Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s5.2.2

c48.s5.2.2

The name of the caste is said to come from the Sanskrit name of the country, Gandhāra (or Kandahār) from which the animal was said to have been introduced into India. Judging from physical appearance, however, the Gaḍariyā and, except the Gaḍḍī, the shepherd castes generally, have much more Kōl or Dravidian blood in them than the western cattle-breeder. The Dhaṅgar of the Marāṭhā country, indeed, is by some identified with the Dhāṅgar, or Orāon, of the eastern portion of the Central Belt, a large tribe which is thought, mainly on linguistic grounds, to have pushed its way up north from the Karnatic. Even in the present day, too, the Dhaṅgar build their shrines in the same way and of the same sort of unhewn stones as the Kuṟubar of the Karnatic, a once dominant tribe of the south, to which belonged the Kadamba dynasties of Banavāsi in Kanara and the Pallava dynasties of the Tamil country. The Dhaṅgar are now, however, a Marāṭhi-speaking community, hardly to be distinguished from their Kunbī neighbours. The Holkar Chief of Indore belongs to this caste, and still enjoys hereditary grazing rights in parts of the Dekkan and some of the best of S'ivaji's celebrated "Māvalī" troops were Dhaṅgar. Some of the Dhaṅgar return themselves as Hātkar, a title for which more than one definition is available.