DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16243#0150
n6
PEOPLE OF INDIA
careful examination by local committees of Indian gentlemen
appointed for the purpose.
The entire Hindu population of this tract, numbering twenty
millions, has been divided into seven classes. The first class
is reserved for the Brahmans, of whom there are more than a
million, forming six per cent, of the Hindus of Bengal. As
every one knows, there are Brahmans and Brahmans, of status
varying from the Rarhi, who claim to have been imported by
Adisura from Kanauj, to the Barna Brahmans who serve the
lower castes and from whose hands pure Brahmans will not take
water. No attempt has been made to deal with these multi-
farious distinctions in the table. It would be a thankless task
to try to determine the precise degree of social merit or demerit
that attaches to the Plrali Brahmans, who
Social precedence of are SUpposecj to have been forced, some four
Hindus m Bengal. \r '
centuries ago, to smell or, as some say, to
eat the beefsteaks that had been cooked for the renegade
Brahman Plr Ali, the dewan of the Muhammadan ruler of
Jessore; to the Vyasokta Brahmans who serve the Chasi
Kaibartta caste and rank so low that even their own clients will
not touch food in their houses ; to the Agradani who preside at
funeral ceremonies and take the offerings of the dead; to the
Acharji fortune-teller, palmist, and maker of horoscopes ; and
to the Bhat Brahman, a tawdry parody of the bard and genea-
logist of heroic times, whose rapacity and shamelessness are
proverbial.
Next in order, at the top of the second class, come the
Rajputs, who disown any connexion with Bengal, and base
their claims to precedence on their supposed descent from the
pure Rajputs of the distant Indo-Aryan tract. Their number
(113,405) must include a large number of families belonging to
local castes who acquired land and assumed the title of Rajput
on the strength of their territorial position. Then follow the
Baidyas, by tradition physicians, and the writer caste of
Kayasth. The former pose as the modern representatives of
the Anibastha of Manu and assert their superiority to the
Kayasthas on the ground that the latter have been pronounced
by the High Court of Calcutta to be Sudras, a Kayasth judge
concurring, and that their funeral usages confirm this finding;
that the Sanskrit College, when first opened, admitted only
Brahmans and Baidyas as students ; that the Kayasths were
originally the domestic servants of the two higher castes, and
when poor take service still; and that native social usage
PEOPLE OF INDIA
careful examination by local committees of Indian gentlemen
appointed for the purpose.
The entire Hindu population of this tract, numbering twenty
millions, has been divided into seven classes. The first class
is reserved for the Brahmans, of whom there are more than a
million, forming six per cent, of the Hindus of Bengal. As
every one knows, there are Brahmans and Brahmans, of status
varying from the Rarhi, who claim to have been imported by
Adisura from Kanauj, to the Barna Brahmans who serve the
lower castes and from whose hands pure Brahmans will not take
water. No attempt has been made to deal with these multi-
farious distinctions in the table. It would be a thankless task
to try to determine the precise degree of social merit or demerit
that attaches to the Plrali Brahmans, who
Social precedence of are SUpposecj to have been forced, some four
Hindus m Bengal. \r '
centuries ago, to smell or, as some say, to
eat the beefsteaks that had been cooked for the renegade
Brahman Plr Ali, the dewan of the Muhammadan ruler of
Jessore; to the Vyasokta Brahmans who serve the Chasi
Kaibartta caste and rank so low that even their own clients will
not touch food in their houses ; to the Agradani who preside at
funeral ceremonies and take the offerings of the dead; to the
Acharji fortune-teller, palmist, and maker of horoscopes ; and
to the Bhat Brahman, a tawdry parody of the bard and genea-
logist of heroic times, whose rapacity and shamelessness are
proverbial.
Next in order, at the top of the second class, come the
Rajputs, who disown any connexion with Bengal, and base
their claims to precedence on their supposed descent from the
pure Rajputs of the distant Indo-Aryan tract. Their number
(113,405) must include a large number of families belonging to
local castes who acquired land and assumed the title of Rajput
on the strength of their territorial position. Then follow the
Baidyas, by tradition physicians, and the writer caste of
Kayasth. The former pose as the modern representatives of
the Anibastha of Manu and assert their superiority to the
Kayasthas on the ground that the latter have been pronounced
by the High Court of Calcutta to be Sudras, a Kayasth judge
concurring, and that their funeral usages confirm this finding;
that the Sanskrit College, when first opened, admitted only
Brahmans and Baidyas as students ; that the Kayasths were
originally the domestic servants of the two higher castes, and
when poor take service still; and that native social usage