Mallah, Bengal
Mallah, Bengal
This section has been extracted from THE TRIBES and CASTES of BENGAL. Ethnographic Glossary. Printed at the Bengal Secretariat Press. 1891. . |
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Ar, a sailor, a boatman, a generic term current in Behar and Bengal as the popular designation of various boating and fishing castes. Mr. Sherring notices this general use of the word, but adds that there is a special tribe of Mallahs divided into the following sub-castes :-(1) Mallah, (2) Muria or Muriari, t3) Pandubi, (4) Bathawa or Badhariya, (5) Chaini, Chain or Chai, (6) Suraya, (7) Guriya, (8) Tiar, (9) Kulwant or Kulwat, (10) Kewat, He also mentions the tradition that all these" are descended from a common father, by name Nikhad, but that the Kewats alone were born in lawful wedlock." Nikhad is merely a variant for Nishad or Nishada, a Dravidian tribe mentioned in the Rig-Veda, from which several of the fishing castes may posibly derive their origin. It is clear, however, that while the ten groups enumerated by Mr. Sherring may at one time have belonged to a single tribe, that tribe must have broken up some time before the Arabic word Mallah can have been current in India long enough to stand any chance of being adopted as a tribal name. 1£, then, Mr. Sherring's statement is correct, a point on which there is room for some difference of opinion, it merely shows that a certain number of distinct fishing castes believe themselves once to have formed part of a larger group, to which they give the 'modern name Mallah, a foreign word denoting an occu¬pation, not a caste, and throwing no light OD. the affinities of the people who use it. The castes to which the term Mal1ah is ordinarily applied in Bengal are the following :-Gourhi, Chain, Bind, Kewat, Tiyar, Muri'lri, Surahiya, Malo, and jailya Kaibartta.
