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A Case of Anomalous Values in Indian Civilization: Meat-Eating Among the Kanya-Kubja Brahmans of Katyayan Gotra

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

R. S. Khare
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Extract

Indian philosophical thought has always attempted to deal with opposite or binary values. However, when faced with contradictions, social scientists try to analyze the form, meaning and function of opposed values in real social situations. The problem of opposed values becomes difficult and anomalous when the culture, at different levels, not only permits oppositions, but simultaneously sanctions them. The data on meat-eating among the Kanya-Kubja brahmans of Katyayan gotra (primarily an exogamous group composed of several lineages) present this type of problem to the social anthropologist.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , February 1966 , pp. 229 - 240
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Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1966

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References

1 Thurston, E., Castes and Tribes of South India (Madras, 1909), I, 268–269.Google Scholar

2 Crooke, William, The Tribes and Castes of the North Western Provinces and Oudh (Calcutta, 1896), II.Google Scholar

The Saryuparin Brahmans are also called Sarwariya Brahmans. According to an informant, “They settled on the banks of the river Sarju in the time of Raja Aja, grand-father of Rama, the epic hero.” They have gotra and local sub-divisions arranged along aspads or titles. However, I am not in a position to examine and compare this case of meat-eating because of insufficient data.

3 Pravara usually refers to one or more eponymous sages including or excluding the gotra-founder. At present, these names are recited in daily worship, and on such occasions as the consecration of sacrificial fire and wearing a new sacred thread. In short, it is a ritual calling, much less prevalent than gotra.

4 Bajpai, A. P., Upmanyu Vamshavali (Benares, 1946), pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

5 Biswa scale, found only among the Kanya-Kubjas, has twenty divisions on analogy with the traditional measurement of land. According to the latter, there are 20 biswas to one bigha. Originating about 300 years ago, today this scale has definite and rather important ritual and social rank implications in marriage. The common rule is, “A Kanya-Kubja of 20 Biswa must marry his daughter only to one enjoying an equal rank, or, alternatively in a family in which there is a difference of only three or four biswas, but not more.” Thus those who rank low in the biswa scale try to relate themselves by any means possible to those higher in it. It is usually done by means of substantial dowry, but sometimes “it is even by coercion and threat.” Regarded as sowing the seeds of intra-caste and even intra-gotra rivalry, biswa is the most important scale for deciding one's ritual and social status. As this important scale of caste ranking is associated with ank (lineal ancestor) and Purusha (immediate ancestor), the latter are used as a means of ascertaining it.

6 It is a religious sect which concentrates on worshipping Divine Power (variously called Shakti, Durga, Mata, Devi, Jagdamba, etc.) through rituals which might be varied and even contradictory in character. Meat-eating is usually allowed as a sect ritual.

7 Sharma, K. N., “Hindu Sects and Food Patterns in North India,” Aspects of Religion in Indian Society, ed. by Vidyarthi, L. P. (Meerut, 1961), p. 53Google Scholar. He correlated vegetarianism with Vaishnavism and meat-eating with Shaktism and other contemporary forces of social change.

8 Khare, R. S., “The Kanya-Kubja Brahmans and their Caste Organisation,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, XVI (1960), 362–363.Google Scholar

9 In the Puranic age, the word Katyayan appears as (1) a rtvik (presiding priest) at Brahma's yajna (sacrifice) in Vayu-Purana; (2) a Pravara in Matsyapurana; and (3) a Kasyapa gotrakaras (gotra founder) again in Matyapurana. In the same work (Dikshitar, V. R. R., The Purana Index, Madras, 1951)Google Scholar, the word Katyayani refers to the image of a devi (goddess) having “ten hands, three eyes, youthful, [sic] killing Mahisasura, and riding on the lion.” That the Katyayani fast was first observed by the girls (gopis) of the Vraja in the early season of Hemanta (October-November) is reported by the Bhagwat (x.22., 1–27). Monier-Williams, in his Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1899), also notes that Katyayani is a name of Durga appearing in Harivanshapurana, Lalitvistara and Prabodha-chandrodaya; there are also reported three rishis (sages) of the same name, all belonging to the gotra of rishi Kat.

10 Vishwamitra, the famous epic sage, and originally a king and a Kshatriya (son of King Gadhi), provides the most glaring mythical instance in which a Kshatriya is allowed to become a Brahman “in his same yoni [birth] by his tapa [asceticism].” Symbolizing all the qualities of a ferocious Kshatriya (warrior), he had to toil hard to attain brahmanhood. But the latter was ‘conferred’ on him by Vasistha, a famous brahma-rishi, only after Vishwamitra had forsaken warrior values. According to almost all Katyayan informants, “a dispensation for taking up certain warrior practices, including meat-eating, comes through the fact that Vishwamitra, our ancestor, was after all initially a warrior himself.”

11 William Crooke, op. cit.; Bhattacharya, J. N., Hindu Castes and Sects (Calcutta, 1896)Google Scholar; Monier-Williams, , Brahmanism and Hinduism (London, 1891).Google Scholar

12 Crooke (1896) and several informants cited a famous episode of Bala's supernatural power. “Once a number of Kanya-Kubjas made a plot to spit on him (Bala) when he went to the Ganges to bathe. When he came out of the river on its banks, all spat at him. He sat down and laughingly said, ‘To be spat by so many eminent Brahmins is good as a bath in Ganga ji.’ So his enemies were ashamed and begged his pardon. Then he said, ‘the reason that I bow to none is that my power is without limit, of which I will give you proof!’ So he bowed to a stone lying by and it was broken into fragments. They [brahmins] were astonished, and bowing at his feet, went their way.”

13 Wilson, H. H., Religious Sects of the Hindus (Calcutta, 1958). p. 139Google Scholar. This book was originally published in 1861 and edited by Ernst R. Rost.

14 Wilson, p. 141.

15 Wilson, pp. 139–140.

16 Zimmer, Heinrich, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civiliation, ed. by Campbell, Joseph (New York, 1946), pp. 201–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Zimmer, p. 205; emphasis provided by author.

18 The informant cited the case of Mangal Pandey, the soldier who was held to be responsible for starting the Indian Mutiny. He was a brahman. He fired the first bullet against the British in Meerut, a city in western Uttar Pradesh.

19 There is a famous mythical episode between the sages Vishwamitra and Vasistha in this regard. Vishwamitra, as a King, wanted to snatch by force a cow named Nandini, which belonged to sage Vasistha. The latter, being a Brahman, did not resort to force, he just requested the cow to protect herself. Nandini defeated Vishwamitra in the first encounter. Feeling insulted, Vishwamitra pleased Lord Shiva by austerity and penance; and he thus acquired extraordinary weapons. Once again, however, Vishwamitra was defeated as there was nothing to defeat brahma-danda (weapon of the Brahman) of Vasisdia. Feeling more humiliated, Vishwamitra now tried to attain Brahmanhood itself by means of severe tapa (austerity). But Vasistha would not allow him to enter into Brahmanhood as long as Vishwamitra relied on weapons and other Kshatriya (warrior) values. Only after renunciation of these, Vishwamitra was conferred Brahmanhood and was thereafter called Brahmarishi (Brahman sage) instead of Rajrishi (warrior sage).

20 R. S. Khare, op. cit., pp. 351–353.

21 Eggan, Fred, “Cultural Drift and Social Changes,” (Papers in honour of M. J. Herskovits) Current Anthropology, 1963, IV, no. 4, p. 347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Eggan, p. 354.

23 Vaishnavised Shaktism abolishes animal sacrifice, dwells on benign aspects of the Goddess, and strongly favors teetotalism. Katyayans are increasingly taking to this version of Shaktism.

24 It is a common observation that moods of the deity of worship change with the devotee's age. It has, however, nothing to do explicitly with the well-known Vanaprastha and Samyasa ashramas of old age. The theory of ashramas is hardly applicable in the life of a modern Hindu. I am describing some subtle changes in faith and world view of a modern Hindu as he grows old.

25 Those who want to rise in the secular arena start eating meat. Those who have risen socially and economically start eating meat as a reflection of their sophistication.

26 Pritchard, E. E. Evans, The Nuer (Oxford University Press, 1940)Google Scholar; Social Anthropology (London, 1951)Google Scholar; Nuer Religion (Oxford University Press, 1956)Google Scholar. He has clearly dwelt upon the need for abstracting from a body of social events in his Social Anthropology. He has exemplified this method of analysis extensively in two other works cited above.

27 K. N. Sharma, op. cit., pp. 53–54; emphasis provided by author.

28 Sharma, pp. 43–44.

29 Another interesting example of anomalous sect practices is described by Carstairs (“Pattern of Religious Observances in Three Villages of Rajasthan,” Aspects of Religion in Indian Society, ed. by Vidyarthi, L. P., Journal of Social Research, 1961 IV, no. 1–2, 59–113Google Scholar) in which the “ritual act of sex” is practiced by the rural Rawats of Rajasthan. “The name of Ram-Devji is also associated with the worship of Sakti, or female energy, as personified by the Goddess Devi. This form of worship is akin to the other panth, but with the difference that the supreme object of their devotion is not represented by light or fire, but by the act of sexual intercourse, and by semen, which is believed to issue from both male and female in that act.”