as the supply of suitable husbands dimirushed,„and. competition ran higher for a K uliu bridegroom. . •
T h e reforms undertaken in the fourteenth century by Devi
*Vara, a ghatak or genealogist of Jesaore, extended only to the Kulins. These were divided into three grades — (7) Swabh&va or original Kulins, (ii) Bhanga, (m ) Bansaja. The Swabhava grade was further subdivided into 36 mels, or endogamous groups, eaoh bearing the name of the original ancestor o f the elan or of his .village. This restriction of the marriage3 o f Kulins to their own mel was the leading feature o f Devi Vara’s reform. Its prinoiple was adopted and extended, it is believed, by the Kulins them
selves, in the singular arrangement known as Palti-Prakriti, or preservation of the type, by whioh families of equal rank were formed into triple groups, as it werej fo? matrimonial purposes, and bound to observe a sort of reciprocity.
M e a n t im e -th9 rush of competition for KuliD husbands on the part o f Bhanga, Bansaja and Srotriya classes was as strong as before, while the proportionate number of pure Kulins had been reduced by the loss of those who had become Bhangas and B a n s a ja s . In order to dispose of the surplus of women in the higher groups, polygamy was introduced, and was resorted to on a very large soale. It was popular with the Kulins beoause it enabled them to make a handsome income by the aoddent of their birth; and it was accepted by the parents of the girls concerned as o f f e r i n g the only means of complying with the requirements of the Hindu religion. Tempted by a p a n ,: or premium, whioh often reached the sum of two thousand rupees, Swabhava Kulins made light of their kul and its obligations, and married Bansaja girls, whpm they left after the ceremony to be taken oare of*
by their parents. Matrimony became a sort of profession, and the honour of marrying a daughter to a Bhanga Kuliu is said to have been so highly valued in Eastern Bengal that as soon as a boy was ten years old his friends began to disouss his matrimonial p r o sp e c ts , and before he was twenty he had beoome the husband of many wives of ages varying from five to fifty.*
"With the Bpread of education among the upper olasses of Bengal an aivanoe In social morality has been made and the grosser forms of polygamy have fallen into disrepute. But the a r tific ia l organization of the oaste still presses hard on a Kulin father who is unlucky enpugh to have a large fam ily of daughters.
These must be married before they attain puberty, or disgraoe will fall on the fam ily, and three generations of ancestors will be dishonoured. But a Kulin bridegroom can only be obtained
* Ilisley’s Tribes and Castes of Bengal.
by paying a heavy prqjnium, many o f the m ils instituted by
•Devi Vara have died#out, and in suoh oases, reciprocal marriage being no longer possible, ih e son of a fam ily left without a corresponding mel must marry the only daughter of a w id o w ; while the daughter of a K alin widow, for whom no husband o f equal birth oan be procured, may be married to a Srotriya, and a premium accepted without endangering the fam ily prestige.*
A s has already been noticed in Chapter II, Gopbhum, the Sadgops.
furthest headland o f the promontory from Central India whioh juts into the distriot, was formerly the seat o f a Sadgop dynasty of whioh some traoes are still extant. According to Mr. John Boxwell, “ Sadgop ” is nearly pure Sanskrit, a tatmma, and probably a modern name: ii> means “ good cowherd ” . The Sadgops are supposed to have separated from the yodids by abandoning pastoral pursuits afld taking exclusively to agri
culture, and their separation into two sub-castes— Pasohim Kuliga and Purba Kuliga living to the west and east o f the Bhagirathi—is referred by tradition to the time of Ballal Sen.
It is doubtful, however, whether tbis theory of .their origin is correot. Tne Sadgops are undoubtedly a modern caste, and their realm Gopbhum oould not have been ancient. They have no counterpart in Hindustan; they are not widely diffused and all the scattered members of the caste refer back to Gop- bhfim. They now utterly repudiate connection with the godla, and with the profession of cow-herdiDg or milking. Though they must have been Gops before they were Sadgop, and though Gopbhum is more pastoral than agricultural, they assert that they were the lords, not the attendants, of cattle, and the only profession they acknowledge for themselves is agri.
culture. They actually stand at the head of the Bengal agri
cultural ca'tes, but their pretension to head the Nabasakh, or nine chief Sudra castes, who interchange the hukah, is contested by the Telis. The rtadgop, nevertheless, pretend to rank with the Kayastha, and, like them, take the surname Ghosh, whioh is burne, too, by some goaias. They have not yet, however, 'lik e some.of the Bengal Kayasthas, claimed Kshatriyahood. in
the sense that it is now being claimed, as metely the next rank to the Brahmans. N or can they be thought quite analogous to the Kayasthas in view of the infinitely wider diffusion, purer Aryan blood, and known antiquity of the latter. The closest aoiua'l analogy that can be found to them are the A guri, whose formation and recentness are known. But the con
clusion that the Brahmans have had much to do with the
* Eisley’a Tribes and Castes of Bengal.
6 4 BUBDWAN.
Aguris.
Sadgop is irresistible. In no other way oqp the large mixture of Aryan blood as shown b y the occurrence #among the Sadgop ' of so many individuals with the large bones, fine frames, acquiline
’ features and carriage of the BrShmans, be accounted for. The only A ryans in the small locality concerned must have been the Brahmans or the Kayastha. I f the latter, we can know from other instanoes that the status of the Sadgop could not be so high as it is. In a oountry like Gopbhum, the largest class of servants and attendants on the oonquering Brahmans must have been cowherds and milkmen. The conjeoture that the Sadgop have sprung from the Brahmans and the earlier go&las would account for all the peculiarities to be noticed among them—
their Aryan blood and their high .social position, their position in Gopbhum as a dynasty, and their name. Their repudiation of all connection with the Aodern • goala would be further accounted for by the very humble or degraded position of the latter. The Sadgop do not claim to represent even the legendary Gops and Gopis. W hether their genesis was aotually in Gopbhum or Gopbhum took its name from them, is immaterial.
One ourious custom of the caste may be noticed. Sadgops will not eat pumpkin (law) and dal in the month o f Asarh, and by way of accounting for this prohibition tell the absurd story that they are descended from one Ealu Ghosh, who, being appointed b v one of the gods to look after hi3 cattle, killed and ate ,the saored animals. Oddly enough, instead of being punished for his saorilege, his descendants, who thenceforth applied them
selves to cultivation, were permitted to rank above the ohildren of the other brother, Murari Ghosh, who faithfully discharged his trust.•
The Aguri caste is peouliar to this district, and its ohief settlement is the old deltaic soil between the great line of marshes to the. west of the Bhagirathi and the present boundary of Gopbhum, in which the Sadgops are still the most prominent caste. ;'The tract is now the pargana Azmatashahi, a name whioh indicates that it was formed by the Mughals, and the prevalenoe of thd Aguris in it points to its having formed part of the kingdom to*Gopbhum. As usual, the unmixed section of the race is found clinging to the wild and uncultivated portion of its country. For the Aguris, b y their own aHmission, are the product of uniong between the Khetris o f the house of Burdwan and the Sadgops of the Gopbhum dynasty, and tho caste arose within the last two hundred years, if not within a still shorter period. Two hundred years ago was the era of the Burdwan Khetris first assuming prominence. True to the policy of
the old Aryan invaders, or me^e acquirers o f the soldier caste, they
•began tp form 'alliances with tfye members of the royal race (it matters not whether purely aboriginal or semi or wholly Aryan, provided it was royal) with whioh they oame in contact.
The Khetris, however, had scarcely risen to the state of Rajas themselves when a combinatiQn of circumstanoes, whioh at this moment are influencing them, induoed them to assert their exclusive oharacter as an immigrant people from either Oudh or the Punjab, and not as settled inhabitants o f Bengal. They have, throughout the last two hundred years, shown this anxiety to keep up by this means their connection with the other Khetris who are scattered throughout India. The consequence was that the Aguri caste, though esteemed highly respectable, has never attained the. full status of the Kshatriya, as it would have done, to judge from »other examples, had its origin been less reoent. Though its name Aguri is contracted from Ugraha-Khetri, or “ the fierce Khetris ” (probably in allusion to its semi-barbarous ancestors, the Sadgops of wild Gopbhum), it is a distinotly cultivating caste. Its members, at least those of one section of the caste, wear the saored thread, and assert their superiority over the Sadgops from whom they have in part sprung, a pretension whioh, though soorned by the Sadgops, is
practically admitted by other Hindus.*
The Aguris are popularly believed to be the modern represen
tatives of the U gra or Ugra Kshatriyas mentioned in M an u :
“ from a Kshatriya by a Sudra .girl is born a oreature called an Ugra (oruel) which has a nature partaking both of Kshatriya and of Sudra and finds its pleasure in savage conduct,” Acoording to tlie same authority, their occupation is “ oatching and killing animals that live in holep.” They are distinotly, however, a cultivating class: many of them, hold estates and tenures of various grades, and the bulk of the oaste are fairly prosperous cultivators. In 1872 they were almost peouliar to the territories of the Burdwan Raj, and it is clear that the Burdwan Khetri could have been the only Kshatriya concerned^ in. a development which appeared in a single estate in Bengal, -though thfe text which accounts for it is over 1,800 years old* and refers to the Punjab. The Burdwan Brahmans readily found the text .when it was necessary to assign a particular status to these 'new families.
I f popular rumour is to be credited, the Aguris still “ find their pleasure in savage conduot,” for they are said to be extraordinarily short-tempered, and the oriminal records of the distriot seem to show
* Oldham. Some Historical and Ethnical Aspects of the Burdwan district.