Part 44

8. Occupation

The traditional occupation of the caste is to wash gold from the sandy beds of streams, while they formerly also washed for diamonds at Hirakud on the Mahanadi near Sambalpur and at Wairagarh in Chanda. The industry is decaying, and in 1901 only a quarter of the total number of Sonjharas were still employed In it. Some have become cultivators and fishermen, while others earn their livelihood by sweeping up the refuse dirt of the workshops of goldsmiths and brass-workers; they wash out the particles of metal from this and sell it back to the Sunars. The Mahanadi and Jonk rivers in Sambalpur, the Banjar In Mandla, the Son and other rivers in Balaghat, and the Wainganga and the eastern streams of Chanda contain minute particles of gold. The washers earn a miserable and uncertain livelihood, and indeed appear not to desire anything beyond a bare subsistence. In Bhandara it is said that they avoid any spot where they have previously been lucky, while in Chanda they have a superstition that a person making a good find of gold will be childless, and hence many dread the search. When they set out to look for gold they wash three small trayfuls at three places about five cubits apart. If they find no appreciable quantity of gold they go on for one or two hundred yards and wash three more trayfuls, and proceed thus until they find a profitable place where they will halt for two or three days. A spot in the dry river-bed is usually selected at the outside of a bend, where the finer sediment is likely to be found; after removing the stones and pebbles from above, the sand below is washed several times in circular wooden cradles, shaped like the top of an umbrella, of diminishing sizes, until all the clay is removed and fine particles of sand mixed with gold are visible. A large wooden spoon is used to stir up the sediment, which is washed and rubbed by hand to separate the gold more completely from the sand, and a blackish residue is left, containing particles of gold and mercury coloured black with oxide of iron. Mercury is used to pick up the gold with which it forms an amalgam. This is evaporated in a clay cupel called a ghariya by which the mercury is got rid of and the gold left behind.

Sudh

Sudh, Sudha, Sudho, Suda.--A cultivating caste in the Uriya country. Since the transfer of Sambalpur to Bengal only a few Sudhs remain in the Central Provinces. They are divided into four subcastes--the Bada or high Sudhs, the Dehri or worshippers, the Kabat-konia or those holding the corners of the gate, and the Butka. These last are the most primitive and think that Rairakhol is their first home. They relate that they were born of the Pandava hero Bhimsen and the female demon Hedembiki, and were originally occupied in supplying leaves for the funeral ceremonies of the Pandava brothers, from which business they obtained their name of Butka or 'one who brings leaves.' They are practically a forest tribe and carry on shifting cultivation like the Khonds. According to their own story the ancestors of the Butka Sudhs once ruled In Rairakhol and reclaimed the land from the forest, that is so far as it has been reclaimed. The following story connects them with the ruling family of Rairakhol. In former times there was constant war between Bamra and Rairakhol, and on one occasion the whole of the Rairakhol royal family was destroyed with the exception of one boy who was hidden by a Butka Sudh woman. She placed him in a cradle supported on four uprights, and when the Bamra Raja's soldiers came to seek for him the Sudhs swore, "If we have kept him either in heaven or earth may our god destroy us." The Bamra people were satisfied with this reply and the child was saved, and on coming to manhood he won back his kingdom. He received the name of Janamani or 'Jewel among men,' which the family still bear. In consequence of this incident, the Butka Sudhs are considered by the Rairakhol house as relations on their mother's side; they have several villages allotted to them and perform sacrifices for the ruling family. In some of these villages nobody may sleep on a cot or sit on a high chair, so as to be between heaven and earth in the position in which the child was saved. The Bada Sudhs are the most numerous subdivision and have generally adopted Hindu customs, so that the higher castes will take water from their hands. They neither drink liquor nor eat fowls, but the other subcastes do both. The Sudhs have totemistic gotras as Bhalluka (bear), Bagh (tiger), Ulluka (owl), and others. They also have bargas or family names as Thakur (lord), Danaik, Amayat and Bishi. The Thakur clan say that they used to hold the Baud kings in their lap for their coronation, and the Danaik used to tie the king's turban. The Bishi were so named because of their skill in arms, and the Amayat collected materials for the worship of the Panch Khanda or five swords. The bargas are much more numerous than the totemistic septs, and marriage either within the barga or within the sept is forbidden. Girls must be married before adolescence; and in the absence of a suitable husband, the girl is married to an old man who divorces her immediately afterwards, and she may then take a second husband at any time by the form for widow-remarriage. A betrothal is sealed by tying an areca-nut in a knot made from the clothes of a relative of each party and pounding it seven times with a pestle. After the marriage a silver ring is placed in a pot of water, over the mouth of which a leaf-plate is bound. The bridegroom pierces the leaf-plate with a knife, and the bride then thrusts her hand through the hole, picks out the ring and puts it on. The couple then go inside the house and sit down to a meal. The bridegroom, after eating part of his food, throws the leavings on to the bride's plate. She stops eating in displeasure, whereupon the bridegroom promises her some ornaments, and she relents and eats his leavings. It is customary for a Hindu wife to eat the leavings of food of her husband as a mark of her veneration for him. Divorce and the remarriage of widows are permitted. The Sudhs worship the Panch Khanda or five swords, and in the Central Provinces they say that these are a representation of the five Pandava brothers, in whose service their first ancestors were engaged. Their tutelary goddess is Khambeshwari, represented by a wooden peg (khamba). She dwells in the wilds of the Baud State and is supposed to fulfil all the desires of the Sudhs. Liquor, goats, buffaloes, vermilion and swallow-wort flowers are offered to her, the last two being in representation of blood. The Dehri Sudhs worship a goddess called Kandrapat who dwells always on the summits of hills. It is believed that whenever worship is concluded the roar of her tiger is heard, and the worshippers then leave the place and allow the tiger to come and take the offerings. The goddess would therefore appear to be the deified tiger. The Bada Sudhs rank with the cultivating castes of Sambalpur, but the other three subcastes have a lower position.

Sunar

List of Paragraphs

1. General notice of the caste. 2. Internal structure. 3. Marriage and other customs. 4. Religion. 5. Social position. 6. Manufacture of ornaments. 7. The sanctity of gold. 8. Ornaments. The marriage ornaments. 9. Beads and other ornaments. 10. Ear-piercing. 11. Origin of ear-piercing. 12. Ornaments worn as amulets. 13. Audhia Sunars. 14. The Sunar as money-changer. 15. Malpractices of lower-class Sunars.

1. General notice of the caste

Sunar, Sonar, Soni, Hon-Potdar, Saraf.--The occupational caste of goldsmiths and silversmiths. The name is derived from the Sanskrit Suvarna kar, a worker in gold. In 1911 the Sunars numbered 96,000 persons in the Central Provinces and 30,000 in Berar. They live all over the Province and are most numerous in the large towns. The caste appears to be a functional one of comparatively recent formation, and there is nothing on record as to its origin, except a collection of Brahmanical legends of the usual type. The most interesting of these as related by Sir H. Risley is as follows:

"In the beginning of time, when the goddess Devi was busy with the construction of mankind, a giant called Sonwa-Daitya, whose body consisted entirely of gold, devoured her creations as fast as she made them. To baffle this monster the goddess created a goldsmith, furnished him with the tools of his art, and instructed him how to proceed. When the giant proposed to eat him, the goldsmith suggested to him that if his body were polished his appearance would be vastly improved, and asked to be allowed to undertake the job. With the characteristic stupidity of his tribe the giant fell into the trap, and having had one finger polished was so pleased with the result that he agreed to be polished all over. For this purpose, like Aetes in the Greek legend of Medea, he had to be melted down, and the goldsmith, who was to get the body as his perquisite, giving the head only to Devi, took care not to put him together again. The goldsmith, however, overreached himself. Not content with his legitimate earnings, he must needs steal a part of the head, and being detected in this by Devi, he and his descendants were condemned to be for ever poor." The Sunars also have a story that they are the descendants of one of two Rajput brothers, who were saved as boys by a Saraswat Brahman from the wrath of Parasurama when he was destroying the Kshatriyas. The descendants of the other brother were the Khatris. This is the same story as is told by the Khatris of their own origin, but they do not acknowledge the connection with Sunars, nor can the Sunars allege that Saraswat Brahmans eat with them as they do with Khatris. In Gujarat they have a similar legend connecting them with Banias. In Bombay they also claim to be Brahmans, and in the Central Provinces a caste of goldsmiths akin to the Sunars call themselves Vishwa Brahmans. On the other hand, before and during the time of the Peshwas, Sunars were not allowed to wear the sacred thread, and they were forbidden to hold their marriages in public, as it was considered unlucky to see a Sunar bridegroom. Sunar bridegrooms were not allowed to see the state umbrella or to ride in a palanquin, and had to be married at night and in secluded places, being subject to restrictions and annoyances from which even Mahars were free. Their raison d'etre may possibly be found in the fact that the Brahmans, all-powerful in the Poona state, were jealous of the pretensions of the Sunars, and devised these rules as a means of suppressing them. It may be suggested that the Sunars, being workers at an important urban industry, profitable in itself and sanctified by its association with the sacred metal gold, aspired to rank above the other artisans, and put forward the pretensions already mentioned, because they felt that their position was not commensurate with their deserts. But the Sunar is included in Grant-Duff's list of the twenty-four village menials of a Maratha village, and consequently he would in past times have ranked below the cultivators, from whom he must have accepted the annual presents of grain.

2. Internal structure

The caste have a number of subdivisions, nearly all of which are of the territorial class and indicate the various localities from which it has been recruited in these Provinces. The most important subcastes are the Audhia from Ajodhia or Oudh; the Purania or old settlers; the Bundelkhandi from Bundelkhand; the Malwi from Malwa; the Lad from Lat, the old name for the southern portion of Gujarat; and the Mair, who appear to have been the first immigrants from Upper India and are named after Mair, the original ancestor, who melted down the golden demon. Other small groups are the Patkars, so called because they allow pat or widow-marriage, though, as a matter of fact, it is permitted by the great majority of the caste; the Pandhare or 'White Sunars'; and the Ahir Sunars, whose ancestors must presumably have belonged to the caste whose name they bear. The caste have also numerous bainks or exogamous septs, which differ entirely from the long lists given for Bengal and the United Provinces, and show, as Mr. Crooke remarks, the extreme fertility with which sections of this kind spring up. In the Central Provinces the names are of a titular or territorial nature. Examples of the former kind, that is, a title or nickname supposed to have been borne by the sept's founder, are: Dantele, one who has projecting teeth; Kale, black; Munde, bald; Kolhimare, a killer of jackals; and Ladaiya, a jackal or a quarrelsome person. Among the territorial names are Narwaria from Narwar; Bhilsainyan from Bhilsa; Kanaujia from Kanauj; Dilliwal from Delhi; Kalpiwal from Kalpi. Besides the bainks or septs by which marriage is regulated, they have adopted the Brahmanical eponymous gotra-names as Kashyap, Garg, Sandilya, and so on. These are employed on ceremonial occasions as when a gift is made for the purpose of obtaining religious merit, and the gotra- name of the owner is recorded, but they do not influence marriage. The use of them is a harmless vanity analogous to the assumption of distinguished surnames by people who were not born to them.

3. Marriage and other customs

Marriage is forbidden within the sept. In some localities persons descended from a common ancestor may not intermarry for five generations, but in others a brother's daughter may be wedded to a sister's son. A man is forbidden to marry two sisters while both are alive, and after his wife's death he may espouse her younger sister, but not her elder one. Girls are usually wedded at a tender age, but some Sunars have hitherto had a rule that neither a girl nor a boy should be married until they had had smallpox, the idea being that there can be no satisfactory basis for a contract of marriage while either party is still exposed to such a danger to life and personal appearance; just as it might be considered more prudent not to buy a young dog until it had had distemper. But with the spread of vaccination the Sunars are giving up this custom. The marriage ceremony follows the Hindustani or Maratha ritual according to locality. In Betul the mother of the bride ties the mother of the bridegroom to a pole with the ropes used for tethering buffaloes and beats her with a piece of twisted cloth, until the bridegroom's mother gives her a present of money or cloth and is released. The ceremony may be designed to express the annoyance of the bride's mother at being deprived of her daughter. Polygamy is permitted, but people will not give their daughter to a married man if they can find a bachelor husband for her. Well-to-do Sunars who desire increased social distinction prohibit the marriage of widows, but the caste generally allow it.

4. Religion

The caste venerate the ordinary Hindu deities, and many of them have sects and return themselves as Vaishnavas, Saivas or Saktas. In some places they are said to make a daily offering to their melting-furnace so that it may bring them in a profit. When a child has been born they make a sacrifice of a goat to Dulha Deo, the marriage-god, on the following Dasahra festival, and the body of this must be eaten by the family only, no outsider being allowed to participate. In Hoshangabad it is stated that on the night before the Dasahra festival all the Sunars assemble beside a river and hold a feast. Each of them is then believed to take an oath that he will not during the coming year disclose the amount of the alloy which a fellow-craftsman may mix with the precious metals. Any Sunar who violates this agreement is put out of caste. On the 15th day of Jeth (May) the village Sunar stops work for five days and worships his implements after washing them. He draws pictures of the goddess Devi on a piece of paper and goes round the village to affix them to the doors of his clients, receiving in return a small present.

The caste usually burn their dead and take the ashes to the Nerbudda or Ganges; those living to the south of the Nerbudda always stop at this river, because they think that if they crossed it to go to the Ganges, the Nerbudda would be offended at their not considering it good enough. If a man meets with a violent death and his body is lost, they construct a small image of him and burn this with all the proper ceremonies. Mourning is observed for ten or thirteen days, and the shraddh ceremony is performed on the anniversary of a death, while the usual oblations are offered to the ancestors during the fortnight of Pitr Paksh in Kunwar (September).

5. Social position

The more ambitious members of the caste abjure all flesh and liquor, and wear the sacred thread. These will not take cooked food even from a Brahman. Others do not observe these restrictions. Brahmans will usually take water from Sunars, especially from those who wear the sacred thread. Owing to their association with the sacred metal gold, and the fact that they generally live in towns or large villages, and many of their members are well-to-do, the Sunars occupy a fairly high position, ranking equal with, or above the cultivating castes. But, as already stated, the goldsmith was a village menial in the Maratha villages, and Sir D. Ibbetson thinks that the Jat really considers the Sunar to be distinctly inferior to himself.

6. Manufacture of ornaments

The Sunar makes all kinds of ornaments of gold and silver, being usually supplied with the metal by his customers. He is paid according to the weight of metal used, the rate varying from four annas to two rupees with an average of a rupee per tola weight of metal for gold, and from one to two annas per tola weight of silver. The lowness of these rates is astonishing when compared with those charged by European jewellers, being less than 10 per cent on the value of the metal for quite delicate ornaments. The reason is partly that ornaments are widely regarded as a means for the safe keeping of money, and to spend a large sum on the goldsmith's labour would defeat this end, as it would be lost on the reconversion of the ornaments into cash. Articles of elaborate workmanship are also easily injured when worn by women who have to labour in the fields or at home. These considerations have probably retarded the development of the goldsmith's art, except in a few isolated localities where it may have had the patronage of native courts, and they account for the often clumsy form and workmanship of his ornaments. The value set on the products of skilled artisans in early times is nevertheless shown by the statement in M'Crindle's Ancient India that any one who caused an artisan to lose the use of an eye or a hand was put to death. In England the jeweller's profit on his wares is from 33 to 50 per cent or more, in which, of course, allowance is made for the large amount of capital locked up in them and the time they may remain on his hands. But the difference in rates is nevertheless striking, and allowance must be made for it in considering the bad reputation which the Sunar has for mixing alloy with the metal. Gold ornaments are simply hammered or punched into shape or rudely engraved, and are practically never cast or moulded. They are often made hollow from thin plate or leaf, the interior being filled up with lac. Silver ones are commonly cast in Saugor and Jubbulpore, but rarely elsewhere. The Sunar's trade appears now to be fairly prosperous, but during the famines it was greatly depressed and many members of the caste took to other occupations. Many Sunars make small articles of brass, such as chains, bells and little boxes. Others have become cultivators and drive the plough themselves, a practice which has the effect of spoiling their hands, and also prevents them from giving their sons a proper training. To be a good Sunar the hands must be trained from early youth to acquire the necessary delicacy of touch. The Sunar's son sits all day with his father watching him work and handling the ornaments. Formerly the Sunar never touched a plough. Like the Pekin ivory painter--

From early dawn he works; And all day long, and when night comes the lamp Lights up his studious forehead and thin hands.

7. The sanctity of gold

As already stated, the Sunar obtains some social distinction from working in gold, which is a very sacred metal with the Hindus. Gold ornaments must not on this account be worn below the waist, as to do so would be considered an indignity to the holy material. Maratha and Khedawal Brahman women will not have ornaments for the head and arms of any baser metal than gold. If they cannot afford gold bracelets they wear only glass ones. Other castes should, if they can afford it, wear only gold on the head. And at any rate the nose-ring and small earrings in the upper ear should be of gold if worn at all. When a man is at the point of death, a little gold, Ganges water, and a leaf of the tulsi or basil plant are placed in his mouth, so that these sacred articles may accompany him to the other world. So valuable as a means of securing a pure death is the presence of gold in the mouth that some castes have small pieces inserted into a couple of their upper teeth, in order that wherever and whenever they may die, the gold may be present to purify them. A similar idea was prevalent in Europe. Aurum potabile or drinkable gold was a favourite nostrum of the Middle Ages, because gold being perfect should produce perfect health; and patients when in extremis were commonly given water in which gold had been washed. And the belief is referred to by Shakespeare:

Therefore, thou best of gold art worst of gold: Other, less fine in carat, is more precious, Preserving life in medicine potable.

The metals which are used for currency, gold, silver and copper, are all held sacred by the Hindus, and this is easily explained on the grounds of their intrinsic value and their potency when employed as coin. It may be noted that when the nickel anna coinage was introduced, it was held in some localities that the coins could not be presented at temples as this metal was not sacred.

8. Ornaments. The marriage ornaments

It can scarcely also be doubted in view of this feeling that the wearing of both gold and silver in ornaments is considered to have a protective magical effect, like that attributed to charms and amulets. And the suggestion has been made that this was the object with which all ornaments were originally worn. Professor Robertson Smith remarks: "Jewels, too, such as women wore in the sanctuary, had a sacred character; the Syriac word for an earring is c' dasha, 'the holy thing,' and generally speaking, jewels serve as amulets. As such they are mainly worn to protect the chief organs of action (the hands and feet), but especially the orifices of the body, as earrings; nose-rings hanging over the mouth; jewels on the forehead hanging down and protecting the eyes." The precious metals, as has been seen, are usually sacred among primitive people, and when made into ornaments they have the same sanctity and protective virtue as jewels. The subject has been treated with great fullness of detail by Sir J. Campbell, and the different ornaments worn by Hindu women of the Central Provinces point to the same conclusion. The bindia or head ornament of a Maratha Brahman woman consists of two chains of silver or gold and in the centre an image of a cobra erect. This is Shesh-Nag, the sacred snake, who spreads his hood over all the lingas of Mahadeo and is placed on the woman's head to guard her in the same way. The Kurmis and other castes do not have Shesh-Nag, but instead the centre of the bindia consists of an ornament known as bija, which represents the custard-apple, the sacred fruit of Sita. The nathni or nose-ring, which was formerly confined to high-caste women, represents the sun and moon. The large hoop circle is the sun, and underneath in the part below the nose is a small segment, which is the crescent moon and is hidden when the ornament is in wear. On the front side of this are red stones, representing the sun, and on the underside white ones for the moon. The nathni has some mysterious connection with a woman's virtue, and to take off her nose-ring--nathni utdarna--signifies to dishonour a woman (Platts). In northern India women wear the nose-ring very large and sometimes cover it with a piece of cloth to guard it from view or keep it in parda. It is possible that the practice of Hindu husbands of cutting off the nose of a wife detected in adultery has some similar association, and is partly intended to prevent her from again wearing a nose-ring. The toe ornament of a high-caste woman is called bichhia and it represents a scorpion (bichhu). A ring on the big toe stands for the scorpion's head, a silver chain across the foot ending in another ring on the little toe is his body, and three rings with high projecting knobs on the middle toes are the joints of his tail folded back. It is of course supposed that the ornament protects the feet from scorpion bites. These three ornaments, the bindia, the nathni and the bichhia, must form part of the Sohag or wedding dowry of every high-caste Hindu girl in the northern Districts, and she cannot be married without them. But if the family is poor a laong or gold stud to be worn in the nose may be substituted for the nose-ring. This stud, as its name indicates, is in the form of a clove, which is sacred food and is eaten on fast-days. Burning cloves are often used to brand children for cold; a fresh one being employed for each mark. A widow may not wear any of these ornaments; she is always impure, being perpetually haunted by the ghost of her dead husband, and they could thus be of no advantage to her; while, on the other hand, her wearing them would probably be considered a kind of sacrilege or pollution of the holy ornaments.