Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s1.5
Indische Paläographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s1.5
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§ 27. **Rājputs** (10,040,800). In this case, the community is unmistakeably military in its origin, with the old baronial attributes of landed-estate and leadership of an armed force. People are returned at the Census under this designation in considerable numbers from all parts of India except the South, but nine-tenths of them hail from north of the Vindhya and west of the Kōsi. The Provinces of Agra and Oudh alone account for 3,950,000. In the Panjāb there are 1,820,000, and in Bihār, about 1,200,000. The cradle of the Rājput is the tract named after him, not, however, as it is limited in the present day, but extending from the Jamnā to the Narbadā and Satlaj, including, therefore, the whole of Mālvā, Bundelkhand, and parts of Agra and the Panjāb. From the northern parts of this tract there seems to have been an early movement of conquest up the western rivers of the Panjāb, as far as the Himālaya and Kashmir, whereby was laid the foundation of the predominance of the tribes still in possession. With this exception, the presence of Rājputs in other parts of India seems due to their expulsion from their ancient seats. The legendary occupation of Kāṭhiāvāḍ from Mathura is ascribed to an attack delivered from the south and east. Successive inroads of Scythians and Hūnas caused a movement to the south-west, into Gujarāt;
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but the principal and most definite migration followed upon the Muslim conquests of the 11th and 12th centuries, which drove large bodies of Rājputs towards the Himālaya and eastwards across the Ganges into the Doāb and Oudh. From thence, as well as from Bundelkhand, they spread into the adjacent parts of Bihār, especially those north of the Ganges. A certain number, too, are found in the north of the Central Provinces, where the boundaries between British territory and Central India are very complicated. Beyond the above limits the original stock is not found, and even within them, it has in some cases been materially watered with local blood, when the distance from the race-centre makes the operation fairly safe, and the community is sufficiently well established to maintain its marriage connection at its conventional level. The presence of so many Rājputs in other parts of India is accounted for by the fact that the title, originally, in all probability, derived from function, denotes, as has been stated, an order of hereditary nobility, access to which is still obtainable, and whose circle, accordingly, is being constantly enlarged upon much the same considerations as of yore. The essentials of the position are the chieftainship of a tribe or clan and the command of an armed force, with the possession of a substantial landed estate and a scrupulous regard for the strict letter of Brāhmanical regulations as to marriage, domestic customs and intercourse with other classes.
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It was on this basis that in the Panjāb the Jāṭ was differentiated from the Rājput, and certain castes in Oudh and its neighbourhood rose above their fellows. In other cases, the above requisites being established, the elaboration of the claim to affiliation to one of the recognised Rājput clans is left to the ingenuity of a competent Brāhman with the aid of an experienced bard or genealogist. For example, on the adoption of Brāhmanism by a large portion of the Mongoloid population of Manipur, the chief and his military retainers passed into the rank of Kṣatriya, and to the number of about 180 000, appear under that title in the last Census returns. The leading families of various Kōl tribes of Chuṭiā Nāgpur, again, are constantly, in Col. Dalton's phrase, "being refined into Rājputs" and sometimes do not wait for 'times' effacing fingers" to conceal the change, and too often ignore the essentially Rājput system of clan-exogamy in favour of their pristine tribal arrangements. There is, in fact, no section of the Brāhmanic hierarchy into which recruitment from the outside has been more extensive or to which the claims to membership have been so numerous. The latter is especially the case in the tracts where the caste system has been imposed as an exotic in comparatively modern times.
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In Lower Bengal, for instance, such claims are remarkably frequent, and this is attributed to the adoption of the ready-made caste-system by a number of different racial stocks without its graduation being authoritatively regulated by a powerful Chief under the guidance of a council of influential Brāhmans. In Madras, again, caste was engrafted upon an already well-established civilisation to which it had to accommodate itself according to circumstances. In the former, therefore, the Rājput, except as before stated in Bihār, is redolent of the local soil, and takes rank therefore below certain other castes which have come to the front under the peaceful conditions of a Province where arms have long succumbed to the tongue and pen. These classes, therefore, do not lay claim to the title of Rājput, but to that of Kṣatriya, implying a position less definite and less likely to be disputed by existing communities. Similarly in the South, whither the Rājput never penetrated, unless it might be in the form of representatives of more or less evanescent dynasties, the rank of Kṣatriya is claimed almost exclusively by members of the labouring and toddy-drawing castes, who justify their pretensions by the undisputed fact that their ancestry furnished the rank and file of the archers and other infantry of the local potentate.
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Instances will be found in latter parts of this Chapter in which the status of Kṣatriya is claimed by many castes of far higher position in the present day than those just quoted. Various legends are current proving that whilst the Purānic assertion of the total extirpation of the Kṣatriya is true, the ancestry of the claimants in question had somehow or other escaped the general destruction, and are the lineal inheritors of the hypothetical Vedic rank, although the majority of them obtrusively avoid any occupation savouring of war. This much appears to be true, that there was a long breach between the heyday of the post-Vedic ruling classes and the genesis of the Rājput. The former were apparently staunch supporters of Buddhism, in its inception a movement in their favour, whilst the latter arose with the forces which deposed that religion in India, and established their position upon the ruins of the States which had professed it. The ground for the evolution of a new military nobility seems to have been prepared by the establishment in Upper India of successive sovereignties of S'aka race. These professed Buddhism, and were thus antagonistic to the orthodox Brāhmanism. But after they had carried their arms far into the country, and the Panjāb and its neighbourhood became their principal seat of government, they seem to have become affected by the prevailing social atmosphere, with which, as has been stated, the tenets of Buddhism were by no means out of harmony.
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One of their monarchs, indeed, is claimed as their founder by more than one of the chief clans of the present-day Rājputs. In the continual disturbances which occurred between the first century before Christ and the downfall of the principal Scythian dynasties in the 7th century A D, the Brāhmanic powers were wont to invoke the aid of any arm, Indian or foreign, which might promote the defeat of their rivals. The incorporation of such leaders into their ranks could be effected without much difficulty, firstly, through the prestige of a victory in the good cause, and, again, through the fiction, dating from a far earlier period in Indian history, that the foreign tribes which pressed upon the frontiers of Brāhmanism were themselves Brāhmanical backsliders of the warrior order, who had lost their position by reason of their neglect of the orthodox rites. Upon the hypothesis that the suppression of Buddhism was an act of faith entitling the protagonists to be received back into the fold, it became possible to combine gratitude with policy, and, by the substitution of a new designation, Rājput, for the old one of Kṣatriya, to effectively demarcate from the former state of things, the new order established under the uncontested supremacy of sacerdotalism.
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None of the Rājputs prove their pedigree further back than the 5th century of the Christian era, and four of the leading tribes of the present day, known as the Agnikula, or Fire-clans, derive their origin from a specific act of creation under Brāhmanic auspices, whereby the sun and fire-worshipping Hūna or Gurjara was converted into the blue blood of Rājputāna, and became the forefathers of the Sisōdiā, Cauhān, Parmār, Parihār, and Sōlaṅki or Cālukya, and perhaps of the Kachvāhā lines. Other cases of similar elevation are to be found, and, considering the dominant position held by Scythian communities in the north and west of India for many centuries, together with the affinity between their worship and that of a popular branch of that of the Brāhmans, and the common northern origin of the two races, it is not improbable that the upper classes, at all events, of the new comers should have identified themselves with the corresponding classes of those amongst whom their lot had been permanently cast. There are, moreover, special features of the structure and customs of Rājput and invader of a few centuries later had the effect of consolidating the Rājput devotion to the scrupulous observance of Brāhmanic injunctions as to marriage and intercourse with other castes which specially distinguished them from their foreign oppressors; and to the present day, they stand out from the rest of the community in the high value they attach to these matters.
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Like the Brāhmans, they are greatly subdivided, but with this important difference, that whereas the Brāhmans may only marry within the subdivision, the Rājput may only marry without it, though within the Rājput pale. The larger subdivision is, in fact, taking the place of the smaller as the circle of prohibited affinity. Conjecturally, this difference in practice may be due to the fact that the Rājput clan is definitely traceable in its origin to a historic leader or family, involving, therefore, a tradition of blood-kinship the more vivid from its being associated with territorial ownership. The tribe or order, again, being spread continuously and in considerable numbers over a large area, with uniform conceptions as to rank and function, the marriage field is a wide one, and the graduation of each unit in its social position has been arranged on considerations which override the normal limitations of caste. The regulations as to intermarriage, therefore, though exceedingly strict, have a wider scope than among most of the other Brāhmanical bodies and are in some cases arbitrarily imposed upon itself by the clan on considerations of rank alone. So strict indeed, are they in regard to what has been called hypergamy, that amongst the upper grades of Rājput society, the girl is held to be a burden upon the resources of the family to an extent that leads to reprehensible means of preventing her from reaching a nubile age.
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The scarcity of brides thus produced, combined with the expenses of the marriage, tend to the formation of left-handed unions with lower castes, the offspring whereof ranks with the mother, or, where numerous and recognised, constitutes a new caste by itself. The latter is the case in the west of India, where the bastards become court dependants. In Orissa, they all rank as Rājputs. In Nepāl there is the curious instance of the children of a Hill woman by a Brāhman becoming Rājput, and forming the kernel of the large military population of the State. In the Kāngra Himālaya, where the continuity of tradition and lineage has been less interrupted than anywhere else, the Chief is a law not only unto himself but unto his subjects in regard to social position and caste, so that the rank of Rājput depends very much upon the royal favour. Considering the part played by Islām in the dispersal of the Rājput ruling families, it is worth noting that in the Panjāb, not only have three fourths of this caste embraced that religion, in both the west and east of the Province, but that conversion has had no effect upon the social position of the Rājput. In the east, where Brāhmanic influence is supreme, change of religion is said to have no result upon caste regulations.
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In the west, where the Pathān atmosphere predominates, the scheme of social restrictions and prescriptions is Brāhmanic, but, as in the east, the sanction by which it is maintained is that of the tribe, not of the caste, and intermarriage and so on is governed by the position of the body in the present day, rather than by considerations of origin, such as are involved in caste.