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The Saurāshtrans of South India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

H. N. Randle
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Extract

Some three years ago chance brought to light in the India Office Library a little book with an English title on the cover: First catechism of Sourashtra grammar. By T. M. Rama Rou. Madras, 1905. It challenged inquiry because the script was quite unfamiliar. With it was another little book in the same script and by the same author—Saurāṣṭra-bōdhini (1906)—which fortunately gave the alphabet, in the usual order, and lists of the complex combinations of all the vowels with all the consonants, so that the script could be read. The language is listed as Paṭṅūlī, but is not described, in the Linguistic Survey of India. The author of the two books had, however, provided the necessary clue to understanding in his grammar, the opening sections of which happen to be bilingual, quoting and translating the rules of Sanskrit grammarians. For the rest, since it was usually possible to anticipate what the writer must say, for example in denning grammatical terms, and since after all the book itself gave an account of the inflectional system of the language, it remained only to arrive at the meaning of words, so far as it was not obvious from analogues in other modern Indo-Aryan languages; and (a more difficult task) to grasp the part played in the language by certain striking forms of expression which have no Indo-Aryan parallels.—To learn a modern language by methods appropriate to the interpretation of lost languages of the past is of course a procedure difficult to defend, when it would be so simple, and so much better, to learn it from the lips of the speakers in India. But the better course was not open to me, and I was not willing to postpone indefinitely an investigation which promised to be interesting from other points besides the linguistic.

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Articles
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Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 76 , Issue 3-4 , October 1944 , pp. 151 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1944

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References

page 152 note 1 Quoted from Rao's, K. RangaMadura, a tourist's guide (Madras, 1913)Google Scholar, to which I am largely indebted for this description of the community. Other sources besides Thurston's, exhaustive article “Patnulkarans” in his Castes and Tribes of South India, vol. vi (1909)Google Scholar, are Nelson's, J. H.The Madura Country (1868)Google Scholar; Francis, W. in Madras Census Report, 1901Google Scholar, and Madura District Gazetteer (1906); and the community's own publication, A History of the Sourashtras in Southern India (Madura, 1895Google Scholar; reprinted 1942).

page152 note 2 Rao's, K. RangaMadura, p. 141Google Scholar. Cf. Nelson, J. H., The Madura Country (1868), Part II, p. 87Google Scholar.

page 153 note 1 Ibid., pp. 145–6. It is hard to see how all of them can claim to be Brahmans. Their own History of the Sourashtras states that “the Souraehtras like other nations of India are divided into four great divisions, viz. Brahma, Kshatriya, Vaisya, and Sudra”. But MrAiyar, K. V. Padmanābha in a Tamil pamphlet Naṭana Gōpāla Svāmi carittiram (Madura, 1938)Google Scholar cites as smṛtivākya some ślokas which speak of textile workers in Saurāṣtra-deśa as “twice-born”:—

Sāurāṣṭra-deśe jīvanti paṭa nirmāya (sic) vai dvijāḥ

Śālihotrānvayodbhūtā vicitra-paṭa-kāriṇaḥ.

The following couplet says that Brahmans in different countries follow various occupations—Tat-tad-deśeṣu viprāṇāṃ vṛttayo vividhāḥ.

page 153 note 2 Census Report, 1901, vol. xv (Madras), p. 173Google Scholar.

page 153 note 3 Francis, W., Madura District Gazetteer, vol. i, pp. 109–111Google Scholar.

page 153 note 4 Ibid., p. 177.

page 153 note 5 I have so far failed to obtain a copy of these questions and answers, although they exist in print.

page 153 note 6 According to the Census of India, 1931 (vol. xiv, Madras, Part II, Table XV, pp. 294–5)Google Scholar a great majority of speakers of Saurāshtrī (89,000 out of 104,000) returned Tamil as their subsidiary language. Only 664 spoke Telugu as subsidiary to Saurāshtrī. But the facts indicate that some Saurāshtrans are trilingual, and that those who are literate can read the Telugu as well as the Tamil script. Saurāshtran publications have been printed in no less than five different characters: Telugu, Tamil, Nāgarī, and two unique scripts (one used in 1880, the other between about 1890 and 1908. The latter is called the Saurāshtran script. See the accompanying plate).

page 154 note 1 Rāo's, T. M. RāmaSaurāṣṭra-nandi-nighaṇṭu (printed in Saurāshtran character, Madura, 1908)Google Scholar, verse 57, gives Boskaṇ, Boskaṇṇo, Boskaṇo as alternative forms of the name of an attendant of Śiva.

page 154 note 2 This is cited from the Madura District Gazetteer, p. 110.

page 154 note 3 This is not clear. The Karestuns (kar, do = the workers [?]) seem to be excluded from the fourfold division, and to be added by an afterthought. Then again Voyddoos (Vaidyas), Bhautuls, Joshis, and Kavis seem to be placed in the same category with the Saulins. [For Saulins see below page 163, footnote 2. Govnda is presumably from gām (S. grāma); the headmen among the Kāle Kunbis of the Bombay Province are called gāvada (Enthoven, , Tribes and Castes of Bombay, vol. ii, p. 225Google Scholar). Bhautul is found at the end of proper names, occasionally.] Nor is it clear how this division works in with the traditional four-fold caste division which is stated to be applicable (p. 153, footnote 1).

page 154 note 4 Rao's, RangaMadura (p. 147)Google Scholar says that “at the close of every marriage the Rama or Krishna Nataka must be enacted”. Much of their literature is of the saṃgīta class, and the rāgas in which such lyrics are to be sung are invariably named. A long section in the Saurāṣṭra-nandi-nighaṇṭu (which is closely modelled on the Amarakośa, however), is devoted to technical terms relating to music, musical instruments, and dramatic performances. It appears from their literature, and is confirmed by those who have dealings with them, that a regard for truth (settu) may be added to the list of their qualities.

page 155 note 1 If the compilers of the History (1891) had heard of the Mandasor inscription discussed below—it was first published in the Indian Antiquary in 1886—this statement might have to be discounted as independent evidence. But if they knew of it they might have been expected to refer to it: unless they had a reason for disregarding it (see, e.g. in this connection, the Madras Census Report, 1901, p. 173: “The Mandasor inscriptions [sic], however, represent them as soldiers as well as weavers, which does not sound Brahmanical.” But the Khatris of the Punjab were soldiers as well as traders, and Sir Richard Burn points out that Brahmans may be soldiers. The suggested derivation of Saurāṣṭra from saura is of course unacceptable.

page 155 note 2 A book of Saurāshtran songs was published in 1924 under the title Madhvamata-prakāśini.

page 155 note 3 Ranga Rao (op. cit., p. 148) says that “they are devotees of Vishnu and Siva indiscriminately . . . Krishna is a favourite deity . . . most of them accept the head of the Sringeri Mutt as their spiritual head”.

page 155 note 4 The Linguistic Survey gives Khatrī as another name for Paṭṇūlī, without comment. But the name may be a clue.

(a) There is a community of about 50,000 hereditary silk and cotton weavers called Khatris in the Bombay Province. “They call themselves Kshatris and claim a Kshatriya origin, those in Gujarat claiming to be Brahma Kshatris. They are tall and fair and they wear the sacred thread. . . . These facts would seem to suggest that they originally belonged to the great Kshatri race of the Punjab” (Enthoven, R. E., Tribes and Castes of Bombay, 1901, vol. ii, p. 205Google Scholar). They have a number of endogamous divisions, such as Brahma Khatri, Somavamsi, Suryavamsi, etc. The Gujarātī Khatris are Vaishnavas; but like other Khatris, and like another small weaver-community, the Patvegars (Enthoven, ii, p. 225), they worship especially Hinglāj Mātā; which suggests that they came (as some of them in fact assert) from Sind (see Bombay Gazetteer, IX, i, p. 189).

(b) The Khatris of the central and north-west Punjab are a very important commercial community of some 450,000 persons. Guru Nānak and Guru Angad were both Khatris. Rose, (Glossary of Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and N.-W. Frontier Province, i, p. 59)Google Scholar remarks: “The modern Khatri is undoubtedly the ancient Kshatriya, though he had taken to trade . . . so thoroughly that Cunningham, [A.S.R., ii, p. 3]Google Scholar speaks of him as the Katri or grainseller as if his name were derived from katra or market!” See also Sherring's, Hindu Tribes and Castes, vol. i, pp. 277–283Google Scholar; vol. ii, pp. 76–9. Sir Atul Chatterjee draws my attention to the wide distribution of the Khatris. They are numerous in the United Provinces (Crooke, , Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, iii, 264–277Google Scholar) and in Bengal (Risley, , Tribes and Castes of Bengal, i, 478–484Google Scholar). Both Crooke and Risley quote SirCampbell's, George paper on The Ethnology of India (J.A.S.B., 1866Google Scholar) as giving the best account of them. All accounts describe them as a fair and good-looking race, whose business and administrative capacities often place them in positions of the first importance. Thus Akbar's minister Todar Mal was a Khatri.

page 156 note 1 A printed literature, in the case of a community which has a literate class, will always have been preceded by a literature preserved in memory and manusoript. Veṅkaṭa Sūri's poem (which occupies some 600 pages of print) was reduced to final form some twenty-five years before it was printed (1905). No doubt much unprinted Saurāshtran literature has survived.

page 156 note 2 This is the only one of the 1880 publications which I have seen. (This copy has since been regrettably lost from an exhibition of Indian books; but fortunately the whole of it had been rotographed.) It is lithographed in a character which I have seen nowhere else, but which has affinities to the “Saurāshtran alphabet” subsequently used in Rāma Rāo's publications. On the back cover is a list of twenty-five Saurāshtran books, obtainable from the author. (This list is given in a form of the Nāgarī script.) Only four of these were registered in the Madras Quarterly Catalogues, so that it is clearly very unsafe to infer that the Quarterly Catalogues at that date were a complete record of publications.—The use of gōṭa in the sense of “one” (e.g. goṭunnaśambu, 99), is a peculiarity of the Laghusaṅkhyavāḷi. Its list of European months has the heading Hūṇa mhaḍān, Hun months.

page 157 note 1 Veṅkaṭa Sūri enjoyed the patronage of the last Tanjore ruler, Śivaji (1832–1855). For his life see BSOAS., xi, i (1943), p. 106Google Scholar, footnote.

page 157 note 2 A Bhāgavata-sāriṅi and Bhagavad-gītā-sāriṇi figure in the 1880 list of Saurāshtran books mentioned above. It is not implied that large-scale translations from the Mahābhārata and other works were undertaken.

page 158 note 1 First Catechism of Sourashtra Grammar. By T. M. Rama Rou [in Saurashtran script], Madras, 1905Google Scholar. This has been summarized in BSOAS., ix, i (1943), pp. 104–121Google Scholar. See p. 151 supra. An edition in Nāgarī character is in the press at Madura.

page 158 note 2 Printed in Saurāshtran character, Madras, 1908, for the use of Saurāshtran schools in Madura. It is a typical kośa, unfortunately incomplete. The published part (Part 1) consists of twelve chapters, under such headings as heaven, space, time, music and drama, water. The synonyms given are often of course Sanskrit tatsamas, but it contains valuable linguistic material.

page 158 note 3 First printed both in Saurāshtran and in Telugu character, Madras, 1902. The text is given first in Saurāshtran character with Saurāshtran notes, then in Telugu character; and there are word lists, Saurāshtran-Tamil-Telugu-English. A second edition in Nāgarī character, with Saurāshtran prose version, was published in 1930 in Madras.

page 158 note 4 For example (in addition to the verses reproduced in the plate) this version of a well-known Sanskrit subhāita:—

“God does not come into the world like a cowherd bringing a cudgel to guard it: but he gives understanding to the faithful—they must guard themselves with it.”

page 160 note 1 The Saurāshtran Literary Committee has courteously given permission for the publication of samples of this literature in text and translation, and their Secretary, Mr. K. V. Padmanābha Aiyar, has promised collaboration. But the project must wait on opportunity.

page 160 note 2 The Mandasor inscription of Mālava years 493 and 529 (Fleet's, Gupta Inscriptions, No. 18Google Scholar).

page 160 note 3 Mr. F. J. Richards points out in a letter that a drastic administrative control of textile workers finds some parallel in the Bast India Company's policy in the Salem District at the end of the eighteenth century. See his Salem District Gazetteer (1918, vol. i, part 1, p. 260)Google Scholar. Sir Atul Chatterjee has suggested that the migrations of the Saurāshtrans may have been partly determined by climatic conditions favourable to silk-weaving.

page 161 note 1 These śikharas are again mentioned in the later couplet describing the temple after restoration. It appears that no remains of the period illustrate this feature: but in the brief section of the Bṛhat-saṃhitā (56) on temple-designs, some of the twenty types have śikharas (in the plural. Buhler's suggestion that the plural ia “honorific” is unnecessary). The author of the Bṛhat-saṃhitā, Varāhamihira, died in a.d. 587. Some discussion of the śikhara in its early stages is to be found in Rupam, 1922, No. 10, pp. 42–56 (Notes on the History of Sikhara Temples, by Gurudas Sarkar) and ibid., 1924, No. 17, pp. 2–6 (Beginning of the śikhara of the Nagara [Indo-Aryan] Temples, by Ramaprasad Chanda).

page 161 note 2 Mālava year 494 current. The date is December-January, a.d. 437–8.

page 161 note 3 bahunā samatītena kālenānyaiś ca pārthivaiḥ. “Other kings” seems to me to suggest foreign occupation of Daśapura, since otherwise there would be some implied reproach of the Guptas and of Bandhuvarman or his family. Perhaps Skandagupta and the ruler of Daśapura suffered some reverse at the hands of the Huns before (say) 468. I suggest that Bandhuvarman was still ruling Dasapura in 473 when the temple was restored. There is nothing in the epigraphic evidence relating to this family to suggest the contrary; and the present tense abhibhāti used of Bandhuvarman in verse 27 seems to support this supposition, which disposes of what has always been felt to be a serious difficulty—the failure to mention the ruler's name in connection with the date of the restoration of the temple.

page 161 note 4 February–March, a.d. 473.

page 161 note 5 Bühler takes a poor view of Vatsabhaṭṭi's gifts. It may be admitted that he was not a court-poet, but a private scholar who was perhaps glad to get a fee from the guild for writing the poem. It seems to me that he produced a pleasing poem, reasonably competent in its technique. Apart from Fleet's edition and translation the locus classicus on the inscription is still Bühler's discussion at pp. 8–29 and 70–1 (with text and emendations at pp. 91–6) in Die indische Inschriften und das Alter der indischen Kunstpoesie (Vienna, Sitzungsberichte, cxxii, 1890)Google Scholar. Bühler, , and Kielhorn, (Göttingen, Nachrichten, 1890, pp. 251–3)Google Scholar, thought that Vatsabhaṭṭi borrowed something from the Ṛtusaṃhāra and Meghadūta; and this has been used to date Kālidāsa.

page 162 note 1 The inscription says that some of the community were skilled in astrology, others intent on great deeds and versed in story, others given to discourses of true religion, while others had renounced worldly things and lived like gods among men. The community included skilled archers; and some were at that moment (a.d. 473) showing their prowess in battle.

page 162 note 2 An Indo-Aryan language of South India: Saurāṣṭra-bhāṣa. In the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, xi, i (1943)Google Scholar. Bühler drew attention to the Mandasor inscription in connection with the account of the Saurāshtrans in the 1891 Census of India, and all later accounts of the Saurāshtrans refer to it—the implication being that there is possibly a connection of some kind between the ancient Mandasor guild and the modern community. The Saurāshtrans themselves, on the other hand, make no reference to the inscription, as noted above (p. 155, footnote 1).

page 163 note 1 See Sewell, R., A Forgotten Empire (1900), p. 384 and footnote 2Google Scholar. Vijayanagar exercised suzerainty over a wide area, and Saurāshtrans may have migrated early to various parts of that empire.

page 163 note 2 It may be worth noting that a copper-plate of Śīlāditya I dated a.d. 608–9 records a grant for the maintenance of a temple of the Sun. It was a temple of the Sun that the Mandasor guild erected. The modern Saurāshtrans say that they were originally sun-worshippers. The second class in their ancient communal order were Saulins (p. 154 supra); sauḷi-vaśa is used in the Saurāṣṭra-Rāmāyaṋu of the family of Daśaratha, apparently in the sense of sūrya-vaṃśa: and the Saurāṣṭra-Nandi-nighaṅṭu gives among names for the Sun the word saul.

page 163 note 3 They annexed Sorath in a.d. 1113–14.

page 164 note 1 This line of thought was suggested to me by Sir Atul Chatterjee. He drew my attention to such weaving centres as Ahmedabad and Burhanpur and pointed out that inquiry into the weaving communities there and elsewhere might yield interesting results. I am not able to pursue the particular investigations indicated; but his criticism of my first view about the migration of the Saurashtrans has led me to the point of view here expressed.