Sonjhara

List of Paragraphs

• 1. Origin and constitution of the caste
• 2. Totemism
• 3. Marriage
• 4. Customs at birth
• 5. Funeral rites
• 6. Religion
• 7. Social customs
• 8. Occupation

1. Origin and constitution of the caste

Sonjhara, Jhara, Jhora, Jhira.—A small occupational caste who wash for gold in river-beds, belonging to the Sambalpur, Mandla, Bālāghāt and Chānda Districts and the Chota Nāgpur Feudatory States. In 1911 they numbered about 1500 persons. The name probably comes from sona, gold, and jhārna, to sweep or wash, though, when the term Jhara only is used, some derive it from jhori a streamlet. Colonel Dalton surmised that the Sonjharas were an offshoot of the Gonds, and this appears to be demonstrated by the fact that the names of their exogamous septs are identical with Gond names as Marābi, Tekām, Netām, Dhurwa and Madao. The Sonjharas of Bilāspur say that their ancestors were Gonds who dwelt at Lānji in Bālāghāt. The caste relate the tradition that they were condemned by Mahādeo to perpetual poverty because their first ancestor stole a little gold from Pārvatis crown when it fell into the river Jamuna (in Chota Nāgpur) and he was sent to fetch it out. The metal which is found in the river sands they hold to be the remains of a shower of gold which fell for two and a half days while the Banāphar heroes Alha and Udal were fighting their great battle with Prithvi Rāj, king of Delhi. The caste is partly occupational, and recruited from different sources. This is shown by the fact that in Chānda members of different septs will not eat together, though they are obliged to intermarry. In Sambalpur the Behra, Pātar, Nāik and Padhān septs eat together and intermarry. Two other septs, the Kanar and Peltrai who eat fowls and drink liquor, occupy a lower position, and members of the first four will not take food from them nor give daughters to them in marriage, though they will take daughters from these lower groups for their sons. Here they have three subcastes, the Laria or residents of Chhattīsgarh, the Uriya belonging to the Uriya country, and the Bhuinhār, who may be an offshoot from the Bhuiya tribe.

2. Totemism

They have one recorded instance of totemism, which is of some interest. Members of the sept named after a tree called kausa revere the tree and explain it by saying that their ancestor, when flying from some danger, sought protection from this tree, which thereupon opened and enfolded him in its trunk. No member of the sept will touch the tree without first bathing, and on auspicious occasions, such as births and weddings, they will dig up a little earth from the roots of the tree and taking this home worship it in the house. If any member of the sept finds that he has cut off a branch or other part of this tree unwittingly he will take and consign it to a stream, observing ceremonies of mourning. Women of the Nāg or cobra sept will not mention the name of this snake aloud, just as they refrain from speaking the names of male relatives.

3. Marriage

Marriage within the sept is forbidden, and they permit the intermarriage of the children of a brother and sister, but not of those of two sisters, though their husbands may be of different septs. Marriage is usually adult except in Sambalpur, where a girl must be provided with a husband before reaching maturity in accordance with the general rule among the Uriya castes. In Chhindwāra it is said that the Sonjharas revere the crocodile and that the presence of this animal is essential at their weddings. They do not, however, kill and eat it at a sacrificial feast as the Singrore Dhīmars are reported to do, but catch and keep it alive, and when the ceremony is concluded take it back again and deposit it in a river. After a girl has been married neither her father nor any of her own near relatives will ever take food again in the house of her husband’s family, saying that they would rather starve. Each married couple also becomes a separate commensal group and will not eat with the parents of either of them. This is a common custom among low castes of mixed origin where every man is doubtful of his neighbour’s parentage. Divorce and the remarriage of widows are permitted, and a woman may be divorced merely on the ground of incompetence in household management or because she does not please her husband’s parents.

4. Customs at birth

At child-birth they make a little separate hut for the mother near the river where they are encamped, and she remains in it for two days and a half. During this time her husband does no work; he stays a few paces distant from his wife’s hut and prepares her food but does not go to the hut or touch her, and he kindles a fire between them. During the first two days the woman gets three handfuls of rice boiled thin in water, and on the third day she receives nothing until the evening, when the Sendia or head of the sept takes a little cowdung, gold and silver in his hand, and pouring water over this gives her of it to drink as many times as the number of gods worshipped by her family up to seven. Then she is pure. On this day the father sacrifices a chicken and gives a meal with liquor to the caste and names the child, calling it after one of his ancestors who is dead. Then an old woman beats on a brass plate and calls out the name which has been given in a loud voice to the whole camp so that they may all know the child’s name. In Bilāspur the Sonjharas observe the custom of the Couvade, and for six days after the birth of a child the husband lies prone in his house, while the wife gets up and goes to work, coming home to give suck to the child when necessary. The man takes no food for three days and on the fourth is given ginger and raw sugar, thus undergoing the ordinary treatment of a woman after childbirth. This is supposed by them to be a sort of compensation for the labours sustained by the woman in bearing the child. The custom obtains among some other primitive races, but is now rapidly being abandoned by the Sonjharas.

5. Funeral rites

The bodies of the old are cremated as a special honour, and those of other persons are buried. No one other than a member of the dead man’s family may touch his corpse under a penalty of five rupees. A relative will remove the body and bury it with the feet pointing to the river or burn it by the water’s edge. They mourn a child for one day and an adult for four days, and at the end the mourner is shaved and provides liquor for the community. If there be no relative, since no other man can touch the corpse, they fire the hut over it and burn it as it is lying or bury hut and body under a high mound of sand.

6. Religion

Their principal deities are Dūlha Deo, the boy bridegroom, Nira his servant, and Kauria a form of Devi. Nira lives under an ūmar tree and he and Dūlha Deo his master are worshipped every third year in the month of Māgh (January). Kauria is also worshipped once in three years on a Sunday in the month of Māgh with an offering of a cocoanut, and in her honour they never sit on a cot nor sleep on a stool because they think that the goddess has her seat on these articles. The real reason, however, is probably that the Sonjharas consider the use of such furniture an indication of a settled life and permanent residence, and therefore abjure it as being wanderers. Some analogous customs have been recorded of the Banjāras. They also revere the spirit of one of their female ancestors who became a Sati. They sacrifice a goat to the genius loci or spirit haunting the spot where they decide to start work; and they will leave it for fear of angering this spirit, which is said to appear in the form of a tiger, should they make a particularly good find. They never keep dogs, and it is said that they are defiled by the touch of a dog and will throw away their food if one comes near them during their meal. The same rule applies to a cat, and they will throw away an earthen vessel touched by either of these animals. On the Diwālī day they wash their implements, and setting them up near the huts worship them with offerings of a cocoanut and vermilion.

7. Social customs

Their rule is always to camp outside a village at a distance of not less than a mile. In the rains they make huts with a roof of bamboos sloping from a central ridge and walls of matting. The huts are built in one line and do not touch each other, at least a cubit’s distance being left between each. Each hut has one door facing the east. As a rule they avoid the water of village wells and tanks, though it is not absolutely forbidden. Each man digs a shallow well in the sand behind his hut and drinks the water from it, and no man may drink the water of his neighbour’s well; if he should do so or if any water from his well gets into his neighbour’s, the latter is abandoned and a fresh one made. If the ground is too swampy for wells they collect the water in their wooden washing-tray and fill their vessels from it. In the cold weather they make little leaf-huts on the sand or simply camp out in the open, but they must never sleep under a tree. When living in the open each family makes two fires and sleeps together between them. Some of them have their stomachs burned and blackened from sleeping too near the fire. The Sonjharas will not take cooked food from the hands of any other caste, but their social status is very low, about equivalent to that of the parent Gond tribe. They have no fear of wild animals, not even the children. Perhaps they think that as fellow-denizens of the jungle these animals are kin to them and will not injure them.

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 Hirākud on the Mahānadi near Sambalpur and at Wairāgarh 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 Sunārs. The Mahānadi and Jonk rivers in Sambalpur, the Banjar In Mandla, the Son and other rivers in Bālāghāt, and the Wainganga and the eastern streams of Chānda 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 Bhandāra it is said that they avoid any spot where they have previously been lucky, while in Chānda 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.