Caste and Race in India c8.227

c8.227

Duarte Barbosa speaks of eighteen castes in Malabar, each with customs and idol-worship of their own. The Brahmins serve the kings in almost any respectable capacity but in arms. Some of them even act as courtiers. Though the main occupation of the Tiyans is that of tapping toddy yet many of them are found as quarrymen, as soldiers, and even as agrestic serfs.¹ Domingos Paes tells us that there were many Brahmins in the service of the King of Vijayanagar as officers of the towns and cities, while others lived by trade or cultivation.² Abul Fazal remarks that the Vaiśya and the Śūdra are divided into numerous branches. He actually mentions the following castes: Kayasth, Bhur, Bachgoti, Chandel, Chauhan, Gaharwal, Gautami, Ghelot, Kausik, and Raghubansi evidently as sub-divisions among the Rajputs, Ahir, Lodh, Gujar, Kurmi, Bagri, Mina, Meo, Mehtar, Bhil, Koli, Gwalia, Garasiah, Khasia, Baoriya, Bisen, Bais, Khand, and Khari, a division of the Gaud Kayasths.³ Moreland rightly summarizes the position of caste at the end of Akbar's reign in the following words: "Among the Hindus the caste system existed substantially as it exists to-day and the differences among castes and races were such that we find travellers speaking of Baniyas or of Gujaratis as 'nations' distinct from Brahmans or Rajputs."⁴ In the time of Jehangir, the Baniyas of Gujarat had numerous sub-divisions neither of which would eat nor drink with others.⁵ Hamilton, in the middle of the eighteenth century, mentions sixty-five divisions of the Baniyas of Surat.⁶