which it greatly needs, but it also involves a distinct loss of administrative 
power to ourselves. And if aught that I have written in this report should 
incline any from among my readers to a study of the social and religious 
phaenomena by which they are surrounded,Jats any rate shall be amply repaid 
for my labour. 

Moreover, Indian official literature is gradually gaining for itself students 
from beyond the limits of India, and European scholars are turning to it for 
the facts of which they find themselves in need. In his Village Communities 
{pages 34-5) Sir Henry Maine writes of Indian Settlement reports : They 
constitute a whole literature of very great extent and variety, and of the 
utmost value and instructiveness. I am afraid I must add that the English  
reader, whose attention is not called to it by official duty, not unusually finds 
it very unattractive or even repulsive. But the reason I beheve to be, that 
the elementary knowledge which is the key to it has for the most part never 
been reduced to writing at all. I see no reason why an Indian report 
should of necessity be repulsive or unintelligible ; and I have ventured, 
here and there, to add at the expense of brevity matter which would perhaps 
be superfluous if addressed exclusively to Indian officials. 

The more we learn of the people and their ways, the more profoundly 
must we become impressed with the vastness of the field and with the immense 
diversity which it presents. Not only is our knowledge of the facts as nothing 
compared with our ignorance ; but the facts themselves vary so greatly from 
one part of the Panjab to another, that it is almost impossible to make any 
general statement whatever concerning them which shall be true for the whole 
Province. I have not always stopped to say so ; and I have not unfrequently 
made assertions, as it were ex cathedra infallibili. But I would always be 
understood to mean, in writing of the people, that while I have taken pains to 
obtain the best and most trustworthy information available, I only present 
it for what it is worth, and that it will almost certainly be inapplicable 
to some parts at least of the Panjab. Yet I do not think that the uncertain 
value which attaches to the information that I have recorded renders that infatuation less worthy of record. In matters such as are discussed in this 
report the next best thing' to having them put rightly is to have them put 
wrongly, if only the wrongness he an intelligent wrongness ; for so we stimu
late inquiry and provoke criticism ; and it is only by patient and widespread 
inquiry and incessant and minute criticism, that we can hope to arrive on these 
subjects at accurate information and sound generalisations. Nothing would be 
so welcome to me as to find the officers of the Province setting to work to 
correct and supplement the information given in my report ; for the more 
holes they will pick and the more publicly they will pick them, the faster shall 
we extend and improve our knowledge of the matters discussed.

I need not apologise for the many and palpable defects of the report, so 
far as they are due to the haste with which all official publications have to be 
prepared. Pages which have been written against time in the first instance, which 
have been sent to press often without even the most cursory revision, and which, 
when once in type, the writer has not felt at liberty to improve save by the most 
trifling corrections, must not be judged by any literary standard. But I must, 
in justice to myself, be allowed to make one explanation which will account for 
much hurried and slovenly work that is only too apparent in the following 
pages. On the loth of January 1883, I received orders from thePanjab 
Government to the effect that the report must be finished without fail by the 
end of the following February. When these orders reached me, I had com
pleted only Chapters I, U, and IV, and the first two Parts of Chapter UI ; 
while Part U of Chapter VI which deals with Pathans and Biloches, and the 
greater portion of Chapters XI and XII and of the first two Parts of Chapter 
XUI, were written in the rough, though exceedingly incomplete. Thus I had 
six weeks allowed me within which to fill in the lacunæ In these last sections, 
to discuss increase and decrease of population, language, caste with the excep
tion of Pathans and Biloches, age, sex, and civil condition, occupations, educa
tion, and infirmities, and to summarise the results of our Census experience. 
The portion of the report which was wholly written within these six weeks 
comprises some 260 pages of print. It is hardly to be wondered that my 
treatment of these subjects is hasty and imperfect. My own feeling on looking 
back, is one of suprise  that I accomplished the task after any fashion whatever. 
But on the 26th of February the MS. of my report was completely ready for 
press, and has not been touched since then. The press has been kept fully 
supphed with copy from the end of October 1882 ; and the subsequent delay is 
wholly due to the difficulty experienced in getting the report printed and 
published . 

I would suggest the pages of Panjab Notes and Queries, a small periodical juat started 
under the Editorship of Captain Temple of Ambala. as a convenient medium for discussion. 

1 need hardly say how largely I am indebted to others for both facts and 
ideas. The greater part of the information contained in the report has been 
either taken from scattered publications and from district Settlement or Census 
reports, or furnished me by correspondents. I owe much to Mr. Wilson's 
Code of Tribal Custom in Sirsa and to Mr. Barkley's notes on the Jalandhar 
district, both of which the writers placed in my hands in MS., and to Mr. 
Tupper's work on Panjab Customary Law ; while every chapter of the report 
attests my obligations to Mr. Alex. Anderson for the prompt and complete 
manner in which he answered my numerous inquiries about the peculiar and 
interesting tract of which he was in charge. In one respect I was singularly 
ill-fitted for the task entrusted to me ; for practically speaking my whole 
Indian service had been confined to a single district Karnal, which does not 
even he in the Panjab proper. Thus I have been throughout in the greatest 
danger of wrongly extending to the Province, as a whole, knowledge acquired 
in a small and very special portion of it. I can hardly hope that I have 
altogether escaped this pitfall ; but that I have not fallen into it more fre
quently, is wholly due to the invaluable assistance rendered me by Messrs. 
Alex. Anderson, Coldstream, Douie, O'Brien, Steedman, Thomson, and Wilson. 
These gentlemen have carefully read the proofs of the report as they issued 
from the press ; and their criticisms have enabled me to correct many faults 
and errors, and to add much that is valuable. I cannot express too strongly 
my obligation to them for undertaking and carrying through in their hardly
earned leisure so tedious and uninteresting a task. My warmest thanks are 
also due to Messrs. Cunningham, Douie, and Merk for valuable help un
sparingly given on all points relating to the frontier tribes ; to Major Plowden 
for his careful examination of the sections on the Pathans and their language ; 
to Mr. Christie for his copious and suggestive annotation of my discussion of 
the vagrant and criminal classes ; to Mr. Tupper for much valuable help given 
in the earher stages of the operations ; and to Dr. Dickson and the Rev. Mr. 
Wherry for the personal attention they most kindly bestowed on the Census 
printing, without which I should scareely have succeeded in getting the work 
done. But these are only a few among the many who have helped me. I 
apphed for assistance to many officers of many Departments, and to none in 
vain ; and it is to the help thus received by me, that whatever value my report 
may be found to possess is mainly due. 

My warmest acknowledgments are due to Mr. W. C. Plowden, Commis
sioner of Census, for his ever ready help and counsel, for the patient consider
ation with which he listened to my difficulties and suggestions, and for the 
kind anxiety which he evinced from first to last to do anything and everything 
that might make matters easier for me, so far as the unity of the Imperial 
scheme permitted.  

Finally, I would express ray grateful sense of the courtesy and consider
ation which I experienced at the hands of District officers throughout the oper
ations. My position as Superintendent of the Census was one of some delicacy ; 
for it obliged me to inspect, criticise,, and report on the work of officers much 
senior to myself. That my relations with those officers were throughout of the 
most pleasant and cordial nature, is due to a good feeling on their part for 
which I am indebted to them. 

Simla :  

DENZIL IBBETSON. 

The 3Oth August 1883.