Garpagari.1—A caste of village menials whose function it is to avert hailstorms from the crops. They are found principally in the Maratha Districts of the Nagpur country and Berar, and numbered 9000 persons in 1911. The name is derived from the Marathi gar, hail. The Garpagaris are really Naths or Jogis who have taken to this calling and become a separate caste. They wear clothes coloured with red ochre, and a garland of rudraksha beads, and bury their dead in a sitting posture. According to their tradition the first Garpagari was one Raut, a Jogi, who accompanied a Kunbi malguzar on a visit to Benares, and while there he prophesied that on a certain day all the crops of their village would be destroyed by a hailstorm. The Kunbi then besought him to save the crops if he could, and he answered that by his magic he could draw off the hail from the rest of the village and concentrate it in his own field, and he agreed to do this if the cultivators would recompense him for his loss. When the two came home to their village they found that there had been a severe hailstorm, but it had all fallen in the Jogi’s field. His loss was made good to him and he adopted this calling as a profession, becoming the first Garpagari, and being paid by contributions from the proprietor and tenants. There are no subcastes except that the Kharchi Garpagari are a bastard group, with whom the others refuse to intermarry.

Marriage is regulated by exogamous groups, two of which, Watari from the Otari or brass-worker, and Dhankar from the Dhangar or shepherds, are named after other castes. Some are derived from the names of animals, as Harnya from the black-buck, and Wagh from the tiger. The Diunde group take their name from diundi, the kotwar’s2 drum. They say that their ancestor was so named because he killed his brother, and was proclaimed as an outlaw by beat of drum. The marriage of members of the same group is forbidden and also that of the children of two sisters, so long as the relationship between them is remembered. The caste usually celebrate their weddings after those of the Kunbis, on whom they depend for contributions to their expenses. Widow-marriage is permitted, but the widow sometimes refuses to marry again, and, becoming a Bhagat or devotee, performs long pilgrimages in male attire. Divorce is permitted, but as women are scarce, is rarely resorted to. The Garpagaris say, “If one would not throw away a vegetable worth a damri (one-eighth of a pice or farthing), how shall one throw away a wife who is 3½ cubits long.” A divorced wife is allowed to marry again.

The caste worship Mahadeo or Siva and Mahabir or Hanuman, and do not usually distinguish them. Their principal festival is called Mahi and takes place on the first day of Poush (December), this being the day from which hailstorms may be expected to occur; and next to this Mando Amawas, or the first day of Chait (March), after which hailstorms need not be feared. They offer goats to Mahadeo in his terrible form of Kal Bhairava, and during the ceremony the Kunbis beat the daheka, a small drum with bells, to enhance the effect of the sacrifice, so that their crops may be saved. When a man is at the point of death he is placed in the sitting posture in which he is to be buried, for fear that after death his limbs may become so stiff that they cannot be made to assume it. The corpse is carried to the grave in a cloth coloured with red ochre. A gourd containing pulse and rice, a pice coin, and a small quantity of any drug to which the deceased may have been addicted in life are placed in the hands, and the grave is filled in with earth and salt. A lamp is lighted on the place where the death occurred, for one night, and on the third day a cocoanut is broken there, after which mourning ends and the house is cleaned. A stone brought from the bed of a river is plastered down on to the grave with clay, and this may perhaps represent the dead man’s spirit.

The occupation of the Garpagari is to avert hailstorms, and he was formerly remunerated by a customary contribution of rice from each cultivator in the village. He received the usual presents at seed-time and harvest, and two pice from each tenant on the Basant-Panchmi festival. When the sky is of mixed red and black at night like smoke and flame, the Garpagari knows that a hailstorm is coming. Then, taking a sword in his hand, he goes and stands before Mahabir, and begs him to disperse the clouds. When entreaties fail, he proceeds to threats, saying that he will kill himself, and throws off his clothes. Sometimes his wife and children go and stand with him before Mahabir’s shrine and he threatens to kill them. Formerly he would cut and slash himself, so it is said, if Mahabir was obdurate, but now the utmost he does is to draw some blood from a finger. He would also threaten to sacrifice his son, and instances are known of his actually having done so.

Two ideas appear to be involved in these sacrifices of the Garpagari. One is the familiar principle of atonement, the blood being offered to appease the god as a substitute for the crops which he seems about to destroy. But when the Garpagari threatened to kill himself, and actually killed his son, it was not merely as an atonement, because in that case the threats would have had no meaning. His intention seems rather to have been to lay the guilt of homicide upon the god by slaying somebody in front of his shrine, in case nothing less would move him from his purpose of destroying the crops. The idea is the same as that with which people committed suicide in order that their ghosts might haunt those who had driven them to the act. As late as about the year 1905 a Gond Bhumka or village priest was hanged in Chhindwara for killing his two children. He owed a debt of Rs. 25 and the creditor was pressing him and he had nothing to pay. So he flew into a rage and exclaimed that the gods would do nothing for him even though he was a Bhumka, and he seized his two children and cut off their heads and laid them before the god. In this it would appear that the Bhumka’s intention was partly to take revenge on his master for the neglect shown to him, the god’s special servant. The Garpagari diverts the hail by throwing a handful of grain in the direction in which he wishes it to go. When the storm begins he will pick up some hailstones, smear them with his blood and throw them away, telling them to rain over rivers, hills, forests and barren ground. When caterpillars or locusts attack the crops he catches one or two and offers them at Mahabir’s shrine, afterwards throwing them up in the air. Or he buries one alive and this is supposed to stay the plague. When rust appears in the crops, one or two blades are in like manner offered to Mahabir, and it is believed that the disease will be stayed. Or if the rice plants do not come into ear a few of them are plucked and offered, and fresh fertile blades then come up. He also has various incantations which are believed to divert the storm or to cause the hailstones to melt into water. In some localities, when the buffalo is slaughtered at the Dasahra festival, the Garpagari takes seven different kinds of spring-crop seeds and dips them in its blood. He buries them in a spot beside his hearth, and it is believed that when a hailstorm threatens the grains move about and give out a humming sound like water boiling. Thus the Garpagari has warning of the storm. If the Garpagari is absent and a storm comes his wife will go and stand naked before Mahabir’s shrine. The wives know the incantations, but they must not learn them from their husbands, because in that case the husband would be in the position of a guru or spiritual preceptor to his wife and the conjugal relation could no longer continue. No other caste will learn the incantations, for to make the hailstones melt is regarded as equivalent to causing an abortion, and as a sin for which heavy retribution would be incurred in a future life.

In Chhattisgarh the Baiga or village priest of the aboriginal tribes averts hailstorms in the same manner as the Garpagari, and elsewhere the Barais or betel-vine growers perform this function, which is especially important to them because their vines are so liable to be injured by hailstorms. In ancient Greece there existed a village functionary, the Chalazo phulax, who kept off hailstorms in exactly the same manner as the Garpagari. He would offer a victim, and if he had none would draw blood from his own fingers to appease the storm.3

The same power has even been imputed to Christian priests as recorded by Sir James Frazer: “In many villages of Provence the priest is still required to possess the faculty of averting storms. It is not every priest who enjoys this reputation; and in some villages when a change of pastors takes place, the parishioners are eager to learn whether the new incumbent has the power (pouder) as they call it. At the first sign of a heavy storm they put him to the proof by inviting him to exorcise the threatening clouds; and if the result answers to their hopes, the new shepherd is assured of the sympathy and respect of his flock. In some parishes where the reputation of the curate in this respect stood higher than that of the rector, the relations between the two have been so strained in consequence that the bishop has had to translate the rector to another benefice.”4

Of late years an unavoidable scepticism as to the Garpagari’s efficiency has led to a reduction of his earnings, and the cultivators now frequently decline to give him anything, or only a sheaf of corn at harvest. Some members of the caste have taken to weaving newar or broad tape for beds, and others have become cultivators.

The Garpagaris eat flesh and drink liquor. They will take cooked food from a Kunbi, though the Kunbis will not take even water from them. They are a village menial caste and rank with others of the same position, though on a somewhat lower level because they beg and accept cooked food at the weddings of Kunbis. Their names usually end in nath, as Ramnath, Kisannath and so on.