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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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Origin
Mal Samaria Male, Savar' Paharia, Sauria, Samil Pahar'ia, _ _ Asal Paharia, Sangi, a Dravidian tribe of the. Rajmahil hills, closely akin to the Oraons, and probably an isolated branch of the large and widely diffused Savar tribe. The actual name of the tribe appears to be Mal, which is combined with the pronouns en, I'tn, and e in order to form the present of the verb substantive. Thus Malen is the first person singular, I am a Mal; Male, the third person singular; Malem, the first person plural; and Maler (used in the spelling Malair by Lieutenant Shaw as the name of the tribe), the third person plural. '£he selection of Male as the tribal name for the purpose of this work is therefore both arbitrary and incorrect, and can only be justified by the necessity of having some discinctive designation to mark off these MilIs from the Mal Paharias of the southern hills and from the Mal caste of Bengal. In respect of physical characteristics the Male represent the extreme type of the Dravidian race as we find it in Bengal. The nasal index measured on 100 men of the tribe yields au average of 94-5, which closely approaches the proportions ascertained for the Negro. '1'he average stature is low, the complexion dark, and the figure short and sturdy.
Early history of the tribes
Owing to the rocky and forest-bound character of their country, _ and their incessant internal struggles, the Males of the Raj mahal hills maintained a virtual independence during the period of Musalman assendancy in Bengal. It appears that, although they never com-pletely recognized the imperial authority, they had a rude indigenous system of government, which was worked in moderate accord with the zamindars of the low country bordering on the bills. The hills included in each tappa or subordinate fiscal division were subject to one or more divisional headmen, called sardars, to whom the village headmen (mall/his) were in their turn subordinate. The sardars, who were possibly more civilized than the rest of the tribe, received from the zamillda1'S allotments of land in the plains on jagir or service tenures, in consideration of which they made themselves responsible for the prevention and detection of crime among the hill people. Besides this, the passes leading from the hills into the plain country were guarded by outposts of Males, whose duty it was to stop any bodies of men from making raids upon the plains, and to give warning of an impending inroad. For further security, the zamindars themselves maintained at the foot of the hills a chain of clzattkzs or police outposts, which were independent of the Male guardians of the passes within the hills. Once every year, at the Dasahara festival, the divisional headman (sar'daj') of each tappa came down to the plains with his subOl'dinate manjlzlS, and there partook of a feast and received a turban at the zamindarS expense, at the same time formally renewing his engagements to keep the peace within his jurisdiction.
For a long time this system kept crime within bounds, and promoted good feeling between the Males and the people of the low country; but about the middle of last century a show of independence on the part of the hill people was treacherously resented by the zaminda1's, who took the oppotunity of the annual public feast to murder several of the village headmen. On this the Males within the hills gave up the guardian¬ship of the passes, and commenoed a eries of depredations, which were held in some check up to 1770 by the line of zamindari police posts without the hills. In that year, however, the famine which desolated the neighbouring districts pressed with peculiar severity upon the alluvial strip of country lying between the Hajmahal hills and the Ganges; the police outposts were abandoned, and the plains thus lay at the mercy of the Males, who, owing to their aboriginal practice of living upon jungle foods, had• escaped the extremity of distress. It was therefore in the years following the famine of 1770 that the raids of the hillmen upon the low country became most frequent and most systematic. Plunder no doubt was their main object, and the desire to revenge the treacherous murder of their headmen; but many of their inroads were in the first instance instigated by the landholders, who were in the habit of offering the Males a free passage through their' own lauds on condition that they ravaged those of the neighbouring zamindars. At any rate, the terror they occasioned was so widespread that the alluvial country was deserted by its cultivators; no boat dare moor after dusk on the southern bank of the Ganges; and even the Government mail¬runners, who in those days passed along the skirts of the hills, by way of HajmaMl and the TeEa Garhi Pass, were frequently robbed and murdered at the foot of the hills. Up to 1778 the British Government, like the Muhammadans before them, made various attempts to suppress the Males by military force. In 1772 a corps of light infantry, armed expressly for jungle fighting, was raised and placed under command of captain Brooke.
But the Males never gave the troops a chance in the open country; while in the tangled undergrowth of the hills firearms had no decided advantage over the strong bamboo bows and heavy poisoned arrows of the hillmen. Besides this, the absence of roads, the difficulty of keeping up supplies, and the fatally malarious climate of the Rajmahn jungles, made the permanent subjection of the Males a horeless undertaking for native troops. In 1778 captain Brown, then commanding the corps of light infantry, submitted to Government a scheme for the pacification of the hillmen, the e sential elements of which were the following: -First the sardars !; or divi¬sional headmen of the M,ales were to be restored to their original position a chiefs of the tribe, receiving formal sanads of appointment from Government, and in their turn entering into engagements, renewable annually, to perform certain specified duties. Similar engagements were to be taken from the mcinjhis or village head¬men, binding them to obey the sardars in all matters laid down in the lJancrds.
Second, those sardcil'S whose tappas bordered upon the public road were to receive a fixed pecuniary allowance, nominally for the purpose of maintaining police to protect the mail-runners, but in fact as a bribe to deter them from committing robberies them¬selves. Third , all transactions with the hill people were to be carried on through their sardars's and mcinjhis, but intercourse with the inhabitants of the plains was to be encouraged by establishing markets on the outskirts of the hills. FOurth, the old chauki bancli or chain of police outposts, which had been abandoned in 1770, was to be completely re-established and maintained by Government until the service lands attached to them had been brought under cultivation. But the control of these outposts was to be taken from the zamindars's and made over to tltcincicla1'S or police officers appointed by Government, who were again to be subordinate to sasawals or divisional superintendents. This police force was further to be strengthened by conferring grants of lands below the hills on invalid sepoys, on the condition that they settled on their allotments and gave assistance in the event of a Male inroad. The total annual expense of the scheme was estimated at £100. Early in 1778 captain Brown's scheme wa approved by Government; and both the chain of police posts below the hills and the system of allowances to the sardars on the public road were partially established before the end of the year. But in 1779 the hill country of RajmaMI was transfelTed from Captain Brown's j nrisdiction, and it thus fell to Mr. Augustus Cleveland, who had been appointed Colleotor of Bhagalpur, to calTY out the foregoing scheme. In the following year (1780) Mr. Oleveland reported that forty-seven hill chiefs had of their own will submitted to Government authority. With the view of retaining these men as loyal subjects he subse¬quently proposed that a corps of hill archers, four hundred strong, should be enrolled from among the Males and officered by eight sa/’clcin or divisional headmen, under the command of the collector of Bhagalpill'.
The officers were to be paid Rs. 5, and the common soldiers Rs. 3, per mensem. Every village headman, he suggested, should be called upon to furnish recruits to the corps, and should receive for this service an allowance of Rs. 2 a month. The yearly expense of this arrangement, including the cost of the pill'ple faokets and till'bans which were to form the uniform of the corps, was estimated by Mr. Cleveland at £3,2uO. Warran Hastings, who was then Governor-General, at first objected to the enrolment of the corps of archers on the ground of this heavy expense, and sanctioned a scheme which Mr. Cleveland had proposed in the meantime, for granting pensions of Rs. 10 a month to all divisional headmen Sardars and of Rs, 5 a month to their Nazbs or deputies; manjMs 01' village headmen were to receive no allowance at all. But towards the end of 1780 the enrolment of a corps of archers was sanctioned, mainly in consequence of the Commander-in-Chief having expressed his approval of the scheme when passing through Bbagalpur on his way to the Upper Provinces. At the same time the fiscal divisions of Ambar and Sultanabad were transferred to Mr. Cleveland's jurisdiotion, it having been found that the chiefs of the southern portion of the Rajmahal bills would not give in their allegiance as long as they were exposed to continual inroads from the inhabitants of those parganas. Shortly afterwards, at the special request of the saTda1'S aud mal'l:fhZs of Belpatta, that fiscal division was also placed under Mr. Cleveland, pensions being granted to the chiefs and recruits furnished for the hill archers. Not long after the enrolment of the hill archers an outbreak that occurred in the hills was quelled by them so effectively that a proposal by Mr. Cleveland that the corps should be drilled and armed like regular sepoys was readily sanctioned, and Lieutenant Shaw was appointed adjutant; the name of the corps being at the same time changed to "The Bhagalpur Hill Rangers," by which name they were known until disbanded on the reorganization of the Native army after the Mutiny in 1t l57, From the first enrolment of the hill archers petty offences committed by the members of the corps were punished by a rude courtmartial of the officers. In 1782, however, one of the archers murdered a Male woman, and in order to punish this, the first serious crime that had oocurred, Mr. Cleveland proposed the formation of a distinct tribunal, the jurisdiction of which should be limited to members of the coorps.
This, which was at first styled comtmartial, and afterwards hill assembly, was to consist of three or more officers of the corps, the power of appointing and dissolving the court resting with Mr. Cleveland. Mr. Oleveland was also to approve of all sentences passed by the court, except when capital punishment was awarded. In that case an assembly of five or more hill chiefs (sU1'claTs) was to be convened, and a final decision to be passed in aooordanoe with the opinion of the majority. Mr. Cleveland further proposed that offenoes oommitted by the inhabitants of the hills generally, with the exoeption of those who were enrolled in the corps of archers, should be withdrawn from the jUl'isdiction of the ordinary courts and placPd under a tribunal of chiefs (sa1"dars) presided over by' himself. The entire scheme, both as regards tho court-martial for the archers and the assembly of sarcla1'S for the hillmen generally, was approved by Government in April 1782. Shortly afterwards Mr. Cleveland reported that he had ananged for assemblies to be held twice a year, and gave the following aocount of the proceedings of the first trial :-" I have settled with the chiefs that they are regularly to assemble here twioe a year for the purpose of trying all prisoners who may be brought before them; and as particular cases OCCill' which may require immediate inquiry, they have agreed to attend whenever I find it necessary to summon them. One assembly has been already held, at which 1 principal chief (sardar 74 mujhis , and 120 common hill people were tried for plnndering the parganIL of Kharakpur of near nine hundred head of cattle. The trial lasted three days, and was conducted with as much ceremony and formality as the nature and disposition of the people would admit of. I have the pleasure to observe, however, that the chiefs appeared to conduct themselves throughout the trial with the greatest attention and impartiality, and the result of their proceedings, which I have confirmed, is as follows :-One principal chief, Bidji of Titoria, and one common hill man, Chandra of Pupat, to be hanged immediately; and the sentence was accordingly carried into execu¬tion this morning, in the presence of the corps of hill archers and all the principal hill chiefs and rnll11Jltis. One mUl1filli, Jarua of Tatakpara, to be hanged twenty days hence, unless the whole cattle plundered are delivered up in that time, in which case he is to be pardoned. Seven ml111/his to be confined for their lives, nnless the whole of the cattle plundered are delivered np in twenty days, in which case they are to be pardoned. Sixty-five mILly/tis and 120 common hill people acquitted." The rules of Mr. Cleveland's Hill Assembly were subseqnently incorporated in Regulation I of 1796, which "provided that the Magistrate should commit all important cases to be tried before an assembly of hill chiefs. He was to attend the trial as superintending officer, and confirm or modify the sentence, if not exceeding fourteen years' imprisonment. Higher sentenecs were referred to the Nizamat Adalat, as the Supreme Oriminal Court was then called. 'This unusual procedure was followed till 1827, when the law was repealed by Regulation I of that year; the mountaineers were then declared amenable to the ordinary courts, but some of the hill man/lzZs were to sit with the Magistrate as assessors when he tried cases in which the hill men were concerned; and the man/his were also authorized to adjudicate summarily in disputes about land, succession, and claims to money when the value of the claim did not exceed one hundred rupees."
Itappears that the Hill Assembly, when no longer kept together by the personal influence of Mr. Cleveland, became almost unmanageable. considerable difficulty was experienced in getting the chiefs to meet at all; and when present they would not attend to the proceedings of the court, while their sentences were hasty and capricious in the extreme. It was found, too, that even when the assemblies could be induced to do their work, the power they had been entrusted with was too uncontrolled, and that the total per-sonal exemption of the Males from the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts was a measure of doubtful policy, the more so as it seems to have been held that under Regulation I of 1796 the Magistrate had no power to try and punish Males for petty offences on his own motion. Regulation of 1827 has now heen repealed by Act XXIX of 1871.
In 1783, the year before his death, Mr. Oleveland proposed that the Males should be given extensive grants of waste land at the foot of the hills on the following terms :-(1) Every sa1'dILr was to have a rent• free jagh' or service tenure, in perpetuity, of from 100 to 300 bightis of land. (2) Any Male of lower rank than a. chief
might be allowed any qnantity of land ront free for ten years, it being liable to subsequent assessment at equitable rates. (3) In order to secure that the foregoing provisions should really come into operation, Mr. Cleveland sugge ted that all SGl'dcl1'S and man:fhis holding pelJsions from Government should forfeit their pensions unless they settled in the plains within twelve months. It was hoped that by thus forcing the hill men to settle in the plains they would become civilized by interoourse with the lowlanders; while as they learned more productive methods of agriculture it would be possible to make them contribute to the cost of administration. But the scheme was never carried out, and the immigration of Santals from the west has now almost completely cut off the Males from close intercourse with the plains. In any ca e, it may be doubted whether they would have left their hills; while from all that is known of the Oraons and other Dravidian race f Mr. Cleveland's expectation that the Males would take to manufactures appear to have been utterly unfounded.
Traditions
The traditions of the Male are meagre. In Lieutenant Shaw's wellknown monograph on the tribe published in 1795, a story is told of seven brothers who were deputed by the gods to people the earth. A feast was made, and it was arranged that each brother was to take of such food as he liked and go to the land which he had chosen to dwell in. One took one thing and one another, and their choice determined the caste of their descendants. From the brotber who took goat's flesh sprang the Hindus ; another who took flesh of all kiuds, but refused pork, became the father of the Mahomedans ; another chose pork, and from him are the Kiratis; another is the ancestor of the , Kawdir' (Kadar), and so on. Only the eldest brother, who was sick, got all sorts of food in an old dish. He was left in the hills as an outcast, and from him the Male are descended. 'This myth is clearly only an echo of the similar story told by the Mundas and Ho. Both vel' ions agree in their general tenor and in some of their details; both must have arisen after the tribes had been for some time in contact with Hilldus, and both, it may be added, find it necessary to provide a place for the English in their account of the making of mankind.
Internal Structure
All my correspondents agree in assuring me that the Males have no endogamous or exogamous subdivisions, an a elr marnages are reguae solely by the standard formula for reckoning prohibited degrees which is explained in the introduction. If this is correct, a point upon which I am not yet fully convinced, the fact is remarkable. The Mates have been less exposed to Hindu influences than their kinsmen, the Oraons, yet the latter retain a long list of exogamous totems, while the former have no exogamous groups at ali, and in this respect are more modern than most Hindu tes. The question seems to me to call for further inquiry. One would wish to know whether the Male ever observed the characteristic Dravidian system of exogamy; and if so, how it came to fall into disuse.
Marriage
Free courtship is allowed, and girls are married, when of full age, to men of their own choice. Sexual inter¬ course before marriage is not recognized in theory, but if an unmarried girl becomes pregnant a sacrifice is offered to atone for the indiscretion, and arrangements are made to get her married without delay. Marriage brokers (sit/w) are employert to conduct the prelim¬inary negotiations, and to settle the difficult question of the bride¬price. When this has been satisfactorily arranged, an auspicious day is fixed, when the bridegroom goes with his friends to the bride's house, taking with him a goat to furnish forth the wedding feast, and the bride-price. a portion of which is sometimes paid before¬hand through the sithu. The parties are made to sit opposite each other, the bridelrroom facing east and the bride west, while her girl friends comb and oil her hair. Then the father takes the bride by the hand and gives her to the bridegroom, pointing out that she is not halt, maimed or blind, and enjoining him to treat her kindly. This done, the sithu takes the bridegroom's right hand, dips the little finger in sindu1', and makes five dots with it ou the girl's fore¬head, afterwards using her finger to perform the same office for the bridegroom. Guns are fired to mark tho completion of this essential rite, and the married couple then eat together out of the same dish in symbol of their union. The proceedings are concluded by a feast.
Divorce
Divorce is permitted with the sanction of the leading men of the village. If the husband demands a divorce on the ground that his wife is barren, that she has committed adultery, or that she is incurably lazy, he is entitled to claim a refund of the bride-price which he paid for her in the first instance. He forfeits this right if the reasons which he gives are deemed to be frivolous and insufficient. If the wife claims a divorce on whatever grounds, her family must refund the bride-price. The ritual observed consists in tearing a sal leaf or breaking a small branch or a piece of string in token of separation, and pouring a vessel ?f water over the woman's head. Divorced women may marry again .
Religion
The religion of the Males is animism of the type common among Dravidian tribes. At the bead of their system stands the Sun called Dharmer Gosain, and represented by a roughlyhewn post set up in front of each house. He is worshipped with offerings of fowls, goats, sindm, and oil at the commencement of the harvest season, and at other times when any misfortune befalls the family. When people are gathered together for this purpose, the village headman. who acts as priest, goes round the congregation with an egg in his hand, and recites the names of certain spirits. He then throws away the egg, apparently as a propitiatory offering, and enjoins the spirits to hold aloof and abstain from troubling the sacrifice. Among the Ininor gods mentioned by Lieutenant l:)haw, Raksi now appears as the tutelar deity of strong drink, who is worshipped by the headman of the village before beginning to distil liquor from the fresh mallua crop.
According to Lieutenant Shaw, Raksi is sought out when a man¬eating tiger infests a village or a bad epidemic breaks out, and is worshipped in the form of a black stone set up under a tree and hedged round with Euphorbia plants. chal or chalnad is a god presiding over a group of ten villages, and represented by a black stone set up under a 1nukmum tree. Gonts and pigs are the animals usually offered to him, and the sacrifice of a cow, said by Lieutenant Shaw to be performed every three years, seems to have fallen into disuse. Pau-Gosain. the god of highways, lives under a bel, kura1'e, or rnukmum tree. He is invoked by persons going on a journey. When Lieutenant Shaw wrote the offering was a cock. Now it is a white goat, and the sacrifice is said to be a very expensive one, by sea on of the large amount of rice-beer-ten or twelve maundsthat must be offered to the god and drunk by his assembled votaries. The tutelary deity of the village, spoken of by Lieutenant Shaw under the name of Dwara Gosain, is now called Bara-Dwari, because he is supposed to live in a temple with twelve doors. The whole village worship him in the month of Magh. Oolonel Dalton suggests that this god may perhaps be the same as t.he Oraon Dara. Kul Gosain, 'the Geresof the mountaineers,' and Autga, the god of hunting, appear not to be known at the present day. Gumo Gosain, or the god of the pillar, is represented in every household by the wooden post (gumo) which supports the main rafters of the roof. On this the blood of a slain goat is sprinkled to propitiate the spirits of ancestors. 'l'he fact that this god is common to the Males and Mal Pabarias (see page 70 below), and is worshipped by both in the same way, seems to tell str0ngly in favour of the common origin of the two tribes. As in Lieutenant Shaw's time, chamda Gosain still ranks high among the tribe, and demands offerings on a larger scale than any other god. A sacrifice consisting of twelve pigs and twelve goats, with rice, oil and sindll1' in proportion, must put a severe strain on the resources of a Male villager. In order to commemorate the event, three bamboos decorated with streamers of bark painted black and red a,t the ends, the natural colour being left in the centre, are set up to represent Chamda Goain in front of the house of the person who organizes the sacrifice. One bamboo has ninety streamers, another sixty, and the third twenty, and the poles are also decorated with peacock's feathers. The night is spent in dancing, and ill the morning sacrifices are offered in the house and in the fields for fl, blessing on the family and on the crops. The bamboos are then taken inside and suspended from the roof of the house to show that the owner has performed the full sacrifice.
The question whether the Males have any functionaries who can properly be called priests is in some respects an obscure one. According to Buchanan, they formerly had priests called Naiyas or Laiyas, a designation common enough in Western Bengal, but these, it is said, have now disappeared, and then functions have development upon the Demanos, who were originally only diviners selected for their supposed intimacy with the spirits, their capacity for going into trances, and so forth, these powers being in some mysterious way bound up with their long hair, which may on no account be cut. More recent observers, however, assure me that the Demano merely directs religious and ceremonial observance, but does not himself officiate as priest. The duties of priest are disoharged by the village headman or the chief mem ber of' the household, or by any influential person ohosen for the ocoasion, and the Demano is merely a spiritual direotor endowed with certain eupernatural powers, such as that of disoerning the causes of all diseases, so that when a lOan falls ill he can say which of the gods has afflicted him and what sort of sacrifice should be offered to bring about his recovery. On the occasions when Chamda Gosain and Gumu Gosain are worshipped, the Demano is decorated with a necklace of cowrie hells. No Demino may eat turmeric. Besides the Demano there is another rlass of divines called Cherin, whose duty is to select persons to officiate as priests. This he does by balancing a bow on his two hands and watching its osciilations, while he calls out one by one the names of the persons present, the idea being that the god thus signifies from whose hands he wishes to receive the offering. 'The flesh of the animals offered in sacrifice is eaten by the male worshippers: women may Dot partake of it.
Disposal of the dead
As a rule the Male bury their dead, the corpse being laid on a layer of bhelak leaves with the head pointing towards the north. The bodies of those who died of snake-bite or have come to a violent end are exposed in the jungle. According to Colonel Dalton, the bodies of Demanos are dealt with in this fashion, on the ground that if they are buried in the village, their ghosts walk and cause annoyance to the living. On the fifth day after death a feast is given, to which all members of the family are invited. Six months or a year later a special ceremony is held for the purpose of appeasing the spirit of the dead man. The chief part is played by the Demano. who represents the deceased, and is dressed so as to personate him as closely as possible. In this character he demands clothes, ornament!', food and whatever the dead man was fond of in this life, the belief being that if they are given to the Demano, the spirit will in some unexplained fashion have the u e of them in the world of the dead. When the Demano has got all that he asked for, he goes into a fit and remains insensible for some minutes, during which time he is sup¬ posed to be in communication with the spirit of the deceased. On his revival the company partake of a feast. . The property left by the dead man cannot be divided until this second feast has taken place. According to Oolonel Dalton, the eldest son takes half, and the remainder is equally divided among the agnates. Some say, however, that division among the sons takes place on a sort of diminishing soale according to order of birth, the eldest getting the largest share, the second less, and so on.
Mode of living
The Male villages are usually built on the summits of the range of hills occupied by the tribe. Their houses are constructed of wattled bamboo, the interstices of which are filled with grass, no mud being used. They cultivate by burning the underwood and sowing seed in the ashes, a system usually known as jhum or Parao, but by them called kale mandote, or 'jungle-burning.' Although addicted to this destructive method of agriculture, the Male are great lovers of trees, which they plant freely on their village sites. In matters of diet they acknowledge none of the restrictions recognized by Hindus. They eat beef, pork, domestic fowls, all kinds of fish, and the leavings of people of other castes, and indulge freely in strong drink.
