Kanjar.—A name applied somewhat loosely to various small communities of a gipsy character who wander about the country. In 1911 about 1000 Kuchbandhia Kanjars were returned in the Province. In Berar the Kanjars seem to be practically identical with the Sansias; Major Gunthorpe1 gives Kanjar and Sansia as alternative names of the same caste of criminals, and this is also done by Mr. Kennedy in Bombay.2 Mr. Kitts writes of them:3 “The Deccani and Marwari Kanjars were originally Bhats (bards) of the Jat tribe; and as they generally give themselves out to be Bhats are probably not included at all among the Kanjars returned at the census. They are a vagrant people, living in tents and addicted to crime. The women are good-looking; some are noted for their obscene songs, filthy alike in word and gesture; while others, whose husbands play on the sarangi, lead a life of immorality. The men are often skilful acrobats.” And in another passage:4 “The Sansia family or the ‘Long Firm’ of India includes two principal divisions represented in Berar by the Kanjars and Kolhatis respectively. They will eat, drink and smoke together, and occasionally join in committing dacoity. They eat all kinds of meat and drink all liquors; they are lax of morals and loose of life.” Now in northern India the business of acting as bards to the Jats and begging from them is the traditional function of the Sansias; and we may therefore conclude that so far as Berar and the Maratha Districts are concerned the Kanjars are identical with the Sansias, while the Kolhatis mentioned by Mr. Kitts are the same people as the Berias, as shown in the article on Kolhati, and the Berias themselves are another branch of the Sansias.5 There seems some reason to suppose that these four closely allied groups, the Kanjar or Sansia, and the Kolhati or Beria, may have their origin from the great Dom caste of menials and scavengers in Hindustan and Bengal. In the Punjab the Doms are the regular bards and genealogists of the lower castes, being known also as Mirasi: “The two words are used throughout the Province as absolutely synonymous. The word Mirasi is derived from the Arabic miras or inheritance; and the Mirasi is to the inferior agricultural castes and the outcaste tribes what the Bhat is to the Rajputs.”6 In the article on Sansia it is shown that the primary calling of the Sansias was to act as bards and genealogists of the Jats; and this common occupation is to some extent in favour of the original identity of the two castes Dom and Sansia, though Sir D. Ibbetson was not of this opinion.7 In the United Provinces Mr. Crooke gives the Jallad or executioners as one of the main divisions of the Kanjars;8 and the Jallads of Umballa are said to be the descendants of a Kanjar family who were attached to the Delhi Court as executioners.9 But the Jallad or supwala is also a name of the Doms. “The term Jallad, which is an Arabic name for ‘A public flogger,’ is more especially applied to those Doms who are employed in cities to kill ownerless dogs and to act as public executioners.”10 Mr. Gayer states that as the result of special inquiries made by an experienced police-officer it would appear that these Jallad Kanjars are really Doms.11 In Gujarat the Mirs or Mirasis are also known as Dom after the tribe of that name; they were originally of two classes, one the descendants of Gujarat Bhats or bards, the other from northern India, partly of Bhat descent and partly connected with the Doms.12 And the Sansias and Berias in Bombay when accompanied by their families usually pass themselves off as Gujarati Bhats, that is, bards of the Jat caste from Marwar or of the Kolis from Gujarat.13 Major Gunthorpe states that the Kolhatis or Berias of Berar appear to be the same as the Domras of Bengal;14 and Mr. Kitts that the Kham Kolhatis are the Domarus of Telingana.15 In writing of the Kanjar bards Sherring also says: “These are the Kanjars of Gondwana, the Sansis of northern India; they are the most desperate of all dacoits and wander about the country as though belonging to the Gujarati Domtaris or showmen.” The above evidence seems sufficient to establish a prima facie case in favour of the Dom origin of these gipsy castes. It may be noticed further that the Jallad Kanjars of the United Provinces are also known as Supwala or makers of sieves and winnowing-fans, a calling which belongs specially to the Doms, Bhangis, and other sweeper castes. Both Doms and Bhangis have divisions known as Bansphor or ‘breaker of bamboos,’ a name which has the same signification as Supwala. Again, the deity of the criminal Doms of Bengal is known as Sansari Mai.16

The Kanjars and Berias are the typical gipsy castes of India, and have been supposed to be the parents of the European gipsies. On this point Mr. Nesfield writes: “The commonly received legend is that multitudes of Kanjars were driven out of India by the oppressions of Tamerlane, and it is inferred that the gipsies of Europe are their direct descendants by blood, because they speak like them a form of the Hindi language.”17 Sir G. Grierson states:18 “According to the Shah-nama, the Persian monarch Bahram Gaur received in the fifth century from an Indian king 12,000 musicians who were known as Luris, and the Luris or Lulis, that is gipsies, of modern Persia are the descendants of these.” These people were also called Lutt, and hence it was supposed that they were the Indian Jats. Sir G. Grierson, however, shows it to be highly improbable that the Jats, one of the highest castes of cultivators, could ever have furnished a huge band of professional singers and dancers. He on the contrary derives the gipsies from the Dom tribe:19 “Mr. Leland has made a happy suggestion that the original gipsies may have been Doms of India. He points out that Romany is almost letter for letter the same as Domni (?????), the plural of Dom. Domni is the plural form in the Bhojpuri dialect of the Bihari language. It was originally a genitive plural; so that Romany-Rye, ‘A gipsy gentleman,’ may be well compared with the Bhojpuri Domni Rai, ‘A king of the Doms.’ The Bhojpuri-speaking Doms are a famous race, and they have many points of resemblance with the gipsies of Europe. Thus they are darker in complexion than the surrounding Biharis, are great thieves, live by hunting, dancing and telling fortunes, their women have a reputation for making love-philtres and medicines to procure abortion, they keep fowls (which no orthodox Hindu will do), and are said to eat carrion. They are also great musicians and horsemen. The gipsy grammar is closely connected with Bhojpuri, and the following mongrel, half-gipsy, half-English rhyme will show the extraordinary similarity of the two vocabularies:20

In the above it must be remembered that the verbal terminations of the gipsy text are English and not gipsy.”

Sir G. Grierson also adds (in the passage first quoted): “I may note here a word which lends a singular confirmation to the theory. It is the gipsy term for bread, which is manro or manro. This is usually connected either with the Gaudian manr ‘rice-gruel’ or with manrua, the millet (Eleusine coracana). Neither of these agrees with the idea of bread, but in the Magadhi dialect of Bihari, spoken south of the Ganges in the native land of these Maghiya Doms, there is a peculiar word manda or manra which means wheat, whence the transition to the gipsy manro, bread, is eminently natural.”

The above argument renders it probable that the gipsies are derived from the Doms; and as Mr. Nesfield gives it as a common legend that they originated from the Kanjars, this is perhaps another connecting link between the Doms and Kanjars. The word gipsy is probably an abbreviation of ‘Egyptian,’ the country assigned as the home of the gipsies in mediaeval times. It has already been seen that the Doms are the bards and minstrels of the lower castes in the Punjab, and that the Kanjars and Sansias, originally identical or very closely connected, were in particular the bards of the Jats. It is a possible speculation that they may have been mixed up with the lower classes of Jats or have taken their name, and that this has led to the confusion between the Jats and gipsies. Some support is afforded to this suggestion by the fact that the Kanjars of Jubbulpore say that they have three divisions, the Jat, Multani and Kuchbandia. The Jat Kanjars are, no doubt, those who acted as bards to the Jats, and hence took the name; and if the ancestors of these people emigrated from India they may have given themselves out as Jat.

In the article on Thug it is suggested that a large, if not the principal, section of the Thugs were derived from the Kanjars. At the Thug marriages an old matron would sometimes repeat, “Here’s to the spirits of those who once led bears and monkeys; to those who drove bullocks and marked with the godini (tattooing-needle); and those who made baskets for the head.” And these are the occupations of the Kanjars and Berias. The Goyandas of Jubbulpore, descendants of Thug approvers, are considered to be a class of gipsy Muhammadans, akin to or identical with the Kanjars, of whom the Multani subdivision are also Muhammadans. Like the Kanjar women the Goyandas make articles of net and string. There is also a colony of Berias in Jubbulpore, and these are admittedly the descendants of Thugs who were located there. If the above argument is well founded, we are led to the interesting conclusion that four of the most important vagrant and criminal castes of India, as well as the Mirasis or low-class Hindu bards, the gipsies, and a large section of the Thugs, are all derived from the great Dom caste.

The Doms appear to be one of the chief aboriginal tribes of northern India, who were reduced to servitude like the Mahars and Chamars. Sir H. M. Elliot considered them to be “One of the original tribes of India. Tradition fixes their residence to the north of the Ghagra, touching the Bhars on the east in the vicinity of the Rohini. Several old forts testify to their former importance, and still retain the names of their founders, as, for instance, Domdiha and Domingarh in the Gorakhpur district. Ramgarh and Sahukot on the Rohini are also Dom forts.”21 Sir G. Grierson quotes Dr. Fleet as follows: “In a south Indian inscription a king Rudradeva is said to have subdued a certain Domma, whose strength evidently lay in his cavalry. No clue is given as to who this Domma was, but he may have been the leader of some aboriginal tribe which had not then lost all its power”; and suggests that this Domma may have been a leader of the Doms, who would then be shown to have been dominant in southern India. As already seen there is a Domaru caste of Telingana, with whom Mr. Kitts identified the Berias or Kolhatis. In northern India the Doms were reduced to a more degraded condition than the other pre-Aryan tribes as they furnished a large section of the sweeper caste. As has been seen also they were employed as public executioners like the Mangs. This brief mention of the Doms has been made in view of the interest attaching to them on account of the above suggestions, and because there will be no separate article on the caste.

In Berar two main divisions of the Kanjars may be recognised, the Kunchbandhia or those who make weavers’ brooms and are comparatively honest, and the other or criminal Kanjars.22 The criminal Kanjars may again be divided into the Marwari and Deccani groups. They were probably once the same, but the Deccanis, owing to their settlement in the south, have adopted some Maratha or Gujarati fashions, and speak the Marathi language; their women wear the angia or Maratha breast-cloth fastening behind, and have a gold ornament shaped like a flower in the nose;23 while the Marwari Kanjars have no breast-cloth and may not wear gold ornaments at all. The Deccani Kanjars are fond of stealing donkeys, their habit being either to mix their own herds with those of the village and drive them all off together, or, if they catch the donkeys unattended, to secrete them in some water-course, tying their legs together, and if they remain undiscovered to remove them at nightfall. The animals are at once driven away for a long distance before any attempt is made to dispose of them. The Marwari Kanjars consider it derogatory to keep donkeys and therefore do not steal these animals. They are preeminently cattle-lifters and sheep-stealers, and their encampments may be recognised by the numbers of bullocks and cows about them. Their women wear the short Marwari petticoat reaching half-way between the knees and ankles. Their hair is plaited over the forehead and cowrie shells and brass ornaments like buttons are often attached in it. Bead necklaces are much worn by the women and bead and horse-hair necklets by the men. A peculiarity about the women is that they are confirmed snuff-takers and consume great quantities of the weed in this form. The women go into the towns and villages and give exhibitions of singing and dancing; and picking up any information they can acquire about the location of property, impart this to the men. Sometimes they take service, and a case was known in Jubbulpore of Kanjar women hiring themselves out as pankha-pullers, with the result that the houses in which they were employed were subsequently robbed.24 It is said, however, that they do not regularly break into houses, but confine themselves to lurking theft. I have thought it desirable to record here the above particulars of the criminal Kanjars, taken from Major Gunthorpe’s account; for, though the caste is, as already stated, identical with the Sansias, their customs in Berar differ considerably from those of the Sansias of Central India, who are treated of in the article on that caste.

We come, finally, to the Kunchband Kanjars, the most representative section of the caste, who as a body are not criminals, or at any rate less so than the others. The name Kunchband or Kuchband, by which they are sometimes known, is derived from their trade of making brushes (kunch) of the roots of khas-khas grass, which are used by weavers for cleaning the threads entangled on the looms. This has given rise to the proverb ‘Kori ka bigari Kunchbandhia’ or ‘The Kunchbandhia must look to the Kori (weaver) as his patron’; the point being that the Kori is himself no better than a casual labourer, and a man who is dependent on him must be in a poor way indeed. The Kunchbandhias are also known in northern India as Sankat or Patharkat, because they make and sharpen the household grinding-stones, this being the calling of the Takankar Pardhis in the Maratha Districts, and as Goher because they catch and eat the goh, the large lizard or iguana.25 Other divisions are the Dhobibans or washerman’s race, the Lakarhar or wood-cutters, and the Untwar or camelmen.

In the Central Provinces there are other divisions, as the Jat and Multani Kanjars. They say they have two exogamous divisions, Kalkha and Malha, and a member of either of these must take a wife from the other division. Both the Kalkhas and Malhas are further divided into kuls or sections, but the influence of these on marriage is not clear. At a Kanjar marriage, Mr. Crooke states, the gadela or spade with which they dig out the khas-khas grass and kill wolves or vermin, is placed in the marriage pavilion during the ceremony. The bridegroom swears that he will not drive away nor divorce his wife, and sometimes a mehar or dowry is also fixed for the bride. The father-in-law usually, however, remits a part or the whole of this subsequently, when the bridegroom goes to take food at his house on festival occasions. Mr. Nesfield states that the principal deity of the Kanjars is the man-god Mana, who was not only the teacher and guide, but also the founder and ancestor of the tribe. He is buried, as some Kanjars relate, at Kara in the Allahabad District, not far from the Ganges and facing the old city of Manikpur on the opposite bank. Mana is worshipped with special ceremony in the rainy season, when the tribe is less migratory than in the dry months of the year. On such occasions, if sufficient notice is circulated, several encampments unite temporarily to pay honour to their common ancestor. The worshippers collect near a tree under which they sacrifice a pig, a goat, a sheep, or a fowl, and make an offering of roasted flesh and spirituous liquor. Formerly, it is said, they used to sacrifice a child, having first made it insensible with fermented palm-juice or toddy.26 They dance round the tree in honour of Mana, and sing the customary songs in commemoration of his wisdom and deeds of valour.

The dead are usually buried, both male and female corpses being laid on their faces with the feet pointing to the south. Kanjars who become Muhammadans may be readmitted to the community after the following ceremony. A pit is dug and the convert sits in it and each Kanjar throws a little curds on to his body. He then goes and bathes in a river, his tongue is touched or branded with heated gold and he gives a feast to the community. A Kanjar woman who has lived in concubinage with a Brahman, Rajput, Agarwal Bania, Kurmi, Ahir or Lodhi may be taken back into the caste after the same ceremony; but not one who has lived with a Kayasth, Sunar or Lohar or any lower caste. A Kanjar is not put out of caste for being imprisoned, nor for being beaten by an outsider, nor for selling shoes. If a man touches his daughter-in-law even accidentally he is fined the sum of Rs. 2–8.

The following account of the industries of the vagrant Kanjars was written by Mr. Nesfield in 1883. In the Central Provinces many of them are now more civilised, and some are employed in Government service. Their women also make and retail string-net purses, balls and other articles.

“Among the arts of the Kanjar are making mats of the sirki reed, baskets of wattled cane, fans of palm-leaves and rattles of plaited straw: these last are now sold to Hindu children as toys, though originally they may have been used by the Kanjars themselves (if we are to trust to the analogy of other backward races) as sacred and mysterious implements. From the stalks of the munj grass and from the roots of the palas27 tree they make ropes which are sold or bartered to villagers in exchange for grain and milk. They prepare the skins of which drums are made and sell them to Hindu musicians; though, probably, as in the case of the rattle, the drum was originally used by the Kanjars themselves and worshipped as a fetish; for even the Aryan tribes, who are said to have been far more advanced than the indigenous races, sang hymns in honour of the drum or dundubhi as if it were something sacred. They make plates of broad leaves which are ingeniously stitched together by their stalks; and plates of this kind are very widely used by the inferior Indian castes and by confectioners and sellers of sweetmeats. The mats of sirki reed with which they cover their own movable leaf huts are models of neatness and simplicity and many of these are sold to cart-drivers. The toddy or juice of the palm tree, which they extract and ferment by methods of their own and partly for their own use, finds a ready sale among low-caste Hindus in villages and market towns. They are among the chief stone-cutters in Upper India, especially in the manufacture of the grinding-mill which is very widely used. This consists of two circular stones of equal diameter; the upper one, which is the thicker and heavier, revolves on a wooden pivot fixed in the centre of the lower one and is propelled by two women, each holding the same handle. But it is also not less frequent for one woman to grind alone.” It is perhaps not realised what this business of grinding her own grain instead of buying flour means to the Indian woman. She rises before daybreak to commence the work, and it takes her perhaps two or three hours to complete the day’s provision. Grain-grinding for hire is an occupation pursued by poor women. The pisanhari, as she is called, receives an anna (penny) for grinding 16 lbs. of grain, and can get through 30 lbs. a day. In several localities temples are shown supposed to have been built by some pious pisanhari from her earnings. “The Kanjars,” Mr. Nesfield continues, “also gather the white wool-like fibre which grows in the pods of the semal or Indian cotton tree and twist it into thread for the use of weavers.28 In the manufacture of brushes for the cleaning of cotton-yarn the Kanjars enjoy almost a complete monopoly. In these brushes a stiff mass of horsehair is attached to a wooden handle by sinews and strips of hide; and the workmanship is remarkably neat and durable.29 Another complete or almost complete monopoly enjoyed by Kanjars is the collection and sale of sweet-scented roots of the khas-khas grass, which are afterward made up by the Chhaparbands and others into door-screens, and through being continually watered cool the hot air which passes through them. The roots of this wild grass, which grows in most abundance on the outskirts of forests or near the banks of rivers, are dug out of the earth by an instrument called khunti. This has a handle three feet long, and a blade about a foot long resembling that of a knife. The same implement serves as a dagger or short spear for killing wolves or jackals, as a tool for carving a secret entrance through the clay wall of a villager’s hut in which a burglary is meditated, as a spade or hoe for digging snakes, field-rats, and lizards out of their holes, and edible roots out of the earth, and as a hatchet for chopping wood.”