Nunia, Lunia.1—A mixed occupational caste of salt-makers and earth-workers, made up of recruits from the different non-Aryan tribes of northern India. The word non means salt, and is a corruption of the Sanskrit lavana, ‘the moist,’ which first occurs as a name for sea-salt in the Atharva Veda.2 In the oldest prose writings salt is known as Saindhava or ‘that which is brought from the Indus,’ this perhaps being Punjab rock-salt. The Nunias are a fairly large caste in Bengal and northern India, numbering 800,000 persons, but the Central Provinces and Berār contain only 3000, who are immigrants from Upper India. Here they are navvies and masons, a calling which they have generally adopted since the Government monopoly has interfered with their proper business of salt-refining. The mixed origin of the caste is shown by the list of their subdivisions in the United Provinces, which includes the names Mallāh, Kewat, Kūchbandhia, Bind, Musahār, Bhuinhār and Lodha, all of which are distinct castes, besides a number of territorial subcastes. A list of nearly thirty subcastes is given by Mr. Crooke, and this is an instance of the tendency of migratory castes to split up into small groups for the purpose of arranging marriages, owing to the difficulty of ascertaining the status and respectability of each other’s families, and the unwillingness to contract alliances with those whose social position may turn out to be not wholly satisfactory. “The internal structure of the caste,” Mr. Crooke remarks, “is far from clear; it would appear that they are still in a state of transition, and the different endogamous subcastes are not as yet fully recognised.” In Bilāspur the Nunias have three local subcastes, the Bandhaiya, the Ratanpuria and the Kharodhia. The two last, deriving their names from the towns of Ratanpur and Kharod in Bilāspur, are said to have been employed in former times in the construction of the temples and other buildings which abound in these localities, and have thus acquired a considerable degree of professional skill in masonry work; while the Bandhaiya, who take their name from Bāndhogarh, confine themselves to the excavation of tanks and wells. The exogamous divisions of the caste are also by no means clearly defined; in Mīrzāpur they have a system of local subdivisions called dīh, each subdivision being named after the village which is supposed to be its home. The word dīh itself means a site or village. Those who have a common dīh do not intermarry.3 This fact is interesting as being an instance of the direct derivation of the exogamous clan from residence in a parent village and not from any heroic or supposititious ancestor.

The caste have a legend which shows their mixed origin. Some centuries ago, they say, a marriage procession consisting of Brāhmans, Rājpūts, Banias and Gosains went to a place near Ajodhya. After the ceremony was over the bride, on being taken to the bridegroom’s lodging, scraped up a little earth with her fingers and put it in her mouth. She found it had a saltish taste, and spat it out on the ground, and this enraged the tutelary goddess of the village, who considered herself insulted, and swore that all the bride’s descendants should excavate salt in atonement; and thus the caste arose.

In Bilāspur the caste permit a girl to be married to a boy younger than herself. A price of five rupees has to be paid for the bride, unless her family give a girl in exchange. The bridegroom is taken to the wedding in a palanquin borne by Mahārs. After its conclusion the couple are carried back in the litter for some distance, after which the bridegroom gets out and walks or rides. When he goes to fetch his wife on her coming of age the bridegroom wears white clothes, which is rather peculiar, as white is not a lucky colour among the Hindus. The Nunias employ Brāhmans at their ceremonies, and they have a caste panchāyat or committee, whose headman is known as Kurha. The Bilāspur section of the caste has two Kurhas. Here Brāhmans take water from them, but not in all places. They consider their traditional occupation to have been the extraction of salt and saltpetre from saline earth. At present they are generally employed in the excavation of tanks and the embankment of fields, and they also sink wells, build and erect houses, and undertake all kinds of agricultural labour.