 
### Cattle nomads of the Indian desert

Tan Dan about cattlebreeders and pack-ox caravans since ancient time

By Son Lal

Copyright 2013 by Son Lal

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This is a work of fiction. The names and characters come from the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Similarly, the locations and incidents in this book, which might resemble real locations and events, are being used fictitiously and are not to be considered as real.

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### Cattle nomads of the Indian desert

Tan Dan about cattlebreeders and pack-ox caravans since ancient time

Tan Dan's nomadic forefathers lived a tough life, herding cattle out in the grassland wilderness of the northwestern parts of the Indian subcontinent. In this book Tan Dan tell about them and other similar groups that might be related to them. Especially, the ox caravan transporters and the many small castes of various professions in western Rajasthan that seem to have originated from these nomads. Other small castes served the pastorals at cattle fairs, selling all kinds of necessities to livestock breeders and farmers. The cattle castrators were also a necessary service group. Where did it all started? Where are the roots for the cattle nomads of the Indian desert? Tan Dan tries to find out and his speculations goes back to early human establishment in the region and further to the west.

Some generations ago Tan Dan's relatives carried out a difficult transformation from grazing big cattle herds on vast hot climate grasslands to dryland farming for cattle breeding. An intensification in reponse to a changing environment in the Rajasthan desert region. Tan Dan tells how his grandfather coped with it.

As narrated to his friend Son Lal around 1980.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Tan Dan

Chapter 2 The risky life of Chelana cattle

Chapter 3 Early Detha cattle husbandry on Chelana grasslands

Chapter 4 Monsoon failures, cattle migration, and the diminishing Detha herd

Chapter 5 Jugti Dan's farm development work

Chapter 6 The life on Jugti Dan's agricultural farm in the 1920s

Chapter 7 Satia castrators

Chapter 8 Tilvara Cattle Fair

Chapter 9 The emergence of ox caravans

Chapter 10 The Baldia ox caravan transporters

Chapter 11 Baluchistan and Suraj Karan

Chapter 12 The Banjara nomadic culture

Chapter 13 Banjara caravan business

Chapter 14 Banjaras as warrior nomads

Chapter 15 Early urban cultures with whom early oxen caravans might have interacted

Chapter 16 Tan Dan's comments on his baldia group classification

Chapter 17 The same caste may have different names in different regions

Chapter 18 The same name for different castes

Chapter 19 Bahi bhats as family pedigree recorders

Chapter 20 Praisers and glorifiers related to the baldias

Chapter 21 East west division within the baldia group of castes

Chapter 22 Non-baldia nomadic groups in northwestern India

Chapter 23 Banjara smallscale pack oxent transport in the 1970s

Chapter 24 After the age of pack oxen caravans

Supplements

Indian words used in this book are explained here.

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### Chapter 1 Tan Dan

This is Tan Dan's version of the pastoral life in northwestern India with focus on his home region in western Rajasthan. The narrations go far both in space and time, as Tan Dan has many thoughts on how the vast multi-ethnic region from the Indian forests to the river plains of west Asia might have been experienced by widely travelling pastoral nomads over a period of four thousand years. It is narrated from his own perspective as villager of the semi-arid tropics in northwestern India. Based on his observations of the life of the nomadic groups from his childhood up to 1980 and on the narrations of those who have lived as cattle nomads themselves. Such as his father.

Others may have different ways of looking at these events. No claim is made that this is the ultimate truth. It is an attempt to come close to a nomadic culture that disappeared a few decades ago. Bits and pieces can still be found in western Rajasthan.

Who is Tan Dan?

Tan Dan Detha was born in a farmer family of the Charan caste in 1943. His native village is Chelana in Jodhpur District of Rajasthan in northwestern India. Tan Dan has lived in the midst of his strongly traditional environment all his life. He is a critical observer rather than a follower of that tradition.

Who is Son Lal?

Son Lal is my pen name. I was born in a Scandinavian country of northern Europe in the early 1940s. I have lived in India off and on for fifty years, since I first arrived to the Gateway of India at Bombay by ship in 1963. In the 1970s I met Tan Dan. We soon found we shared many views on the world, and had the same curiosity of village life. I saw a chance to learn how he experienced his rural environment. He did his best to explain, and I am grateful to him for having shared his knowledge and thoughts with me.

How this narration was done

Tan Dan told in English and I typed, while we sat together in long sessions. His many photos became a starting point for our discussions. Our knowledge of English was on the same level and we formulated the sentences together. Sentence after sentence, day after day. Most of it we wrote around 1980, but some additions were made in later decades. Afterwards I have edited the material and supplemented some sections with information from elsewhere. Still, it is Tan Dan's voice that is heard on these pages. It is a personal narration by a village farmer, and has no connection to any university.

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### Chapter 2 The risky life of Chelana cattle

After the land reform in 1952 effect of the droughts on killing cattle became more severe over time due to increased shortage of grazing land. More and more land was used for crop cultivation on previous grazing land. Overgrazing and increased aridity deteriorated the quality of the grasslands that still existed.

The deteriorating grazing lands in the 1970s

In the arid region of western Rajasthan, where only one fifth of lands scattered in different parts was suitable for sustained cropping, half of the area was used for cropping.

In 1970 the net cultivated area was 63 per cent of the total area in Jodhpur district. That much was cultivated by crops, especially pearl millet in the monsoon season. It was much above the 15 per cent of the land area best fit for cultivation. On the contrary, 69 per cent of the whole area was fit for pasture based livestock-farming. For grazing rather than crop cultivation. (Source: NS Jodha, 1977 and 1980)

The area available for grazing in the district declined of course, but the livestock population went up. Between 1951 and 1966 the livestock population increased by fifty per cent. The livestock density on the diminishing grazing land area almost doubled between these years.

How baffling! The number of animals increased and the grazing land decreased. The larger area to cultivate required more bullocks for ploughing, and the growing human population wanted to keep more cows for milk. Then the number of surplus cattle also grew, as there was no way to get rid of surplus cattle by slaughter. The health of the animals declined and their large numbers caused an environmental problem.

The growing human population also damaged the natural vegetation in the areas used for grazing and deforestation became severe. The growth of the human population as a social problem left the public debate in India in the 1970s. After Sanjay Gandhi's failure. A basic problem that never got a solution. Most people were more concerned about Sanjay Gandhi's high-handed handling of the issue than the population growth as such.

Unattended cattle around 2000 AD

The miserable situation for cattle continued at Chelana during the next forty years in spite of the emergence of irrigation farming. Mechanized agriculture at Chelana meant that tractors replaced all bullocks except a few that pulled carts around the bus station. Male cattle were not castrated any longer. They moved around mingling with cows let loose after no longer yielding any milk. Hundreds of animals roamed around on their own in search of something to eat. Inside the village at places such as the bus station, which in early mornings looked like a cow shed. They also roamed around in crop field areas surrounding the village settlement.

Unattended herds of such unproductive underfed animals now and then created havoc in standing crops. An important reason for farmers to keep night-watch in their fields. The idea of castrating surplus bulls as a way of reducing the cattle population pressure was not talked about at all. The focus was on saving the life of the animals by ample donations to the goshala, the place where abandoned cattle were kept for survival. In the buses volunteers went around collecting money from the passengers for the goshala. That money would be used for buying fodder and other necessities to alleviate the condition of the unhappy animals. They were worshipped and given bread by pious villagers enjoying the sight of divine cows. That was also the condition in many other villages and urban centres in the early 21st century, both in western Rajasthan and elsewere in India.

Chelana grasslands in Tan Dan's childhood

How different the vegetational cover looked like on uncultivated land around 1950! When Tan Dan was a child and all the days played hide and seek out in the bush jungles with his friends. They were sent by their parents as helpers to the cattle herders, and had sometimes quite a problem to find those cattle who had gone astray. The animals could wander far while grazing, without feeling any need of joining the herd. Especially oxen put at the yoke most of the time enjoyed freedom like this, while the cows going with the herds as a habit seldom left on their own.

It was as a small cowherder, Tan Dan spent a lot of time playing hide and seek with his friends. A free and happy time, which ended with start of the village school in 1950. First an improvised one with three classes at a temple near the Thikana. Later on, a fourth class was added. Then Tan Dan had left for further studies at Anandpur Kalu. His father Tej Dan and other grown ups managed to build a real school house, in spite of resistence from Rajputs and Baniyas, who did not want simple village children to be spoiled by formal education.

**

Thus, the grass in the grazing grounds in Tan Dan's childhood was high and tough and looked endless with only patches here and there of cultivated land. From the monsoon season up to Holi in February March the cattle had ample of feed on the green stretches.

In the hot season the grass dried up, but under the upper layer of grass burnt whitish and brown, there was a grass layer that had dried up like hay, although on root. That layer was nutritious and liked by the animals, Tan Dan thought. The cattle understood how to find it by poking their moles down to the bottom of the vegetation near the ground.

Such grassland could hardly be seen around Chelana in the 1970s. Socalled grazing land had hardly any grass cover at all. Only those who could feed their stall-fed bullocks and milk cows on straw and concentrates could benefit from their small herds of altogether about ten animals.

Those Dethas who continued as traditional cattle herders also in the new age became very poor. Especially Shiv Dan, Ishar Dan's grandson. Shiv Dan was the only fulltime Detha cattle herder in the 1970s. Completely landless. In the decades after the land reform in 1952, Shiv Dan's thirty heads of cattle, the last remnant of the big Detha herd, were underfed and sickish. There was no good grazing land left in the area. When Shiv Dan's cattle passed by some crop field, both the animals and their herder were chased away and badly scolded, if the crop was damaged.

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### Chapter 3 Early Detha cattle husbandry on Chelana grasslands

The life of the Detha clan when settling at Chelana

The Dethas at Chelana hailed from semi-nomadic cattle breeders in Sind to the west of the Rajasthan desert. Some Dethas moved to Rajputana princely states, when getting feudal grazing rights there. Eventually a part of the clan settled at Chelana in the 19th century. Chelana was then a small dusty village of straw roofed mud huts mainly living on pearl millet cultivation. The water in the deep well was enough for slaking the thirst, very important in the hot desert climate. But not for growing crops. They were rainfed in the monsoon season.

Three brothers came together with their families and animals. Budh Dan, Dalpat Dan and Ishar Dan. They had been sent to Chelana with one thousand heads of cattle each, according to the family narrations. Their father had got feudal grazing rights in the wilderness in between three villages and the brothers would stay in the area to make use of it. The big joint families lived exclusively on livestock breeding. Their big herds were always on the move between the four grazing places of Chelana, Devli, Palki and Lilian, tens of miles apart. They lived like nomads moving around with two thousand animals or more. The Detha kinship group also had about fifty to sixty horses in Budh Dan's time. Horse rearing was an old tradition among the Dethas. It dated back to the days when their ancestors were horsebreeders in Sindh, and sold their horses to armies.

Horses were used when herding cattle on long migrations in the Sindh days, and later in Rajasthan when driving the _herh_ herd of castrated male calves to the cattle fairs. Mostly, they sold two to three hundred castrated male calves per year at cattle fairs. About one hundred miles away. They went there every year. Either to Parbatsar or to Tilvara. Parbatsar is situated between Ajmer and Nagaur districts, and Tilvara is near Balhotra in Barmer District. Tilvara was the biggest cattle mela in western Rajasthan, and the Dethas preferred to sell their young oxen there.

Building houses and stonewalls

Already when the Dethas lived as cattlebreeding nomads they made enclosures for calves and young animals to protect them from wild animals. They did so at places, where they settled for some time. Enclosures also helped preventing untimely suckling and disorder in the herd. The enclosures were used for separating the calves, when the cattle herd returned from grazing.

The fence was usually made of thorny bushes, but when the Dethas started to live more regularly at Chelana, Budh Dan constructed a stonewall enclosure for the calves. His son Jugti Dan was keen on building stone walls and helped his father after having spent some years studying Dingal poetry at Jodhpur. The family belonged to the Charan caste and Dingal was the language of the Charan bards active at the princely courts of Rajputana. The clan wanted Jugti Dan to raise its status by becoming a Dingal poet, and it became a side activity to his cattlebreeding work.

Jugti Dan became the first one in his kinship group who lived a more settled life. He started livestock farming at Chelana, after the Detha clan had settled outside the southern corner of the village. Budh Dan built a small stone house there, which Jugti Dan enlarged. Then he built more stone houses. At that time only the village fortress and two more houses were built of stone.

Jugti Dan built a big stonewalled enclosure

One of Jugti Dan's major achievements was the construction of a big stonewall around his twenty acres compound for the cattle herd. The wall is still revered by his Detha offspring.

He and his co-workers built the long stonewall outside the southern end of the village settlement. It was six feet high, four feet wide at the bottom and 2.5 feet at the top. The compound was further divided into various compounds for keeping cattle of different categories.

At the inner corner of the enclosure Jugti Dan built a big stone house, the Pol building of the Dethas. Their the Detha menfolk used to gather for work and leisure.

The Rajput ruler at the villageThikana felt challenged, as it had a big gate.

The tall protective stonewalls of the stored fodder compound

The pol was situated within a five acres enclosure within the twenty acres compound. There Jugti Dan and his family kept stacks of hay, jovar and bajra stovers. The five acres enclosure had exceptionally high stonewalls, about seven feet, in order to keep trespassers out and as a protection against fire.

Each year Jugti Dan's family saddled the top of the wall around this enclosure with fresh thorny bushes and twigs. (Called pilani in Marvari.) They got material for the pilani work after bushing clearing.

Hay making by the Dethas

The hay was cut on natural grasslands, and mostly consisted of _Diacanthium annulatum_ , _Panicum antidotale_ , _Cynodon dactylon_ , malicha, and some _Cenchrus_ spp. grasses called _dhaman_ and button grass. The grass grew wild on fallow lands of the village, and was harvested for hay by the Dethas during Jugti Dan's time. In the first place on land owned by themselves, but also elsewhere with the permission of the owner. Where they found that the grass had come up well. Also in other villages. The grass was cut, when it had come up waist-high (about a meter). It was cut about two weeks after the end of the monsoon rains, when the grass seeds had started to ripen and the colour of the grass was about to change from lush green to yellow green. Tan Dan has been told by his father Tej Dan that they used to test the grass before they cut it, by pressing a few straws of grass between the fingers. If it smells unripe, they would wait with cutting it. When it was ripe, the smell was fainter and sweeter. Then they left it cut in the field, until it was dry enough to be stacked, and for that they had another test. They twisted two bunches of grass around each other with the hands. If the twist remained in the twisted position the hay had not dried enough to be stacked. If it was elastic and untwists and straightens out again, the hay was ready to be stacked, while if the grass straws crack and breaks while twisting, it is a sign that the grass has dried for too long and has reduced nutritional value and digestibility.

Jugti Dan built big hay stacks

Hay cut far away from the Detha homestead in Chelana, perhaps in other villages, were often stacked in the field itself, and the cattle were brought there later when needed, thus there was no problem of transporting such grass. Evidently other villagers did not steal hay. At least it did not stop haymaking and storage on far away fields, although the Dethas had many enemies in the neighbourhood, especially among the Rajputs. Around such field stacks a three feet broad and a four feet deep ditch was dug, and thorny bushes were piled up around the sides of the stack to a height of five to six feet to prevent wild animals from feeding on the hay. Also on the ground under the stack a layer of thorny bush was first kept in order to reduce the menace of rats, hedge hog, fox, mungoes, and other small animals.

Such field stacks of hay could be very long and cover a ground surface of one tenth of an acre for one stack. The sides were sloping and the top was a bit protruded /utskjutande/ with a kind of roof of long coarse grass, such as _kans_ , arranged like the roof of a straw hut. The grass at the top was laid from the periphery first and further layers closer and closer to the ridge of the roof, in order to get the rain water to fall off the stack easily.

A similar large-size hay stack was also kept at the five acres enclosure of the twenty acres compound at the Detha homestead at the outskirt of the Chelana village. In addition two more such hay stacks were kept in two other corners of the twenty acres compound to reduce the risk of fire.

The use of hay stacks and straw stacks

Hay and foodgrain stalks were kept as a reserve fodder for the hot season from April to June. Especially for lactating and pregnant cattle.

In years after good monsoon rains the grass drying up in the next hot season was often sufficient for ordinary cattle left walking around grazing. They could find dry but fairly nutritious grass below the sunburnt top layer of the grass cover.

But in drought years and famines the hay stacks became a life and death matter for the cattle, and stacks which might have been left untouched for several years, in extreme cases up to eighteen to twenty years, according to Tan Dan, might disappear completely in one or two years of famine. It took many years of hard work to build up such stacks to full size again.

Bush clearing in Chelana grasslands in the old days

In the open grasslands away from the village Jugti Dan used to cut a special bush called _jhar ber_ in Marvari, a xerophytic plant with a prolific growth, which Jugti Dan cut in November before the cold and after the kharif rains, when the leaves were fully developed.

Two special tools were used in western Rajasthan for this kind of bush-clearing. One is _jae_ , a six feet long wooden pitch-fork for bending up the lower parts of the bush cover from the ground, to make the bunch of thin stems in the middle visible and within reach for the _zarba_ , a long flat ax with a three feet long curved wooden handle. The handle is curved in order to allow the cutter to cut parallell to the ground in a standing position. Many cattleherders cleared bush in this way in the old days, before the pressure on land for cultivation, fuel and grazing became so great that no large bush formations in the wilderness became possible. At that time bush proliferation sometimes threatened to take over the grasslands, where the cattleherds were being grazed.

A feast for collective bush clearing

Tan Dan's childhood his father Tej Dan once invited a party of about two hundred villagers of various mohallas and background, the message being sent by telling friends to inform others, and also by asking the village drummer to go around in the village and shout invitation in public. Anybody who wanted to come along was welcome. The purpose was to cut out bush on a particularly bushy grassland patch outside the village. For that many working hands were needed, and people were invited to a feast on _gulgula_ at the work site itself. _Gulgula_ is a popular Indian sweet, a mixture of _gur_ , wheat flour, and curd. It is fried in sesamum oil and considered a delicacy.

Gulgula was meant for feeding the people who came along for cutting the bush, mostly menfolk and some children. The men brought their own tools. The children sent out for grazing cattle would all come for such a feast in the wilderness.

In early morning Tan Dan went along with the two bullock carts leaving the Detha house. On the carts were loaded big frying pans with _gulgula_ , and they headed for the bushland. To bring drinking water five bullock carts were sent out. It was a merry feast, which served its purpose, as a lot of bush got cleared.

Tej Dan got the work done by offering food under festive forms to those who wanted to help him. A work too big for a villager to carry out on his own. A time-honoured custom.

Wheat flour as a luxury

In those days _gulgula_ was a great delicacy at Chelana, an exotic item, as wheat flour was one of the ingredients.

Bajra and jowar were the only cereals locally available. Wheat was brought from town, and offered to honoured guests at rare occasions in the form of wheat chapatis, flat round bread. To the envy of the children of the house, who looked on and tried to imagine what it could tast like.

Dried bush leaves for fodder

Jugti Dan cleared the grazing land of the bush _jhar ber_ ( _Zizuphus nummularia_ ) in November each year. The cut bush was used for fences and fodder. First it was left to dry out in the field after cutting. They pulled it to the middle of the field and spread it out in a band of three rows of drying bush laid in a u-formation to facilitate accessibility. They kept it drying like this for five six days at the most. The drying should proceed to such a stage that the leaves fall off easily, when the twigs are shaken.

The leaves were collected and later used as a nutritional fodder, palatable to the cattle. It was used in the dry season mixed with husk of bajra and jowar grains. But if dried too long, also thorns and small twigs fell off and mixed with the leaves. Then it became difficult for the cattle to chew the feed.

Thorny twigs for fences

After the leaves had been separated, the dry thorny twigs were bundled together in big heaps loaded on the ox carts and carried away to the Detha compound in the village. Such a big bundle of thorny twigs is called _bhintora_. Large goat hair carpets were joined with sticks used as nails and wrapped around the _bhintora_ load, which looked gigantic. Cartloads of such bush were carried home from morning to evening for many days each year in November.

The collected leaves were transported in a separate cart.

The stacks of jowar and bajra in the five acres enclosure

After the long stalks of jowar and bajra had been cut in the fields they were tied in thick bundles. Two hundred such bundles were kept together upright leaning against each other in order to let the earhead dry in the wind and sunshine for about twenty days in big field stacks. Such a stack is called _oga_ in Marvari.

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### Chapter 4 Monsoon failures, cattle migration, and the diminishing Detha herd

In Jugti Dan's childhood in the 1850s the whole Detha clan of Chelana had around two thousand heads of cattle. That is what Tan Dan had been told by his eldest sister, his maternal grandmother and others. In years of monsoon failure the villagers brought their animals to regions with less aridity. Some two thousand heads of cattle were driven to grassland hundreds of kilometres away in the 1910s. As one big herd. Thrice. Most of these animals belonged to the Dethas and the rest, about eight hundred, belonged to other Chelana villagers. The Detha cattle herd had shrunk to almost half in these sixty seventy years.

Tej Dan's cattleherding tours in the 1910s

Tej Dan used to tell Tan Dan about what he had seen on his journeys with the Detha cattle herd in the difficult drought years of the 1910s. Dangerous journeys with a big risk of losing cattle on the way. It was probably the vulnerability of the big cattle herd to repeated droughts in those years that got Jugti Dan to change his livestock breeding practices, Tan Dan thought. Jugti Dan improved his grasslands, he started dryland crop farming and he dug a well in the twenty acres stonewalled compound.

Sent by his father Jugti Dan in the drought year of 1912, Tej Dan made a long journey to the Gujarat coast together with other relatives to graze cattle of the whole Detha clan. First Tej Dan went alone on his horse from Chelana to Gujarat, exploring the grass conditions, so that a safe route could be laid out for the cattle herd. Cattle could be lost if the animals would be without grass for several days. Then Tej Dan and his relatives brought the whole herd to Bhuj in northwestern Gujarat after passing through the Rann of Kutch and Kathiavar.

In 1915 the monsoon rains also failed and the Dethas had to make another long journey with the cattle herd. They went to Bahawalpur, a Muslim state in Multan District, which is now in Pakistan. On that journey Tej Dan passed through Kalibangan, a strange place that turned out to be the site of an ancient town of the Harappan civilization more than four thousand years ago.

The third long cattle migration was done in the drought year of 1918. Tej Dan went along with his relatives grazing the Detha cattleherd in the Chambal valley. One evening they reached a village in the valley that was ruled by a village lord who showed them hospitality. When the Thakur appeared the Chelana cattle herders thought he wanted to chase them away, scared by seeing so many animals at his village. They told him they would just pass by very quickly. He replied he had come to give them a welcome greeting. They were his guests and they could stay for several days, if they wished. Tej Dan narrated the events of their journey to his son Tan Dan who in turn has told his cousin nephew Bhupendra Detha. Bhupendra's grandfather Chiman Dan also took part in the adventurous journeys to distant grazing lands.

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### Chapter 5 Jugti Dan's farm improvements

Jugti Dan's attempt to develop the grazing land for his big cattle herd

Jugti Dan had felt the gradual deterioration of pasture land coming and took steps to counteract the change in order to protect his big herd of hundreds of heads of cattle. It was partly to reduce the hazards of the drought years that Jugti Dan tried new methods in grassland management, livestock management and crop cultivation.

Tan Dan got to know about these attempts from his father Tej Dan who lived between 1895 and 1990. Jugti Dan had died a few years before Tan Dan was born in 1943.

Jugti Dan's grassland improvement work

Jugti Dan had fenced some of the grassland he owned himself, both on the original shanshan land of the Dethas flanking the hill in the south and on pasture plots, he had bought from the Mehru Charans of Chelana. On these fenced plots he did not sow any grass seed, but tried to improve the grassland by vegetative propagation. Sowing was cheaper but less reliable, as the emergence depended on the erratic rainfall.

Some of Jugti Dan's jagirdar friends also started grassland improvement for their cattle, after having seen Jugti Dan's work, according to what various villagers have told Tan Dan. They all propagated one particular species within the genus of Cenchrus, namely Cenchrus cilliaris, locally known as _dhaman_. Also the CAZRI station at Chelana selected this species for multiplication fifty years later, but they scattered seed of the dhaman grass in the fenced grassland. Vegetative propagation was too labour demanding for them. Sowing gives a more uneven performance, as success depends on the regularity of rains at the establishment stage, but it is easier and cheaper.

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The fences Jugti Dan used were of cut and dried _jarh ber_ bush. Later on he also built stone walls for his grazing patches, especially the twenty acres plot near his house and a thirty acres plot on the Detha shanshan land near the hill in the south.

They dug six inch (1.5 dm) deep holes with a six inch diameter at a distance of two feet (6 dm) between each pit and two feet between each row. These pits were dug in large numbers all over the grassland fields at the end of the winter. During the summer months western winds are blowing at Chelana and the pits got partly filled by sand carried by the wind. On the first day of the Monsoon rains, they used to dig out big spreadout dhaman plants, and separate them into many pieces, sometimes up to one hundred or more pieces with roots and all. Then they would put one separated plant in each pit and cover the root well with sand, which the wind had helped to fill in the pits and also sand from the sides. This was a time-consuming task, which was carried out on small patches each year. Each patch of established grassland was able to provide good grazing land for many decades. By planting new patches each year Jugti Dan managed over the years to cover all his land not used for other purpose by good grass. His grassland was the best in the village, Tan Dan thinks, having seen the same grassland still in good conditions in his childhood, which on such developed grasslands sprouted immediately after rains. Within a few days it got a thick grass cover.

Such arid climate grasses have a special ability to respond quickly to moisture. Sometimes _dhaman_ sprouts, when it rains somewhere in the neighbourhood, for example at Nilkhedi, even if no rain falls in Chelana. It is due to extreme sensitivity to moisture with the help of the areal pores in their stem nodes. Through these pores (stomata) water can be absorbed, so that grass leaves and shoots can sprout at the nodes, Tan Dan told.

Jugti Dan's steel plough

When the new plants had been firmly established in the middle of the rainy season, Jugti Dan used to plough the grassland fields with a steel plough he had designed himself. As it was heavier than the common arder it could go a little deeper in the hard rough soil of the grasslands with a closed vegetation cover. His plough was able to chisel the grassland soil to a depth of 3-4 inches (7.5-10 cm) instead of the depth of 2-3 inches (5-7.5 cm) of the ordinary wooden plough. He ploughed all his improved grassland fields with this steel plough, also those which had been transplanted in earlier years.

In fields with cultivated crops the soil was looser and the common wooden arder could chisel to a depth of 3-4 inches. Rainfed fields planted with bajra, jovar, moong (a pulse) and til (an oilseed). Also Jugti Dan used the common arder plough in such fields.

Advantages of the ordinary wooden plough

1. It was easy to lift and move to the next furrow at the end of the field .

2. It was easy to pull by the oxen bred in western Rajasthan.

3. It could be carried away from the fields by the tiller alone.

4. It was made by village carpenters who knew how to repair it. Its iron shoe was made and sharpened by the village blacksmith (lohar).

Disadvantages:

The wooden plough often has to be adjusted and put together, as it threatens to fall apart several times per hour in hard soil, and several times per day at least when cultivating fields of average soil conditions.

Jugti Dan's steel plough was more efficient than the wooden plough in the improved grasslands, as it was heavier and more durable. However, it was difficult to lift by one man and could not be moved around as easily as the ordinary wooden arder.

Jugti Dan's bullock cart for transporting stones

Jugti Dan constructed a special kind of bullock cart for hauling big rocks and stone slabs needed for constructing the stonewall. The platform was placed down between the wheels only about ten to twelve inches (almost 3 dm) above the ground. This he constructed in order to facilitate the work of lifting the stones, and to minimize the handling work as much as possible. He himself carried stones daily, so he understood the need of it. He got it constructed the way he wanted by calling the carpenter and the blacksmith to the pol building. They made the cart there under his supervision. He constructed a big cart for moving at places with plenty of space, and a small narrow cart to be used where the big one could not go. The small one could be moved both by oxen and by hand. No other villager tried to copy this design, nor did later generations of the Dethas use such carts. In 1978 Jugti Dan's grandchildren never did any such work themselves, but got it done by stoneworkers of the bavri caste (chawkidars), who had no opportunity to think out or construct such labour-saving carts. Ordinary bullock carts have the platform about one meter above the ground which means a lot of straining work for the Bavri stoneworker, who might damage his back.

Jugti Dan used dummy suckles to prevent calves from drinking too much milk

Jugti Dan felt it was a waste that a calf should suckle cows milk and buffalo milk, so he started a self-made dummy suckle arrangement. Long feeding troughs filled with bajra flour mixed with cooked butter milk and partly milk. The troughs were covered with long strips of goat skin tied together. In these strips leather nipples were inserted, and from these nipples the calves could suckle. Sometimes hundreds of calves sucked these skins at the same time, as the herd was big. Tan Dan's father Tej Dan also used such a device, when a cow died or got a disease. During Tan Dan's childhood in the 1940s. Tej Dan's cattle herd was much smaller.

The problem of cutting crops

For cutting crops at Chelana the small hand sickle was used. It had a curved blade of about one feet and a wooden handle. While cutting crops with such a sickle, the labourer had to work in a squatting position, cutting the crop plants within his reach and then, while still sitting on his heels, he moved a few feet to the middle of the next patch to be harvested. Mostly only two or three inches of the sickle blade are used intensively. Therefore, after extensive use the sickle is getting thin at that place. Only a few stalks are cut at each stroke. Therefore this method is slow and inefficient. Some people try to increase the speed by working in a standing rather than a sitting position. With their back bent forward and arms stretching for the stalks, but it is a very straining position after some time and could harm the back and the body in the long run. That is what Jugti Dan thought. He neither liked to see people sitting while working, nor to see people working with bent backs.

Therefore he introduced a more efficient crop cutting tool which he called _ubo dat_.

Jugti Dan's improved sickle tool

Instead of using the ordinary sickle, Jugti Dan himself devised a crop cutting tool, which could be handled while standing. He called this crop cutting tool _ubo dat_. _Ubo_ means standing in Marvari and _dat_ is sickle, i.e. the sickle for working in upright position. Tej Dan told Tan Dan that Jugti Dan did not copy any other such tool from elsewhere, but tried it out on his own. He experimented with different shapes and adjustments of the tool, until he got a tool that satisfied him. It was like a narrow flat spade blade of iron held parallell to the ground a short distance above it. The blade was about 25 centimeters long and 7 centimeters wide near the wooden handle, which pierced the flat blade vertically from above.

The blade had a slightly curved edge at the cutting side. It was sharpened like a knife by a wet sandstone lying on the ground. Water was sprinkled on the stone while the tool was sharpened. Such stones did exist for sharpening small knives and scissors, but were not used by anybody else than Jugti Dan for sharpening agricultural tools.

The wooden handle was five feet long, the lower half of which was slightly bent and about 70-80 degrees from the blade. The _ubo dat_ sickle was thus similar to an old European scythe.

By a light force it cut the stalks with a rythmic pull. _Cherak, cherak cherak_ was heard, when the stalks were cut and fell to the ground after vibrating for a second in the air. Ladu Dan, a Detha relative, became the best one in this art. He enjoyed doing this work and show his proficiency to others.

Jugti Dan had originally deviced this tool for clearing the ground from the sprouting weedy vegetation that emerged in the monsoon season around the house and in the fruit garden.

Jugti Dan' blacksmith workshop at the Pol building

As Jugti Dan was keen on experimenting with new tools, he had established a little blacksmith section in a corner of his house for menfolk called pole, the house with the magnificent gate, which the Thakur did not like and which was the working hub of the Detha family. Womenfolk, children and servants lived some two hundred meters away in another house called _ravla_. Now and then, when Jugti Dan got a new idea and wanted to get some work done with on his tools, often changes and improvements, he called a blacksmith to do the work right at the pole building. In this way Jugti Dan could follow the progress of the work under close supervision. He did not do any blacksmith work himself, however, as there is no tradition at Chelana nor anywhere else in the casteridden Indian society to try to do a lot of different professions at the same time. In spite of that Jugti Dan was more versatile than most other villagers, and he did not bother much whether a special work which had to be done was considered respectable or not. He himself was every day busy in manual work like digging out stones, hauling them from one place to another, and building stonewalls, which also involved masonry work.

Reasons for Jugti Dan's keenness on experimentation

Jugti Dan used to try new methods and tools on his own. That he could do without any help from outside, as he was an experienced cattle breeder with many generations of accumulated knowledge to draw from, when conducting his own experiments and attempts to improvements.

He got his innovation-minded approach not only as an inherited gift and inner quality, but also because he was forced to think in these directions to maintain his big herd of cattle, which had been the fundament of the Detha economy for many generations. It appears to Tan Dan, that this herd in the 19th and 20th centuries had become increasingly vulnerable to droughts due to the increasing depletion of natural vegetation in western Rajasthan. At such droughts cattle owners could face large losses. To avoid loss Jugti Dan sent his relatives on long migrations in search of grassland for their cattle. In the three drought years 1912, 1915, and 1918, their cattle had to make three very long journeys, which were risky and created hardship and inconvenience for those who were herding the cattle. It might have been such experience, that got Jugti Dan to experiment with new ways of cattle feeding, invent new tools, and intensify his farm production. The solutions he found were often unusual ones. He had to experiment on his own, as he lived in an age when everything was done by habit and tradition, and there were hardly anybody he could consult. Government support in the form of extension services did not exist. Still it seems to Tan Dan that Jugti Dan succeeded better in his development efforts than many farmers in the modern age. There reason could be that he himself had practical experience from labour work both in agriculture and in animal husbandry.

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### Chapter 6 Jugti Dan as a farm manager and a Dingal poet

How Jugti Dan started growing crops on rented land

Jugti Dan was the first Detha at Chelana to grow foodgrains and other crops. He started in fields owned by some Brahmins. Their fields had become idle, when they got employed as cooks for Marwari merchants from Chelana living in Maharashtra. These merchants wanted somebody who could cook Marvari food and who understood their language. Brahmins were in high demand, as they could cook food for all kinds of guests without any risk of ritual pollution.

These absentee landowners persuaded Jugti Dan to rent their land and take care of it for a very small rent. It induced Jugti Dan to start cultivation, as these lands had been cultivated for a long time with dryland farming methods and were comparatively fertile.

Then Jugti Dan also cultivated fields belonging to Charans of the Mehru gotra. They had borrowed money from him and at this period of Chelana history they were too poor and disorganised to pay back, unless Jugti Dan leased their land and recovered the loan from agricultural produce he cultivated himself as their tenant.

Detha sanshan grazing right at Chelana

The two thousand bighas (800 acres) that the Dethas got from the Jodhpur Maharaja as shanshan land was about three to four kilometres away from the Chelana village settlement area towards the South. In the direction of a sandstone hill, the contour of which stands nicely against the horizon.

The land the Detha had got for grazing, spread along the front slope of the hill. It went all the way up to the top, rolling and rocky and unsuitable for crop cultivation, most of it. All the same, various Dethas from Jugti Dan onwards have cultivated some patches. Jugti Dan's family grew pulse on about one hundred acres. It is easier to grow in coarse soil than pearl millet (bajra).

The land was jointly owned by all Dethas in those days and the clan settled internally, who should use what piece of land and for what purpose. It became a custom for some families to stick to certain patches.

Jugti Dan's dryland crop cultivation Jugti Dan's feudal group of farm servants/labourers

In the 1920s Jugti Dan cultivated between five and eight hundred acres of land rented from Brahmin, Rajput, and non-Detha Charan jagirdars. That he did in the kharif season by dryland farming.

The landowner used to dictate the terms for their tenants, especially where the land was scarce, but at Chelana it was rather the supplementary resources required in cultivation that were scarce. Such as oxen and ploughs. In addition to being a largescale owner of such property, Jugti Dan also had the skill and enterprising nature required for coordinating the work on a large scale and promptly carrying out the operations in time, a precondition for success in dryland farming.

Therefore, the relationship which Jugti Dan had as a largescale tenant cultivator to those who owned the land, was quite unusual.

When the farm work increased Jugti Dan required more labourers. Most lowcaste villagers he could not get, as they already had long established relations with various feudal lords. A barter system, in which labour service was exchanged for foodgrain in a client relationship between families over generations. They were not allowed to work for anybody else.

Jugti Dan therefore had to create his own feudal type of group with those who were available. Some were Jats, and a few Bhambis, a low untouchable caste in the traditional caste hierarchy. Many labourers on Jugti Dan's farm were poor people of high castes such as Charans, Sads (a caste of temple priests), and Rajputs.

About twenty labourers who worked under Jugti and his sons getting bajra grain and bread as their main remuneration. That staple food was an important unifier of any feudal enterprise.

Jugti Dan as a moneylender

Passive jagirdars of a lethargic nature with hardly any other resources than land, were often extremely poor and in need of both money and food. Jugti Dan became their master and moneylender, although tenant. They were in his clutches rather than the other way round, as they had to live on what Jugti Dan and his family could produce out of the jagirdar's land. It was difficult to find anybody who could replace him.

According to Tan Dan the interest rate on those days (around 1920) were generally _'ekotara'_ i.e. one Rupee per month for a loan of one hundred Rupees at Chelana, and Jugti Dan also followed this moneylending practice. It means twelve per cent annual interest, which is considerably less than the three to five Rupees per month per hundred Rupees borrowed which was practised at Chelana in the 1970s. It was more a barter economy those days. Payment was in kind and money was less in circulation. Labourers without property only worked for food and could hardly buy anything. Only those with some property or other security could borrow money.

Mahesh Dan as a moneylender

Jugti Dan's son Mahesh Dan got adopted by Jugti Dan's brother Kim Dan as a teenager, as Kim Dan had no son. Kim Dan was wealthy, owning a big cattle herd, and Mahesh Dan inherited that wealth. He settled in a house of his own after Kim Dan's death. Bought from a rich baniya merchant.

Mahesh Dan gradually became a village moneylender, and made a lot of money. Mahesh Dan became a harder moneylender than Jugti Dan, claiming higher rates of interest than the traditional ekotara, i.e. one Rupee per hundred per month. He also enforced stricter terms of recovery. According to his brother Tej Dan, Tan Dan's father.

He protected his own economic interests against his brothers and real father Jugti Dan, and quarrels started. Mostly about petty things. Such as how to compensate each others for help with various things including farm work. As Jugti Dan also got angry at what he thought was Mahesh Dan's selfish behaviour, the quarrels used to end by Mahesh Dan appealing to his mother, Bhuji, Jugti Dan's wife. She was thought to have equal love for all her children, and therefore neutral. Many quarrels were settled by her decision, which they all promised to abide to, as they realised the importance of preserving peace within the family. They had too many enemies to afford internal strife.

Jugti Dan and the money box

In those days only the head of each joint family household of Chelana handled money. Jugti Dan kept all the money for his entire household in a locked box, to which only he had the key, and everybody had to ask him for money for everything. Not even his wife Bhuji had access to the money box, which weighed about 800 kilograms. She like everybody else of the joint houshold tried to get money from Jugti Dan by asking for a bigger amount than required for a particular purchase. They sometimes told him a much higher price than the real one. He seldom questioned them, so his grip over the money was not as tight as it appeared. Once when Jugti Dan went to Jodhpur, he asked those in the house to prepare a purchase list for him. A list of items he should buy in the town.

They wanted many things and especially cloth for various purposes. In the list was written _do than_ (48 metres) of _kanchali_ cloth. For making brassieres. One metre would be enough for four brassieres, so they got a lot of cloth that they could use for other purposes, too, without Jugti Dan's knowledge. Such as gifts and donations, which he was against, but he did not realise this little trick and the family peace was left undisturbed.

Once when Jugti Dan was away, the family had an acute cash problem. Jugti Dan alone had the key to the money box, and the key was with him. Tej Dan went to Mahesh Dan and asked him to lend them some money. But Mahesh Dan demanded interest for the money. It made Tej Dan angry, and another family quarrel started, which finally was solved with the help of Bhuji, Jugti Dan's wife.

Jugti Dan at a Dingal poet school at Jodhpur

When Jugti Dan was young, his father Budh Dan sent him to a traditional Dingal poet school at Jodhpur run by Ganeshpuri, a learned Charan.

The main reason was that Dethas had a low status among Charans of other gotras, who had lived longer in Rajasthan and developed close contacts with the rulers of the princely states as bards.

The Dethas were comparatively unschooled and rugged newcomers from the open sparsely populated stretches of the Sindh plain. It was therefore difficult for the Dethas to get daughters-in-law from other Charans in Rajputana, and to marry their own daughters into good families. The elders thought it would be wise to improve the literary reputation of the Detha clan living both at Chelana and Devli. Therefore they decided to send Jugti Dan to Ganeshpuri's school in the hope that he would become a reputed poet. By staying in Jodhpur for several years Jugti Dan came to learn more about the world. He got friends among people with an urban background in Jodhpur and he got to know about new customs and habits and more modern ways of doing things. For example, Jugti Dan has written in one of his poems about the stable of the risala (cavalry) in Jodhpur. He tells how he admires the good management practices such as the feeding and water arrangements and the habit of exercising the horses. It is possible that some of the new things he introduced on his farm at Chelana, he first came to know about at Jodhpur in his student days.

Jugti Dan as a Dingal poet

Later on Jugti Dan became a well-known Dingal poet in western Rajasthan, and several of his poems were published at the expense of the Marvar State. These poems were mainly about the glory of the king. They included poems about the deeds of the Marvar cavalry when Sir Pratab Singh participated in war campaigns in China under the British. It happened during the First World War 1914-1918.

Sir Pratab Singh was then the guardain of the royal heir to the throne, who by that time was a minor. Other Charan poets with an established reputation only wrote about maharajas and their royal families, and felt it was beneath them to make flattering poems for an ordinary aristocrat such as Pratap Singh, the guardian of the minor maharaja, but Jugti Dan saw his chance to become famous and wrote several heroic poems about Pratab Singh, who became knighted by the British. He went to the royal court in Jodhpur with his poems, which were appreciated, especially by Sir Pratab Singh himself, who arranged to get them published in many books by the State Press. In addition Jugti Dan managed to get several poems about the Detha family and its family history and geneology included in several books. But other Charan families, who had been poets at the royal court for generations, did not like the competition of this newcomer. Rivalry and jealousy developed between Jugti Dan on one side and the other Charan poets on the other, but somehow Jugti Dan managed to hold on by making friends among non-Charan state poets at the court. Some were Brahmins, others Rajputs. Jugti Dan made friends with them in spite of his anti-Brahmin views.

The rivalry between Charan and Brahmin poets

The teacher Ganeshpuri in Jodhpur was a Charan. He himself had learnt Dingal poetry and traditions from Charan teachers. His school was known for its anti-Brahmin attitudes, which were rather common among the Charans, as there was a rivalry with Brahmins about teaching moral values. The Charans more stressed the need of bravery and revenge for misdeeds done to you, and they glorified wordly persons such as the kings and warriors with whom they were associated. They often ridiculed the Brahmin tradition which emphasized kindness and obedience to saints and priests and was strict on vegetarianism and _ahimsa_. Pastoral Charans such as the Dethas seem to have been closer to pre-Muslim West Asian values than to the minutely regulating approach of the insisting and stubborn Brahmins and their hymns in Sanskrit, telling everyone in the whole society how to live.

Charans were proud of their own literary tradition. The Vedic and Brahmin books were not their creation. Several students of Ganeshpuri including Jugti Dan have written anti-Brahmin and anti-temple poems in Dingal. Also Jugti Dan's sons Mahesh Dan and Sabal Dan were taught in the same tradition. The whole home of Jugti Dan was thoroughly anti-Brahmin, and that was also the atmosphere in which Tan Dan was brought up.

In the 1970s the Brahmin priests had got a better hold of the Detha mohalla, often coming in daytime on begging expeditions. Then they were received and attended to by the ladies of the houses when their men were out on work. The Detha women thought their spiritual welfare was linked to listening to, and obeying, the directions of the visiting Brahmins. The Brahmins and sadhus were quite successful, as the Detha ladies nowadays are very pious with regard to Hindu traditions such as observing fast, worshipping, _kirtan_ , observing non-killing of all animals including harmful ones such as poisonous snakes, scorpions, rats, flies and rabies-infected stray dogs. Keenness to donate to Brahmins is a part of that tradition. Also a few men among the Dethas in Chelana are pious Hindus in the traditional Brahminic sense such as Mehar Dan, Chen Dan, and also to some extent Naru Dan, who got impressed by the ideology of Manu, after having read Manu Smrti, when he was in Government service in the Forestry Department, mostly moving around in the Aravalli Hills as a Junior Officer, although otherwise he had no religious inclination.

Also Sabal Dan and Mahesh Dan got training in Dingal poetry

Until his death in 1929 Sabal Dan was employed at the Department of History and Archives of the Marvari State Government. There he assisted other scholars in making a history of Jodhpur State in Hindi, being well versed in Dingal, Sanskrit and other old languages of the source material from which he made compilations. Although he worked in Jodhpur, his family lived as a part of the large Jugti Dan family at Chelana. Sabal Dan also went home now and then for long periods to help in farm work. The farm was the basic means of his livelihood.

According to Tan Dan, Sabal Dan has made many good poems in Marvari about everyday life at Chelana and Rajasthani village life in general. They are all oral but Tan Dan has written down a few of them, which have been told to him by Tej Dan, his father, and Phephu, Tan Dan's aunt.

Jugti Dan's sons Mahesh Dan and Sabal Dan studied at the same school as their father, the traditional pre-British Dingal literature training school in Jodhpur of the teacher Ganeshpuri. Tej Dan and the other two brothers were not sent to school, but they were taught reading and writing at home.

Although Mahesh Dan got an education similar to that of Sabal Dan, he never took up employment anywhere. He always stayed at Chelana.

Mahesh Dan was not much intellectually inclined, although he sometimes made two-lines doha verses poems. The most remembered ones were those he made when the brothers were attacked in Hariadhana in 1929.

Story telling and reading habits of the Detha families in Jugti Dan's time

The Dethas at Chelana kept reading more or less religious books, especially Karnicharitra and Pabuprakash. Most of the unschooled members of the family, also used to read the book of Pandu Yashendru Chandrika, a story about the Mahabharata War written in Dingal. Another book is Hari Ras. It is a religious book poetic in style and popular among Charan families in Rajasthan. In addition they also got a kind of oral home education by listening to poetry recitation in Dingal by the elders sitting in darkness in the angan , with the family elders sitting in the middle. In wintertime warming themselves at a fire. Children and women sat in the periphery, mostly in silence, although sometimes a child might start yelling, if bitten by an insect. Thus a unique tradition of listening and learning poems by heart developed in the Charan caste. Hardly any other villagers in Rajasthan had this regular habit of story telling and poetry recitation.

Brahmin priests had in the old days the tradition of teaching their youth Vedic Hymns in Sanskrit, but this was taught in secrecy and seclusion. The students had to learn by heart. They were mostly not more than three or four at a time, and it was a professional full-time teaching of recitation all day long, to enable the youth to carry on the Vedic tradition. It therefore did not have much resemblance of the evening storytelling of the Charans, which was open for anybody in the village. Also untouchables sometimes would come and listen, sitting at the back end of the angan, near the entrance door.

Jugti Dan's family in the early 1930s

Jugti Dan's large estate was a little kingdom, which broke up at the death of the four brothers. After that most farm activities were left idle. Tej Dan was hospitalised for two and a half years and in bed for another year, leaving the farm without work leaders for many years. The sons of the five brothers were still small. Jugti Dan himself went to the court regularly to attend the murder case, the high expenditure of which necessitated selling out property such as cattle and gold ornaments. Jugti Dan stopped renting land.

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### Chapter 7 Satia castrators

The necessary task of male calf castration

Jugti Dan and his relatives earned money on selling batches of castrated male calves at cattle fairs. Batches of about two hundred animals at a time. That was the main income of Jugti Dan's big cattle farm enterprise. The Dethas got a good price for the animals they had reared, as they sold them castrated. As young untrained bullocks. Most farmers sold uncastrated male calves in spite of the lower price they got that way. The reason was Hindu feelings for the sacred cow. Pious Hindus told it was a sin to inflict suffering on cows and bulls by castration. The cow suffered because she was deprived of a possibility to get calves and the pleasure of giving motherly care. At least in principle, if there were no other male cattle around. The male calf was by castration deprived of the free life of a bull and made a slave that had to labour under the yoke. That is what the villagers used to tell Tan Dan. The Detha cattle breeders did not bother. They got their cattle castrated before selling them at the cattle fair, which Tan Dan thought was due to the lack of Hindu sentiments of his Charan forefathers. It was one of several indications of a westerly origin of the Dethas. From somewhere to the west of the Indian subcontinent.

All the same, the Dethas did not castrate their cattle themselves, but called Satias to carry out the physical work of cutting off the testicles. The Dethas were those who caused the work to be done rather than did it themselves. That was bad enough in the eyes of pious Hindus. (Karvana, Hindi for getting a work done by others, a very common word in the traditional Indian society drenched in feudal master-servant attitudes and work relations.)

As nobody else wanted to castrate cattle, the work of the Satias was indispensible. Bullocks were a must in the Indian agrarian economy. The whole Rajasthani society ought to have been grateful to the Satias for their service. Instead they were treated with contempt, as a low kind of untouchables at the fringe of the Indian civilization.

The Satia was a small nomadic caste that in western Rajasthan lived in make-shift shelters out in the semi-arid bush jungle up to the 1970s. Later on more or less settled as all other Indian nomads. It was their caste tradition to exchange things, to carry out barter trade. Castrating cattle was not their caste profession, on the other hand. That they did, as it was an easy way for them to earn money.

Another example of non-Hindu behaviour by Charan cattle breeders

Only Charans put trishule on their cows as a branding mark. Savarn Hindus would never do this. However, savarn Hindus instead brand the village bull used for breeding. It is called _suraj ro sandh_ , the bull of the sun god. On such village bulls on one thigh is a circle is branded depicting sun and on the other thigh the trishul is branded. (Trishul is a trident spearlike weapon depicted together with deities.)

Highly pious Brahmins and Baniyas disapprove the branding of cattle altogether, as they think the hot branding iron inflicts pain on the animal.

How the farmers got their bullocks

Most farmers kept cows that were covered by village stud bulls. They themselves kept bullocks, not bulls. Male calves were sold uncastrated to Banjaras and similar cattle traders. Bullocks they bought at cattle fairs from cattle traders. Mostly some other Banjara group. Thus the farmers did not use their own male calves as bullocks. It would have required their involvement in the act of castration, and that they wanted to avoid, as it was considered a sin to castrate calves. It could bring problems in future life of the Hindu believers.

The animals were castrated by men of the Satia caste, when they were owned by the cattle traders. The traders called the Satias and thereby became the indirect doer of this sinful work.

Cattle owners such as Jat farmers normally did not ask Satias to castrate cattle at their farms. The few ones who did so were known for that in the whole _khera_ of their caste. They were considered socially abnormal cases, and their families could face difficulties in making marriage relations. They were treated as sinners, not for castrating cattle, which would be an unthinkable act, but for having asked somebody to castrate cattle. They would be the ones who put the bull calf in difficulty.

Detha Charans at Chelana such as Jugti Dan's family _did_ own the bull calves at the time of castration, though. They called the Satias to their farm. A non-Hindu behaviour that Tan Dan thought had been a long tradition among the cattlebreeding forefathers of the clan. Probably from the time they lived closer to pre-Muslim cultural influence from further to the west in Asia and had less contacts with the Hindu traditions of the Indian subcontinent.

The division of work and ownership arrangements at castration

At the time of bull calf castration Satias only did the small work of cutting the testicles with a sharp knife, while the owner of the calf, mostly a Banjara or Gadolia Lohar, did the more heavy work of holding the calf and binding him, feeling less committed in the crime this way. Even ordinary farmers might participate in the work of holding the calf at the time of castration, according to Tan Dan.

Village farmers who did not want to own the calf at that moment, sometimes carried out pseudosales with the Banjaras. For the day or so, i.e the time it took to get the calf castrated by a Satia, assisted by a temporary pseudo-owner with less savarn Hindu feelings than the real owner, the village farmer.

Pious Hindus who felt that helping in any way in this work is _pap_ did not come near at the moment of castration.

Castration after 1980

In 1981 many farmers of western Rajasthan still required bullocks, although the use of tractors were on the increase in dynamic villages such as Chelana.

Then the Satias charged five rupees per castrated animal, a steep increase since 1970, when they charged one Rupee.

The reason might have been the growing difficulty for cattle traders in western Rajasthan to get their cattle castrated. Some Satia families started to live a more settled life as labourers, now and then also working as petty traders.

As no other caste in western Rajasthan wanted to castrate cattle, the region might face a major crisis in the bullock trade in the future, Tan Dan thought.

Then he found out that also some men of the Sansi caste had started bull calf castration. Sansis or Sanshis were earlier outlaws living in the wilderness. In their search for a livelihood they had also started to mend old shoes in Jodhpur district villages such as Chelana. The Bhambis, the traditional leather caste of the region, had discarded that work in their attempt to get ride of the stigma of untouchability.

Nevertheless, at least in the countryside, the religious sentiments for cows and cattle in general, including male calves for castration, was increasing rather than decreasing. Large farming communities such as Jats were anxious to be recognized, if possible, as 'high savarn Hindus'.

One day the Satias might try to improve their status by refusing to castrate.

Their castration work had been very useful to the whole Indian society for centuries, although not recognized as such.

In the decades after the land reform in 1952 the demand for bullocks had increased sharply as more land was cultivated than before. Fifty years later there were only tractors and no bullocks at Chelana. Eventually tractors would take over in most of western Rajasthan, and other parts of northwestern India, but in southern Rajasthan and elsewhere the use of bullocks might continue for a long time. Who castrate their male calves? Do the _adivasi_ farmers at Bansvara castrate their cattle themselves? Is it done by castes similar to the Satias?

Bardija, an alternative method of castration carried out by veterinarians

In 1981 Tan Dan got to know about a new castration method rather similar to the family planning programme during emergency in the 1970s, i.e. the _nashbandhi_. As for cattle it was carried out at the veterinary village clinics. It was called _bardija_.

The sperma tube of the calf was pressed to prevent any sperma to get through. The villagers did not like that technique, though, and the veterinarians had not yet got many cases to handle in western Rajasthan, Tan Dan told.

Satia nomads and their attitude to castration work

It was taken for granted by all villagers that Satias moving around like nomads in search of work, trade and money would immediately do castration work without any hesitation, when asked to. Rather, they would eagerly grab the opportunity to get an extra income. Not out of helplessness, feeling it is a dirty work, that they would like skip. Castration is not a caste duty forced on them by other castes. That kind of _majbur_ feeling might rather have been typical of Bhangi and Bhambi with regard to their traditional work.

The Satias did not do it compelled by caste tradition, either. They castrated cattle, as it was their main source of income.

About the Satia caste

Up to the 1970s the Satias were nomads always moving around. They did not have any permanent settlements. They lived on doing various kinds of petty jobs, and on begging. Some also stole for their livelihood, mainly food.

Married men of the Satia community sometimes traded their wives as a kind of commoditiy. The wives were never traded with anybody outside the Satia community, though.

Under Hindu influence also the Satia community has become a caste observing the gotra system for marriages, which had to be considered when swapping wives.

The tradition of trading among Satias

Tan Dan has been told by Satias that for their caste, trading of one kind or the other has always been a compulsory custom among Satias. Without trading they would be outcasted. Satia means exchange in western Rajasthani and Gujarati. They were the people who did satia i.e. barter trade.

Thus, both name and caste custom indicate that a Satia keep trading things. The caste might have its origin in some nomadic trading group going in annual circles in rural areas, as the Satias also do. Perhaps outcasted or separated in some other way from an ancient nomadic group such as the Banjara.

Mortgaging wives

It happened that husbands mortgaged their wives to other Satias, when they were without money. For loans ranging between 50 and several hundred Rupees depending on the beauty and age of the wife. Tan Dan knew a Satia woman called Jharav, who often visited Jalagarh on her nomadic journeys with her kinship group. She had been mortgaged for 130 Rupees in 1975. Therefore, in 1978 she moved around with the moneylender. The Satias live their own life outside the established society, and the question whether such mortgaging is illegal or not is never raised. The law seldom touches them, although occasionally a Satia may be caught for theft from an established non-Satia citizen.

If an outsider would come and tell that mortgaging wives is illegal, he would most likely get a scolding by everybody concerned including the mortgaged wife. He would be told most impatiently that it is not his business to meddle into their affairs. However, the chance that anybody would say anything is very small, as established persons have no contact with this community, and never bother to find about their life.

Satia caste families changing wives

One kind of barter trade they used to carry out was swapping wives with other Satias. The man who got an older and more ugly looking wife than he gave away got cash as a compensation. In 1978 the amount usually ranged between 100 and 500 Rs, but could reach 1,000 Rs in exceptional cases.

Tan Dan met a Satia family at the Chelana bazar in the hot season 1976. The lady had been traded by her present husband against an older wife. He had paid 400 Rupees to her former husband as a compensation. He was her third husband. They had a son together. When Tan Dan met them the boy enjoyed the first stick of sweetened ice he had ever had in his life. Bought at the bazar for ten paysa.

When a wife leaves for a new husband the question arises, with whom the children should stay, but as far as Tan Dan knows, the Satias have no special rules for that.

Tan Dan met another Satia family on a road between Nagore and Degana in 1981. Two brothers, their wives and children. There might have been more relatives elsewhere, but this was the whole group moving, when Tan Dan met them. The elder brother had a fine brown shirt, as he just had married. He had made the customary trade agreement with another caste fellow for changing wives. The two brothers pulled an ox cart without oxen. A tough task as the cart was heavy and they were going up a slope.

As soon as the younger brother saw Tan Dan, he stopped pulling to tell him the whole story. He felt that this hard work had been forced upon him unnecessarily, and thought his older brother ought to pull the cart himself, as it was he who had done away with the oxen.

The elder brother had had an older wife before, and he had to give the other man his oxen to make an even deal. That was why the brothers had to pull the cart themselves, until they could find new oxen. Tan Dan also met the children of the elder brother and his previous wife. They had stayed with their father.

The wife exchange had taken place the same morning and the new wife was still in her wedding clothes. The marriage ceremony had been carried out in the presence of some members of the Satia caste panchayat. There must at least be one _panch_ present on such occasions. If the Satia kinship groups were organized in a _khera_ organization like the village castes, Tan Dan did not know. The nomadic life might have compelled the Satias to find some other solution.

The younger brother told Tan Dan, that all men of their caste had to change their wives at least twice in their life. Those who liked their first or second wife so much that they did not want to change, had to invite the whole caste community on a feast and be excused in that way, otherwise they would be outcasted. When changing wives, the Satia men make a barter agreement, and the one with an older and less beautiful wife must pay something in addition, he said.

Immediately after the ceremony, the two parties broke up and continued their journeys in different directions. The family had to go some miles more to find a place, where they could buy new oxen. They were poor, they told Tan Dan, and did not know how they could get new bullocks, even if they found some seller. Perhaps they had to make a new barter deal, selling some of their other belongings.

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### Chapter 8 Tilvara Cattle Fair

At the Tilvara cattle fair in Barmer District of western Rajasthan in 1975

The Tilvara cattle fair was held on the wide river bed of the seasonal river Luni.

All kinds of male animals were sold, but not cows and she-buffaloes, as they were the breeding animals of the herders and farmers.

On the dry riverbed the underground water level was high, only about three feet deep. Most participants of the Tilvara cattle fair simply dug a hole in the sandy ground and got their drinking water from there. The easy access of drinking water in February March was a major reason for the popularity of the place as a cattle fair at that time of the year. The cattle fair went on for fifteen days.

There were villagers from near and far. Friends and relatives came in groups, and most of them cooked their own food rather than had their meals at the temporary restaurants built at Tilvara for the mela days.

Plenty of fuel wood was required for cooking at all the small fire places evenly spread out all over the flat sandy riverbed. In the night the view was beautiful from the top of the sand dune next to the Malinath temple, as the plain was dotted with small glowing fires. Around these fires men were chatting and cooked their food.

The wood for these fires were supplied to the campers by labourers such as Dhanki's mother. They cut fuelwood for a month in the thorny bushland of _Acacia juliflora_ along the river banks of the erratic river Luni. Almost invisible most of the year the river came in spate for a few days in the monsoon season and in occasional years creating floods and a lot of damage.

Glimpses from Tan Dan's visits at the Tilvara cattle fair

One early morning in February 1979 Tan Dan had a walk around the site of the Tilvara cattle fair. The air was chilly. He saw groups of villagers approaching with their animals over the rolling sand dunes. They moved towards the Indian flag, which had been hoisted on the mela ground by the Government office who managed the fair. In western Rajasthan most villagers did not know what is a national flag. Nor did they know what a nation means. They considered their own part of India as their nation, rather than having a comprehension of the whole Indian Republic all the way to Assam and Kerala. In western Rajasthani villages this flag was called _mela ra jhanda_ by people in general. That name of the Indian flag Tan Dan has heard at many places. If you showed this flag to villagers somewhere in western Rajasthan, they would be surprised and ask you, why you went around with _mela ra jhanda_ , the cattle fair flag.

At Tilvara, close to the sandy dry bed of Luni seasonal river, there is a temple of the folk god Mallin Nath. He was an early Rathore warrior, and according to the legend, he was the grandson of Rav Sia, the originator of the Rathore clan. Outside his temple Tan Dan found children of the Bhangi caste. They did not beg. Just sat there, waiting. People visiting the temple sometimes gave them _prasad_.

From early morning villagers arrived with cartloads of fodder that they would sell at the mela. With so many animals fodder was in great demand. There were camps, cattle and fodder in all directions on the dry sandy bed of the Luni river. By digging a pit of a few feet the campers got drinking water for themselves and their animals. They lined it by twigs. The pit was soon full, as the groundwater level was close to the surface this time of the year. Half a year after the monsoon rains had ended.

Each group of mela visitors had its own waterhole at its encampment. It was clean enough for drinking. In 1977 Tan Dan got to know a group of Rebaris cooking and eating at such an encampment. The entire camping area extended over kilometers and there were people in lakhs. Hence, the riverbed area was too crowded to harbour everybody. Big water bags of goat skin, carried by two men for each bag, were brought from these waterholes to the encampments of those who stayed outside the riverbed area.

A kalbelia mother and daughter selling fuel wood at Tilvara cattle fair

At the Tilvara mela in spring 1975 Tan Dan met a small girl called Dhanki carrying a big bundle of fuel wood on her head. She helped her mother who carried fuel wood, too.

Dhanki's mother was a widow moving around alone in the fair with her little daughter Dhanki, her only child. She did not want to remarry and tried to carry on by herself. They belonged to the kalbelia caste. Most kalbelias lived on begging and by dancing and singing. For the first time in her life, Dhanki's mother had found a way to earn money on her own by hard labour. She was busy selling her fuel wood from morning to evening during all the fifteen days the cattle fair was going on.

*

At the Tilvara mela Tan Dan also met an old Rebari from a village at the border of Rajasthan and Gujarat in the Sanchor area. He was a dairy cattle owner, he told Tan Dan. His clothes and features and general look resembled the Todas of the Nilgiri. Especially his _patuda_ , i.e. the long narrow blanket over his shoulder had a weaving pattern resembling that of the Todas.

The Todas breed water-buffaloes and treat them as sacred animals. Todas might be of Dravidian origin from northwest India in ancient time. In the south at Nilgiri Hills in Tamil Nadu they look very different from the rural people that surround them. In Sanchor in the border area of Rajasthan and Gujarat, they would look more similar to other small groups of livestock herding nomads such as traditional Rebaris and Charans of the Baldia type of castes.

Some side activities seen by Tan Dan at the mela in 1977 and 1978

The Tilvara cattle fair was not only for trade in cattle and other livestock. There were also big sections for vegetables, utensils, clothes and tools of many kinds.

A Muslim vendor walked around selling cow bells.

Hides were weighed and sold. They were kept in heaps by the salesman of a leather worker caste.

A man of the traditional potmaker caste, the _kumhar_ , sat on the sand smoking _bedi_ in between big heaps of pots.

Nearby was a barber at work, both barber and customer sitting on the open ground.

There was a shop for selling ropes and head decorations for cattle, horses and camels. Often in strong colours in the desert way. At that shop a villager was tempted to buy a flute, which he examined very thoroughly.

Sale of iron, brass, bronze and aluminium potteries.

Village youths bought sweets from a busy vendor.

In another tent the shopkeeper was busy sharpening swords, knives, daggers, scissors, and wool clippers. The owner of the sword assisted by pulling the strap for rotating the sharpening stone. Many of those bringing their weapons for sharpening told they were Rajputs.

Then Tan Dan reached the lathi shop, where a Banjara teenager boy tried to find out which lathi stick would be best for him. He tested the strength, elasticity and balance of the bamboo stick.

Lathi sticks for protection and fighting were sold at such shops in cattle fairs all over Rajasthan. Bamboo sticks were brought to the melas by trucks and trains from hilly forest areas in the Himalayan foot hills and forests in Central India. They were sold in large numbers to visiting villagers, for whom buying lathis used to be an important reason for attending a mela. A good lathi cost in 1977 three to four Rupees in western Rajasthan. It requires careful selection to get a well balanced lathi stick. The length of the lathi should be from foot up to the ear of the person using it. Villagers with grievances could patiently wait for the next mela and then buy a lathi stick. After practising for some time, they would go and see the person with whom they had a dispute.

The power of a joint family, or a whole village clan, was often counted by the number of lathi sticks in their possession that they could handle, Tan Dan told.

"To scare the snakes, and to measure the depth of water, when passing through flooded ground, it is useful.

If you have a quarrel with somebody it will break his teeth.

There are so many good things with a lathi, so why don't you keep one, you brainless fool, my husband."

This is how a woman tries to persuade her husband to buy a lathi in a Marwari language _doha_ poem Tan Dan heard in a village near Jetaran. (Translated by Tan Dan.)

Cattle and camels at the Tilvara mela

In 1977 Tan Dan saw strong oxen for sale of the Bharvadi breed of the Sanchor region. Similar to the Sanchori breed.

In 1975 he saw a Rebari cattle herder at Tilvara watching a match of _kabadi_ going on at the mela ground. He used his lathi as a support. Cattle herders mostly stand and seldom sit. They have a habit of resting one leg at a time, and that he did while watching the match. The head of his bullock was decorated with red ropes. Cattle herders of the Rajasthan desert liked to decorate their animals, feeling close to them. He had young strong bullocks for sale.

In 1978 Tan Dan met a Muslim farmer who a little earlier had bought a pair of oxen at the cattle fair. He brought them for watering. The oxen walked in the usual way when newly bought, one in rear and the other in front, with a rope in between for handling them. If they would walk side by side, they might hit each others with the horns. Before they had become used to each others and felt they were friends, who soon would work together as a pair.

That year he also met an old Rebari with a big beard riding on a Malani camel. In the feudal days Rebaris on Malani camels were used by the Thikanas as fast messengers and called Raykas. The camel rider Tan Dan met still worked at a Thikana of a village in Pali District, but nowadays he did other things there.

Where they met there were many camels. He saw a group lying on the ground in a circle eating from a heap of fodder kept in the middle by the camel breeder. They peacefully enjoyed their meal keeping heads close together.

Two sardars from Punjab sold fur-coat clippers for camels and horses. They demonstrated how fast their clipper works compared to the scissor type of clippers mostly used.

Banjara Cattle traders that had been pack oxen caravan transporters

At Tilvara in Febuary 1977 Tan Dan met a group of Banjara cattle traders talking about their trade. About a dozen men sitting in a circle. They lived on purchasing young uncastrated calves from farmers in the villages, getting the animals castrated, feeding them, and after a few months selling the young oxen at melas such as the one at Tilvara. They sold to farmers who wanted bullocks, but did not want to be involved in the sinful task of castrating bull calf.

When you castrate a bull you make as many sins, as there are ants in an ant hill. " _Kiri nagra ro pap hai_ ," i.e. it is an ant hill of sin.That is what rural people used to tell Tan Dan.

The Banjara men Tan Dan met at Tilvara talked about the situation of demand and supply, number of customers and what prices to take for various male cattle. Only males. No cows were kept at the Mela.

They had their own way of greeting each others before they sat down for business talks. Two Banjara men greet each others by one man putting his hand on the other's shoulder and the latter responded by doing the same, both bowing their heads in a kind of symbolic embrace.

It was a kinship group of cattle traders that earlier had owned a pack oxen caravan for the transport of bulky material such as salt and clay. That is how the men Tan Dan met had lived in their childhood.

Trucks had taken over most of the ox caravan haulage work. The roads had become good enough for truck transport even in areas that some decades earlier had been inaccessible for motor vehicles.

In areas with hills and ravines and pure desert it was still difficult for trucks in 1978, and there the Banjara pack-oxen caravan trade lingered on for some time more.

This particular group of Banjaras had come to the mela to buy uncastrated male cattle. They also bought castrated ones, if prices were good. They bought on a big scale for lakhs of Rupees. Hundreds of animals. 500 to 1,000 Rupees each might have been the price in 1977 of young uncastrated males.

Purchased animals they would bring to areas with many farmers. After castrating the male calves they would sell them at a price of at least one hundred Rupees higher per head. What really would happen to the price was influenced by events outside their control. Monsoon rain failures sometimes forced them to sell more rapidly in spite of lower demand.

There were several such Banjara kinship groups at the Tilvara mela. Some traded in the opposite direction, i.e. they bought male calves from farmers in the villages, and after the calves had been castrated, they were sold to farmers as bullocks at cattle fairs.

In 1977 Tan Dan also met a Banjara kinship group that had faced an accident. A man was lying on the ground after having been badly kicked by an ox hoof. He took rest with a bandage around his knee. At their camp two young Banjara men served as guards. An elderly man sat very alert inside the camp, with bank notes under his shirt wrapped around his waste in a specially designed cloth bag.

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### Chapter 9 The emergence of ox caravans

Tan Dan's assumptions about the the baldia group associated with ox caravan transport:

It has come to India from the west.

It is very old. Both pre-Muslim and pre-IndoAryan.

It is a part of a nomadic pastoral culture with a very large geographical sphere.

Hindu caste division among Banjaras has come later, when groups of Hindu origin have joined the Banjaras as pack oxen caravan traders. Castes are not a part of the original Banjara culture, which is a nomadic culture from outside India.

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Aspects that will be touched upon in this book:

The cattle of the Banjara pack oxen caravan traders

Where and when their cattle were domesticated

Harappan towns and the need of transporters

Harappa and the use of cattle.

The culture of livestock keeping nomads in ancient west Asia.

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What the Banjaras hauled:

foodgrain

salt

clay

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Their customers:

armies

urban centres

villagers

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The camps of the Banjara transporters

The Banjara transporter's way of fighting

Banjara worship

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Charans and other Banjara-like nomadic groups with a pre-Muslim west Asia origin

Early cattle herders and their possible origin

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Today the major part of the Rajasthan population is made up of non-pastoral castes such as Rajputs and the Jats. They are mainstream Hindus with different traditions, customs and costumes than those of the baldia nomadic origin groups. Many of the big castes have migrated into Rajasthan much more recently than the baldias. In earlier periods nomadic tribes was a bigger part of the total population, and in pre-historic time, it is likely that livestock herders and before them animal hunters, have been the earliest human inhabitants of the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent (including Pakistan).

Tan Dan thinks about ten castes of the northwestern India desert region are related to each other with a common origin as tribal nomads. They are all common in western Rajasthan and Gujarat.

These castes are banjaras (bhats, baldias), rav, gavaria, dhadhi, charans, rebaris, bharvads, gadolia lohars, kalbelia gypsies and jogi kabelias, also called nath kalbelias. For the sake of classification Tan Dan has called all of them the baldia group of castes, although the words banjara, baldia, and bhat in Rajasthan refer to the same group of pack oxen caravan carriers. (Synonyms.) There are also some small groups that have split away from the banjaras and formed their own caste such as the _kuchia_.

Hunters and gatherers

Animal hunters and livestock herders were among the first human beings living in the open northwestern plains of the Indian subcontinent, rich in herds of grazing animals. At the advent of man, the Sindh Rajasthan region was covered by savannah forest vegetation, where the herbivores were easy to hunt. The cow may have become sacred as a way of protecting that animal from hunters after domestication. She was the mother of the powerful bull which was the first animal revered in the ancient cultures of Indus and further west up to Asia Minor and Egypt. Taming the ferocious wild bull was a major cult in the beginning of cattle domestication. Bull rites were a part fertility cults. Models and pictures of bulls have been found from very early human cultures including that of the Harappan in the Indus valley.

Further to the east forests were denser and rainfall higher. There lived forest dwellers with omnivorous eating habits. They were both animal hunters and plant gatherers. Among them were the forefathers of the Bhils in central and southern Rajasthan.

Tan Dan thinks there is no evidence that sheep lived in this area at that time.

The vegetation might have been too dense for sheep.

Sheep herding increased in the northwestern Indian Plains, when the area became more arid as a result of deforestation. That change at least partly was caused by the harmful effect on environment of the Indus civilization.

From hunters to herders to the emergence of the baldia group of castes

Hunting kinship groups developed into livestock herding clans in the plains of Baluchistan, Sind and western Rajasthan. When moving around with their herds, they got to know other herding tribes and exchanged ideas about customs and belief and copied costumes and decorations. In this way they developed a cultural identity in a broad sense within their livestock herding environment.

By the passage of time, most likely over thousands of years, they developed a group identity as tribes all worshipping Hinglaj. The godess at Makran who was known for helping livestock herders in times of need.

They lived as tribals with a feeling of affinity. Not as castes compelled to carrying out certain tasks as a part of a larger social scheme ordained by Brahmins, as in the Hindu village society.

Some were cattle breeders, others were camel breeders, horse breeders or sheep breeders. Some lived on caravan transportation with camels as pack animals, other kept oxen in their caravans. The clans of the baldia groups specialized on different tasks within the livestock sector. When new tasks were taken up new clans emerged from old ones. Later on, when castes were formed as a framework for marriage relations, clans became gotras who marriage each others as partners within a caste. But a clan within one caste, could carry out similar livestock work as a clan (gotra) within another caste. For example, there were charans who worked as camel caravan transporters and there were rebaris who were camel breeders. There were charan clans who were both cattle and horse breeders and there were bhat clans who were pack oxen caravan transporters. Which clan became tied to certain other clans in a gotra system tightening into a caste, might have been mere coincidence some twenty generations back in the baldia group history of the Baluchistan Sind Rajasthan region.

The need of breeding cattle suitable for pack-oxen caravan transport

Cattle and other herd animals were livestocked-herded-hunted by various pastoral groups in western Rajasthan-Sindh area already in ancient time. Some herders became ox caravan traders when commodity transport developed between ancient urban centres. Some cattle breeders specialized in breeding pack oxen for such caravans. Over time banjara groups developed thorough-bred cattle seen even today. Such as _tharparkar_. That breed met the need of good pack oxen for caravans carrying bulky goods long distances. Other breeds good for pack-oxen caravans: _rathi_ , _nagori_ , _gir_ and _kankrej_. (Tan Dan in 1981)

The pack-oxen caravan trade started with the emergence of agriculture

The earliest civilisations based on agriculture in the three river areas of Egypt, Sumeria and Indus had domesticated cattle after taming the bull by castration. The castrated bullocks were used for ploughing flood irrigated fields and for pulling ox carts. Both bulls and cows seem to have been deified and worshipped in ancient Egypt, judging from archeological findings.

It is possible that very early agriculturists hailed from cattle herders who knew how to castrate male animals. In addition to ploughing and hauling carts with wheels, bullocks helped in threshing the cereal crops by trampling on heaps of earheads on the thresingh ground.

Storable foodgrain accumulated in godowns and urban centres could develop.

Then the more general cattle herding profession, with the aim of eating and milking the animals, got supplemented by a new kind of herding in which the animals were used for transporting commodities on ox back between emerging commercial centres.

There might be no direct evidence of ox caravan transport in the Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations some four five thousand years ago, but in the Indus valley the existence of commodity transport on the back of oxen already in those days seems likely.

Baldia cattle keepers could have found out the principle of organic farming in cereal cultivation

Early domestication of edible plants might have started very early among forest dwellers burning a piece of forest land. (In India called _jhuming_.) Edible plants can grow in such fields by using freed plant nutrients in the ash. In the following years the land could be used for crop-fallow rotation.

All the same, the first agricultural based urban cultures did not start in forest areas, but in the more open landscape of some river plains in the semi-arid subtropics, such as the Indus valley and the Fertile Crescent in West Asia. In an ecotype where comparatively pure stands of edible grass seed could be harvested for human consumption.

Among the earliest inhabitants of river plains were livestock hunters and herders. Some of them might have observed that grass seed eaten by cattle, without being crushed by their teeth, could germinate nicely after having passed through the stomach system of the animal. They could see that seedlings growing in manure patches thrived well. After realizing that, the breeder might start applying cattle manure for improving the yield of his cereal crop. Poking in the soil with sticks, while applying both seed and manure, improved plant emergence and growth, people would find out. One day somebody might try to plant a bigger area by using cattle to pull the stick stirring the soil. The first arder plough.

Hence, early agriculturists of the Indus valley might hail from pastoral nomads of the Baldia type, Tan Dan thought. They could leave their mobile cattle herding life and use their animals for raising cereal crops as stationary farmers. It resulted in much more food available than before. The settled population grew, and eventually outnumbered the nomadic livestock herders around them.

Commodity transfer between urban centres of the Harappan civilization in northwestern India

When urban centres emerged as a result of improved foodgrain storage organization, commodity transport started between these centres and also between a centre and its periphery. It might have been the origin of pack oxen caravans more than four thousand years ago. It was easier to haul a big load divided on many ox backs in a transport caravan than on wooden wheeled ox carts, especially where there were no roads. Bullocks were definitely available in those days in the Indus valley, as they were used in agriculture. Cattle breeders of the area knew how to get useful work animals by castrating the bulls. Domestication of cattle had taken place earlier.

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### Chapter 10 The Baldia ox caravan transporters

Banjara ox caravans

The traditional occupation of the Banjaras was commodity transportation on ox back. They lived as nomads in kinship groups.

_Baldia_ , _banjara_ , and _bhat_ are all words used for pack oxen caravan traders, emphasizing different sides of their work. (Balad is oxen in Marwari, and banjara refers to trade, business.) In the 1970s there were still some Baldia Banjara transportation left in North India, but most caravan transporters had been forced out of business by new transportation technique, and they had changed to a less mobile life.

Up to a few generations ago nomadic Baldias moved along caravan routes between Afghanistan and Assam and down to South India. It is likely they have been pack oxen transporters since ancient times with their ethnic habitat in the north-west of the Indian subcontinent and further to the west.

The Baldias developed their own unique customs. Up to a few generations ago they only worshipped a godess of their own called Hinglaj. They had a much simpler culture than the settled Hindus, whom they tried to avoid. The Baldias never went to Hindu temples and never consulted brahmins.

Pastoral nomads around the early river-based urban civilizations

It is possible that pastoral nomads moved around with their cattle herds in the open landscape fit for grazing from the Indus valley in the east and further west in the Asian continent some four five thousand years ago. At the time of the earliest known urban settlements in northwestern India and long before that.

To the east of the Rajasthan desert, towards the big jungles of the interior of the Indian subcontinent, the vegetation was too dense for breeding cattle herds. Baldia cattle herders did not go there until much later. They transported bulk commodities to the urban centres that emerged, when powerful kingdoms had been established . In regions where jungles had been cleared along the Ganges valley and further south.

In the ancient towns of the Indus valley civilization _red sindhi_ type of cattle were depicted on pottery paintings. Terracotta models of such animals have been found in archeologicial excavations. Picture and models were also made of such zebu cattle in Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations. These three early urban civilizations had many things in common, and they were in touch with each others. Pack oxen caravans might have carried out a part of the trade between ancient towns in the northwestern India and much further to the west. It was long before the one humped camels became domesticated and used for long distance caravan transport.

Red sindhi cattle domestication in the prehistoric Indus valley region

In ancient days the area of the Indus valley, and the Rajasthan desert to the east of it, was the habitat of livestock from which the red sindhi breed have been developed. Red sindhi was developed into a distinct breed by livestock owners over millenia.

Selective breeding of milk animals such as red sindhi took place extremely early, as the Harappa civilization flourished four to five thousand years ago in Sind, western Rajasthan and Gujarat. Livestock rearing might have started during the formation stage of the this urban culture.

Most likely, milk cattle of red (reddish brown, rather) colour, similar to sahival, red sindhi, and gir breeds have roamed around in wild herds over the vast plains between Punjab and Gujarat along the eastern part of the Indus valley long before the emergence of an urban culture there.

There were more trees in the grassland plains and at places along the river Indus the jungles were evidently thick enough for wild herds of water buffaloes and elephants.

Evidence of a greener landscape in those days

Elephant bones have been found and remnants of elephant stables at the Harappa excavations, as well as the more recent excavations in Kalibangan, Tan Dan told.

These animals must have found ample amounts of water at least in parts of the region in those prehistoric times.

The amount of bricks used for building the ancient excavated towns also show that forests were available for fuel in the brick kilns of those days. Even in the 1970s wild boars were found in parts of western Rajasthan, and it is known that the forests of this region in the old time were full of large flocks of boars, which was a popular prey at aristocratic hunts. Boars are mostly found in humid and marshy places, which is another indication that the region has become drier.

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In folklore from Bikaner district of the Rajasthan desert there are even stories about old sea journeys and boats on Hakda Samand, which is described as an ancient ocean stretching from the Runn of Kutch to Ganganagar. These stories have been told to Tan Dan by villagers in Deshnok twenty miles south of Bikaner town and in village STG 34 in Ganganagar district.

There were ecotypes for both drought resistant and water-loving animals

In the days of early nomadic life in northwestern India there were large stretches of open forests and savannah grasslands with thicker vegetation along the streams. The water buffalo and other water-loving animals were found here, but also the sturdy and drought resistant zebu cattle such as the Red Sindhi, which is able to walk far in search of fodder and is resistant to many hot climate diseases.There were evidently suitable ecotypes for both. Marshy lowland areas near rivers suitable for water buffaloes and dry upland grasslands, where zebu cattle herds roamed around on their own before domestication.

The ecological change towards more harsh conditions in the grassland region

In ancient time livestock in northwestern India lived under less arid conditions than now. The desertification has been a gradual process over centuries and millenia, and the life of the region has adjusted.

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### Chapter 11 Baluchistan and Suraj Karan

The tharparkar breed as an indication of eastward migration of pastoral groups from Baluchistan

In the large habitat of red (reddish brown) milk cattle in the eastern Indus valley plain, there is a comparatively small well defined area of the tharparkar white milk cattle breed. Its centre is the Tharparkar district in southeastern Sind.

There are cattlebreeders in parts of Baluchistan rearing white milk cattle similar to the tharparkar breed in Sind. The two cattlebreeding tribes were also similar, Tan Dan told. As for dietary habits, costumes, jewellary and systems for making huts and haystacks. He thinks the Tharparkar District in eastern Sind is not the original habitat of the tharparkar cattle. That breed has been brought there in domesticated form. That is why the the breed is so homogeneous and reared in a compact area.

It might have been brought from the west already in prehistoric times. Such as the age of Harappan urban culture.

The white Bhagnari milk cattle breed in Baluchistan

The nomadic tribes Tan Dan had in mind live in an area of Baluchistan from Bhag District in the south to Nari river up in the north and to the west towards Nal.

These Baluchistan tribes have milk cattle of the _bhagnari_ breed, which is so similar to the Tharparkar breed that it is hardly possible to see any difference. From the plain the breed has spread up into the valleys of eastern Baluchistan, where there were good pastures. Pack oxen caravans used to pass this area on their route between India and regions to the west in Asia. According to Tan Dan, ancient caravan sites have been excavated in the region. The _bhagnari_ and _tharparkar_ breeds are good pack animals and might have been bred selectively for a long time. In the days of ox caravan transport, mostly for that quality, although nowadays considered a milk breed.

Suraj Karan's experience of Baluchistan

Tan Dan has read in books about the _bhagnari_ cattle and the tribes of Baluchistan. In addition Tan Dan learnt by listening to Suraj Karan, a Brahmin he met in the Sabzi Mandi (vegetable market) of Jodhpur town in the early 1970s. Tan Dan had leased a farm outside Jodhpur and brought vegetables to the wholesale market every morning long before sunrise. At four o'clock, before the market opened, he used to have chats with Suraj Karan about Baluchistan. He worked at a vegetable seed stall, was about seventy years of age and had travelled widely in the North-Western Frontier region, where he had lived for more than twenty years. At Quetta, Nal, Chaman and Bhag. He had also travelled in Afghanistan. At first, when he was a young boy, he was a cook at a merchant of a baniya caste from Bikaner living in Quetta. He was a Brahmin, so all could eat his dishes.

Then Suraj Karan started a dried fruit shop stall at Quetta with money he had got from the baniya. After that he became a commission agent for producers of dried fruit. In this work he had to travel to villages up in hills and valleys. Suraj Karan enjoyed learning about the people of the area, and he was a keen observer.

Suraj Karan thought it was strange, that the cattle his family had in Rajasthan was so similar to the cattle he saw in Baluchistan. That the habits and customs of the tribal people in Rajasthan had a lot of things in common with the Baldia tribes of Baluchistan. Many words were the same, too, in spite of being separate languages.

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### Chapter 12 The banjara nomadic culture

The vast habitat of the West Asia nomadic pastorals

The grasslands of the northwestern Indian subcontinent including Pakistan were a part of a much bigger habitat for nomadic livestock breeding tribes. These mobile groups could move around with their animals over large areas of sparsely populated grasslands, covering Baluchistan, Afhanistan, Iran, Asia Minor (what nowadays is Turkey), and the adjacent parts of former U.S.S.R..

The long range of the ox caravans

Also pack oxen caravans could move far. Baldia Banjara groups, for example, carried goods from Rajasthan to places such as Hyderabad in South India, where there is an area called Banjara Hills. An equally long journey to the west from Rajasthan would reach somewhere in Iran. The riverbased urban centres of ancient Irak could very well have been within their range.

Banjaras had a pre-Muslim west Asian pastoral culture

From their behaviour and nomadic traditions Tan Dan thinks it is clear that original Banjara groups, and similar cattle keeping nomads such as the Detha Charans, do not stem from the Hindu heartland of the Indian subcontinent. Banjara type of nomads rather belong to a pre-Muslim culture of regions to the west of India. As Banjaras did not come as Muslims, although migrating from the west, they must have come to the Indian subcontinent before the Muslim era began in India about one thousand years ago. Banjara-like pastoral nomads might have come already in the prehistoric era many thousand years ago, Tan Dan thought.

The ancient worship of Hinglaj Mata of Baluchistan

In Baluchistan there was a temple for the godess of Hinglaj Mata, a prehistoric godess and a mythological figure among the baldia groups. She is said to have been a nomadic woman of great power and wisdom, who came to the rescue of other nomads, when they were in danger. There are stories about how she helped cattle caravans attacked by robbers and hostile rulers and managed to kill the enemies. She has become the godess of power and energy and her temple in a town of the Makran coast south of Baluchistan was the centre of pilgrimage for all the baldia groups in India up the time of partition. It was also a centre of pilgrimage for nomadic tribes of Pakistan and the countries further to the west.

Summary thoughts on the origin of long distance ox caravan transport

Cattle were already domesticated in the region at the time of Harappan civilization. Transporting foodgrain and other bulky commodities on the backs of cattle was possible. Cattle caravans are ideal for bulky long distance haulage in areas with poor or no roads.

Four to five thousand years ago there might have been transporters similar to the baldia banjara bringing goods from one urban centre to the other in the Indus valley region. Caravan routes for bullocks further to the west were also possible. Pack ox caravans might have been a trade link between the Harappa society and the ancient kingdoms of West Asia. Trade did exist between urban centres in the plains of river Indus and rivers in Irak in west Asia.

In recent time the ageold mobility of the pastoral tribes is reflected in their traditional outfit. Tribes in West Rajasthan and West Asia have similar costumes and jewellery. For example, jewellery for women on the upper side of the hands. In the way they decorate and ornament their camels.

The cattle of the baldias were mainly of the tharparkar breed in eastern Sind. That breed might have come from Baluchistan where a similar cattle breed has its habitat. Most migratory movements have been from west to east in this part of the world. It is likely that both the baldia tribes and the tharparkar cattle have moved in that direction, too.

The red sindhi type of cattle had a more universal spread in the Indus valley region. It was the cattle of the Harappan settlements and roamed around in wild herds in the region prior to that age. The baldias used such brownish red cattle of western India in their pack oxen caravans, but the whitish grey tharparkar was their original pack oxen breed.

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### Chapter 13 Banjara caravan business

Banjaras in salt transport

Some baldia banjara caravan owners carried out salt trade on a big scale. Some of those trained in largescale business through their caravans started related business such as salt excavation and collection. They mostly bought the extraction right for a whole saltlake at a time from local jagirdars and rulers. Banjaras brought salt from Rajasthan to regions in northern, central and eastern India far away from the sea.

Ox caravans carried clay for household use all over India

It was the same for clay. Another basic commodity to be used even in the poorest and most ordinary Indian household. The clay was used for whitewashing parts of walls and floors, as well as for decorations on such surfaces at the time of religious festivals and family functions.

Clay was a major trade item for the Bhat transporters. A heavy bulky commodity of low value per weight unit that was carried in sacks on the backs of the oxen. Both red and white clay were traded from Rajasthan to other states of North India. White clay is called _pandu_ , red clay called _gerun_ , and the oxen caravan itself is called _tando,_ not only in Rajasthan but also in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bastar district of Madhya Pardesh, in northwestern Bihar, and in Baluchistan and Sindh, Tan Dan told. The reason is probably the widespread travelling of the _banjara bhat_ ox caravan transporters.

The affluence of the bhat transporters in the old feudal age

In the old days many bhat nomadic traders were well-off, owning thousands of animals. Living as nomads they had few basic needs, and tended to accumulate more money than they could spend. They got the reputation of being generous, and little alternative use of money could be a reason for their generosity, Tan Dan thought. According to poems in the Dingal literature of the Charans, many famous Hindu temples have been built with the help of money from bhat traders. Such as the very old Somnath temple in Gujarat.

(Bhats, baldias, and banjaras were different names of the same group of nomadic transporters keeping oxen.)

They spent freely on building temples, although they (perhaps) did not believe much in the Hindu gods and religion themselves, having another set of religion and gods. Brought from Baluchistan and the West Asia grassland regions thousands of years ago.

Big and prosperous pack oxen caravan transporters used to be called _lakhi banjara_. Lakh is the Hindi word for one hundred thousand. A way of telling they had endless sums of money and animals.

Besides carrying commodities between various regions, the banjaras also brought food and material to armies on the move at times of war. Many rulers had standing agreements with big ox caravan leaders to help them in commodity transport against good payment and honourable treatment. The rulers sometimes gave jagirs of grazing land over large areas to such bhat leaders, the proof of which was written on copper plates.

The ox caravans paid tax in kingdoms they visited. Both road tax for passing by, and sale tax for the commodities sold. That way the local rulers benefitted directly from the ox caravan trade.

Bhats could fight when attacked

The bhat caravan nomads were experienced fighters with sticks and clubs. They had developed a technique for defensive fighting with a numerically strong enemy by forming a ring of fighters.

When there were chaos in Rajasthan and elsewhere in the region, rulers could hardly exert their power more than some ten to fifty miles from the capital. In such periods of uncertainty, it could be a life and death matter for the oxen caravans to know how to defend themselves in unsafe areas.

It happened that petty kings were in agreement with robbers and looters of caravans, giving support and permission against a share of the loot. Sometimes there was open violence and hostility between kings and caravan owners, and it could happen that the latter were more powerful.

The water has gone to Multan

Old people in villages of western Rajasthan used to tell folk stories about maharajahs and caravan leaders. Tan Dan heard such a story at many places. His own village, his in-law village, and other villages around Merta in western Rajasthan.

About a maharajah, who had his capital at a place called Harsor near Merta. Harsor is nowadays a kasba (small town and trading centre for surrounding villages), but it bears marks of past glory, having a big fort in ruins, and other deserted buildings of old age.

An oxen caravan leader had a very beautiful wife, and the subjects of the maharaja informed him about her beauty, telling they had never seen such a beautiful woman before. They told the maharaja that his palace would become like heaven, if he could get hold of her. The maharaja sent his soldier to bring her. They started to negotiate with the caravan leader about the possibility for the maharaja to buy his wife. The caravan leader told the messengers that he and his wife were in love with each other and did not want to separate. He was not to prepared to give her away against her wish. The soldiers then overpowered the caravan and took her away by force to the palace of the maharaja, who kept her as a wife in his harem.

When other ox caravan leaders came to know about this event, they decided to mobilise all their people and take revenge on the maharaja. It was too risky to fight the king and his army directly, but they found a way to ruin him without fight.

In those days, the story tells, the country around Harsor and Merta was not a dry and barren desert like today. It was a fertile plain with flourishing agriculture watered by a river, which is said to have flown here at that time. On the banks of that river there were cities and settlements.

Their ruins can still be found at many places. The river bed still exists, too. Even nowadays the rivers starts flowing for a few months in the monsoon season in years of exceptionally high rainfall. That river is called Jojri. Villagers have shown Tan Dan old sugarcane crushers of stone on the banks of Jojri at Pundlu and Khavaspura villages. Several temples were built in the 6th and 7th century A.D. on the banks of the Jojri, which they think was a perennial river in the days of prosperity some one thousand years ago. The old people said that the river Jojri did not start just a few miles to the north of Merta, as in their days, but was a mighty river flowing all the way from the Himalayas across the plain of Eastern Punjab and then southwards towards northern Rajasthan. It passed Merta and then joined the river Luni, another desert river about to dry up nowadays. The combined river flew into the sea after having passed the Rann of Kuch.

The villagers told that the hardship and poverty they face nowadays is due to the foolishness of the king, who robbed the wife of the oxen caravan leader and thus invited the wrath of the banjaras.

The banjaras went with their caravans and pack animals to a distant land up in the North far away from Harsor and Merta. With the help of millions of oxen they filled the river bed of Jojri with sand and earth, and in this way managed to change the flow of the river Jojri, so it took a direction further to the west, joining the other Punjabi river flowing down through the Indus plains towards the sea. The maharaja who had robbed the banjari wife, found himself to rule over a ruined kingdom without water. Cultivated land became a desert. When the ruler got to know it was the banjaras who had done this against him, he tried to reach an agreement with them, appealing to their mercy. He got the reply that his cause was lost, and there was no hope for a compromise, as "the water has reached Multan".

Oxen compared to other animals used for transport

The banjaras mostly moved around with oxen as pack animals, as they are the most versatile animals for long-distance transport. Different climates in different regions means different challenges for the animals. Other pack animals such as camels and horses are more adjusted to certain regions. As is said in a marwari poem of Jugti Dan Detha, Tan Dan's grandfather, in praise of the oxen,

"In the rocky tracts the camels cannot carry,

in swampy land elephants cannot walk,

in loose sands horses cannot carry,

but the oxen confidently walk ahead anywhere."

An ox with loaded packing can walk twenty miles per day for months together. It can walk on desert sand, where it does not get stuck as easily as the horse at places of loose sand. They need water to drink and the caravan routes have to go between waterholes for the animals. For that reason the banjaras arranged ponds to be dug in the old days at even distances in a dry areas such as Marwar. Many village ponds in western Rajasthan have started that way, Tan Dan told. Also that of Chelana, Tan Dan's own village.

Camels (one humped) in caravans

On hilly roads the camels can slip on the pepples and they also can slip on wet ground. But in the desert they are very efficient being able to walk forty miles per day with a heavy load, and with their flat broad feet they can walk also in loose sand. In the desert it can walk daily for several months with packing. A camel can go without water for seven to ten days, while oxen and horses has to be given water daily, and in emergency the camel can survive without water for a whole month. When in caravans the camels are given water to drink every fifth or sixth day.

Horses

Horses in Rajasthan can walk at an average march speed of fifty miles per day on long marches with only a rider. Horses can carry only a little packing unless you have a cart. They might be too lively in their temperament for long distance transportation.

Elephants in warfare

Elephants can walk about fifty miles per day on marches, Tan Dan thought, but it was seldom used for transportation work in north India, as available elephants were taken to the armies.

Breeding of elephants in north India stopped long ago. The wild herds might have been depleted due to overexploitation.

The moghuls got most of their elephants from Kerala and Mysore and South India in general.

It was safe to sit up on elephants in battles, as horsemen and footfolk could not reach, especially without guns or arrows.

On the trunk of the war elephants big swords were tied with leather strips. The swinging of such trunks made the elephant difficult to approach for both footfolk and horses.

The elephant rider, the _mahavat_ , sat behind the head of the elephant, protected by a shield covering legs and body.

All the same, the Moghuls were given a hard time, when they climbed the Aravalli Hills on elephant back during their war campaigns in Mevar. Bhil fighters higher up attacked them, shooting arrows with their bows. The tribals helped the Maharana of Chitoor (later Udaipur) to fight Moghul invaders sitting on elephants.

War caravans of armies could be very long. It was told about Aurangzeb's army moving on a line from Aurangabad towards Delhi and Agra in the north, that the first elephants arrived into a kasba in the early morning. Then the whole army of elephants, horses and footfolk kept pouring into the kasba during the whole day until evening.

The handmill from Ghatiala

Among the many indications that the Sumerian and the Indus civilisations were trading with each others across the large highland plateau of Iran is also the handmill, the _ghatti_. It was used for handpounding foodgrain into flour. It was used in the Indus culture and it can be found also today in most village househoulds of northern India. A round flat stone revolved over another round stone when pulling a wooden handle. Like a wheel.

The use of the handpounding wheel did not spread to all parts of India. It was not known among tribal people in East and South India, Tan Dan told. On the other hand this method was used already in the Sumerian civilization in Mesopotamia, and has been widely used also today from West Asia to India for millenia. Its use and function is similar to the potter wheel, although smaller. The potter wheel was also in use in both these civilizations of five thousand years ago. The handpounding wheel used for grinding foodgrain had to be made of a very hard stone, as no fraction of it was to go into the food. It would threaten the health of those eating the bread made of such flour. Therefore handpounding stones were transported for sale over long distances in India and in neighbouring countries.

One of the few stone quarries suitable for handpounding stones was, and still is, situated in Ghatiala near Osian, some forty kilometers to the northwest of Jodhpur town. Gathiala is an ancient town, which has been an important trading centre in the desert for thousands of years.

The Mlechas

In the old days, before the arrival of the first Rajput warrior conquerors in the 7th or 8th centuries A.D., the Mlecha tribal rulers from the hilly lands to the west of the Indus ruled the region of Sind and western Rajasthan. Gathiala was one of the important centres of this kingdom.

The descendants of the Mleccha rulers still live in the Hindu society which have defeated them. Mleccha means untouchable nowadays.The Hindus considered the Mleccha to be untouchables and barbarians, as they ate meat, even beef.

River Indus crossing of commodity caravans

The villagers Suraj Karan visited in Baluchistan used the _gathi_ (handpounding stone wheel) for grinding flour at their homes, and all the gathis had come from the stone quarry of Gathiala. From Gathiala they were transported by ox caravans owned by banjaras. The handmills were also transported on camel back by charans across the desert of Rajasthan to the Indus river. The mighty Indus river was a barrier for further transport during most of the year and the caravans went to certain depot centres situated on the eastern side of the Indus river. At such centres the caravan owners sold their commodities to merchants with godowns, bartering for other commodities owned by the merchants.

Shakhar Rori was the main centre for the trade over the Indus river between West Asia and India on the southern route through the Quetta valley and Bolan pass. At Shakhar Rohri the water of the Indus was easier to pass than elsewhere, and could be crossed in the hot and dry months of May and June.

Similarly, goods transported from western countries such as Afghanistan and Iran piled up over the year at the merchants on the western bank of the Indus river. Caravans exchanged for example dried fruits from Afghanistan, which was, and still is, an important trading commodity from the Afghan region, exchanging spices and other items, including pearls and jewels from India.

Thus, during most of the year dried fruits and such commodities piled up in the storages of the merchants on the western bank of the Indus river at Shakhar Rohri. There the merchants kept selling selling spices etc., while on the eastern bank spices kept arriving and dried fruits were given away. Until the river water was low next time, and the river was crossed again.

From Shakar Rohri westwards the commodities were transported mainly by the oxen caravans of the banjaras.

The handpounding mill was in the old days transported via Shakar Rohri from Gathiala to Baluchistan. Later on, when the railway had been constructed, the _gathis_ went by train from the railway stations around Jodhpur via Hyderabad in Sindh, and further to Shakhar Rohri up to Jacobabad, from where it was transported by oxen caravans further up the valleys of Baluchistan.

The long distance commodity transport across Iran

The _gathi_ handmill have been found in both the Sumerian civilisation of Mesopotamia and the Indus civilisation. In both places there were also toys and ornaments of precious metals of the same kind, sometimes identical. It indicates that trade took place between these two similar societies, across long stretches of highland. It is likely that oxen caravans took part in this long distance trade already in those days four to five thousand years ago. From Mohenjo Daro to Babylon is about 2,500 kilometres. An oxen in a transport caravan can walk about 20 kilometres per day across the roads of the sometimes hilly plateau of Iran. It may walk more than 30 kilometres per day on the flat ground of the Indian plains. In less than half a year an oxen caravan from the Indus valley could reach the river plains of Euphrat and Tigris.

When Persian kingdoms emerged they were situated on the trading routes across the Iran highland. Esfahan and Persepolis could have destinations for pack oxen caravans from India. In towns along the routes caravans kept coming and going. One or two caravans every week might be a reasonable guess. Now and then a pack ox caravan from a town in the Indus valley with at least some hundreds animals could arrive with its exotic load. Long before the domestication of the one humped camel. Later on non-bulky high value commodities in long distance trade were carried on the backs of one-humped camel. There were less animals in such caravans.

One thousand oxen can carry a total load of one hundred tons, as each ox can carry a total load of one hundred kilos in two bags with fifty kilos each. Bulky items such as salt, foodgrain and clay were carried that way from Rajasthan to far away places on the Indian subcontinent. Several such caravans had more than one thousand pack oxen, some had a few thousand.

The oxen caravan bags of akara plant fibres

The oxen caravan bags were of a very old design. Their manufacture had been an important cottage industry until recently in western Rajasthan and Sind, especially in the desert towns of Pachbhadra and Balotra.

The bags were knitted on wooden frames with a string made of fibres of the _akara_ plant, _Calotropis procera_. The fibre itself is locally known as _ankala_. In addition to pack oxen bags, it was used for other items requiring strong strings and ropes.

The akara plant grows wild on the desert dunes and the banks of the riverbeds of seasonal rivers. For village families of the area it was an off-season work from January to May to collect these plants. Mostly women went out and cut the akara plant. Bundles were assembled and left to dry on the site of cutting for about ten days. After their leaves have fallen off, they can be carried home in big bundles, as the plants are light, when dried. At home the men peel off the bark, which they rub into fibres between their hands and twin into cords. These cords are called _ankala dori_. The villagers kept some of it for there domestic use of strings and ropes. The rest they sold to a merchant at the nearest manufacturing centre of oxen caravan bags. The merchant gave the cord to a knitter, usually a poor labourer. He knitted the bags in his own house against payment of labour, mostly just enough for getting the bread of the day. Such a merchant had a group of knitters who made bags for him. Then he sold these bags to the head of a _tanda_ (ox caravan group). Pack bags of _ankala_ cord are soft, moisture proof and very strong, often lasting for forty fifty years, even if they are used daily, according to what many _banjaras_ have told Tan Dan. It is strong enough to handle rough commodities like clay, salt, and mishri (a kind of sugar crystals), juggery and grains, if the sacks are strengthened with rope material of goat hair or camel hair.

The importance of the ankala cord is its softness, which saves pack animals such as oxen and camels from getting scratching wounds on their back. That way the animals could go continuously day after day, month after month, a most important economic factor for a caravan transporter.

Vishan Dan told Tan Dan that the villagers of western Rajasthan have learnt the skill of collecting ankala fibres, and manufacturing sacks of this material, from the nomadic banjaras. (He is an in-law relative living in a Barmer village.)

In practice the banjara had delegated this work to local villagers. In the 20th century the pack sack industry declined in importance, rather dwindled into unimportance, after the decline of the ox caravan trade itself.

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### Chapter 14 Banjaras as warrior nomads

Eagle worship among Baldia group castes

The Banjaras, the Charans and the Rebaris, Baldia groups of a similar origin, according to what Tan Dan thinks, all worshipped the eagle, but no other animal, not even the cow. No other Hindu group worship the eagle except the Rathore Rajputs of Rajasthan. After coming as conquerors to the Rajasthani desert, the Rathores started to worship Karniji, a reincarnation of the Hinglaj, according to the belief of the Baldia group of castes. The baldia livestock breeding nomads seem to have been the most original dwellers of this area, which now is a desert, but earlier might have been more hospitable.

The baldias think the eagle is a messenger of the Hinglaj, appearing in the sky when the godess wants to tell her people she has noticed their trouble and will support them, especially if they are involved in a fight with their enemies. The eagle is thought to have been selected by Hinglaj as a messenger because it is very fast. The belief that the Hinglaj has arrived and stands behind their back when they, the _baldias_ , see an eagle on the sky, is followed up by another belief telling that one should never look back and try to look at her, because her sight is so terrific that no man can stand it. It is enough to feel encouraged and look ahead and fight.

So if an eagle appears on the sky before or under a fight the baldias even today (i.e. in the 1970s) at least among banjaras, charans and rebaris in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, feel encouraged. Not only nomads but also villagers. Even many educated charans such as IAS officers, Tan Dan told, thinking of those university educated charans he had met himself.

Banjara nomads, hardly ever even literate, would in Tan Dan's youth call out their battle cry "Jai Hinglaj Mata", raise their lathis (bamboo sticks), and plunge ahead mindless of any consequences.

It is possible that the baldia groups and the Rajput Rathores of Rajasthan (nowadays the biggest, most powerful and important gourp of eagle worshippers) have got their eagle worshipping cult from ancient Egypt, perhaps indirectly via Sumeria.

The Baldias offered meat and blood to the Hinglaj godess at her temple in Makran, near the Arabian Sea. That was the case before partition of British India in 1947. What it look like in the 1970s was difficult for Hinglaj worshippers in India to know. At that time meat was still offered to Karniji at her temple at Deshnok in Rajasthan. It was believed that the eagle would be the first animal to eat the bloodstenched meat offered by her devotees.

However, there is a snag in this. The Karni temple at Deshnok is covered by a steel net to prevent predatory birds to catch the rats moving around all over the temple. The rats ( _kaba_ ) are protected and fed by the Karni devotees, as a _kaba_ is believed to have the souls, _atma_ , of a deceased Charan. Did they put the meat for the eagle outside the net? Sacrificing goats for Karni stopped in the 1970s due to a law.

Banjaras were warrior nomads with goti

Banjaras keeping pack oxen caravans knew how to protect themselves, their families, their animals and their caravan load. They were warrior nomads skilled in fighting with the _goti_. It is a short wooden stick, thick in one end and thick in the other. A kind of club, similar to the one sometimes depicted in the hands of the stone age man.

The banjara bhats fought with the _goti_ in one hand, and in the other a shield used for protecting themselves from the strokes by the enemy.

The banjaras also had the _katar_ , a wooden curved object used for throwing on enemies. It was thrown in such a way that it returned to the thrower, if it missed its object. Later they also had lathis, swords and spears for protecting their caravans.

Lathi

Lathi, the light and strong bamboo stick used for fighting, became known to the banjaras after moving around with their ox caravans in interior parts of India, where bamboo is growing.

The lathi was very common in all western Rajasthan. Most grown up men had turban and lathi, when outside their homes.

As the bamboo does not grow in western Rajasthan every villager had to buy his lathi. The bamboo wood can be attacked by pest, if kept in store at village shops.

Instead the lathi is sold at melas, such as cattle fairs and religious fairs. Big gatherings kept for a few days with thousands of people from the whole region.

Ring fighting

The Banjara fighting strategy has been been to form a ring of fighters for their own protection keeping always the back free and the wounded inside the ring. It was a small fighting ring and not a ring for encircling their whole livestock herd or caravan. Probably a very old way of fighting.

Also other nomads with livestock herds used to form fighting rings when attacked by a numerically superior enemy. Shepherds and cowherders of western Rajasthan such as rebaris and charans.

Banjara camps were well fortified

The banjaras used their bags to form rings around their camps as fortification. A pack oxen caravan with two thousand animals would have four thousand bags of about fifty kilo each. Layer after layer of bags and narrow footpaths in between like in a labyrinth. Bulky low value material such as clay were kept in the external rings and and further inside there would be rings of foodgrain and more valuable commodities. In the middle women and children. Bullocks and other livestock were kept in the field surrounding the camp.

Strong clan discipline and obedience to the clan head.

All kinship groups of the bhat, rebari and charan castes felt a strong loyalty to their clan heads. That was also the case with many nomadic tribes in West Asia. This feature of loyalty to the clan leader among tribes of nomadic origin was necessary, when moving with big livestock herds across the wilderness. To resist attacks discipline had to be maintained.

Risk and opportunities for the Banjaras of armies in warfare

If attacked by armies on the march over the mountains in the west to make conquests on the Indian plains, it might have been impossible for the banjara caravans to resist looting. However, armies moving over alien land might have been out for bigger preys, and they could have good use of banjara caravan groups, if treated well. Army leaders might have used banjaras and other nomadic groups as informers about local conditions of the land ahead and of good march routes.

Banjaras as suppliers to armies

The ox caravan trade of the banjaras was a commercial enterprise, and the banjaras made agreements with all those who wanted to utilize their transportation service. In times of warfare they were also transporters against payment for leaders of various armies. Both for well established rulers defending their kingdoms, or trying to expand them, and for new invaders, who had come from abroad across the mountains in the west. They were all in need of the service of the banjaras for supplying food and other commodities to their soldiers and armies. Most of them did not have this kind of basic supply service as an integrated part of their armies, but made contracts with the banjaras on whom they became dependent and had to treat well, often promising land and gold as a reward for successful campaigning. The agreements between the army leaders and the banjaras were often to supply the commodities at a certain point, to which the army would reach on its march route. The oxen caravans of the banjaras neither accompanied the armies on their march nor were present at the time of battle.

In Dingal poems and elsewhere it is told that one thousand years ago Muhammed Ghazni came like that with 33,000 horsemen to loot Somnath in Gujarat, the wealth of which he had heard about. They went through the Khyber pass. To move from there to Somnath with thousands of men and horses required supply of foodgrain, as the dry area was sparsely populated without much possibilities to loot farmers on the way. Although not mentioned in the old records, Tan Dan assumes that Muhammed Ghazni made agreements with banjaras about the food supply for both men and animals. The rider would require one kilo grain per day and the horse four kilos. Thus the army would need about 150 tons of foodgrain per day. That much only the banjara ox caravans could provide. Each ox could carry two bags of fifty kilos. One thousand oxen could thus carry 100 tons of foodgrain. Hence, many thousand oxen were required and more than one _tanda_. By cooperation and coordination between kinship groups, a few pack oxen caravans would be able to carry out the task. They would be paid in gold, half before and half of it after the transportation work had been done.

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### Chapter 15 Early urban cultures with whom early oxen caravans might have interacted

The towns in the Indus valley long ago

The first urban societies in the Indus valley and Sumeria were situated on large plains cut across by big rivers. Around these rivers farmers grow crops by surface irrigation. Wheat was the main cereal produced. The ability to store it on a large scale made urban concentration possible. These agro-based cities flourished for many centuries some four to five centuries ago. Sites of towns from that age were rediscovered in the 1920s, when building the railway in the Indus valley.

The Indus culture had several towns with forts, trading centres, and fairly large manufacturing units for basic requirements such as brickmaking and potteries including terracotta. Centres such as Moenjodaro and Harappa near the Indus river, and Kalibangan further to the east in the Rajasthan desert.

Lothal and Lunvada near the river Mahi in eastern Gujarat are two other excavation sites of urban settlements from the same era of Indus civilization four to five thousand years ago.

Man-made ecological imbalance strained the urban Indus culture

In the grassland forests of the area trees and bush were cut down and burnt for fuel at the brick kilns. Deforestation meant less leaf litter on the ground for soil formation. Moreover, irrigated crop fields on flat land along rivers got increasingly alkaline, most probably. Falling yields and increased aridity would reduce the possibility to support the cities. The final blow might have come from invaders or natural disasters. Severe floods and droughts, which forced those who survived to settle elsewhere. The cities were left deserted. Its ruins formed mounds covered by dust and blowing sand.

Tan Dan and his father at Kalibangan ancient site in north Rajasthan

The plain around Kalibangan was in the early 20th century an unpopulated desert of the Bikaner state in Rajputana. Tan Dan's father Tej Dan visited Kalibangan in 1915. Then the place was called Badopal. Tej Dan grazed cattle around the mounds when passing through the area going to Bahawalpur near Multan in Punjab (later Pakistan). The whole herd of some two thousand heads of cattle migrated along that route, leaving western Rajasthan, where there was drought and famine in 1915.

Tej Dan, his relatives and other Chelana villagers stayed for some time in the Kalibangan area. Tej Dan felt there was something strange about the place, but did not know it was the site of an ancient town. Nobody knew, as it was a decade before the excavations started at Moanjodaro. In those days scientists and historians thought that urban civilizations emerged in India after the migration of the Indo-Aryans into the Indian subcontinent from north-west. That a well developed civilization had come and gone in northwestern India already before the arrival of the Indo-Aryan pastoral tribes was completely unknown to all the European scholars of the 19th century firmly rooted in the thought that Sanskrit and Brahmin theology was the origin of Hindu religion and culture in India.

The 23 mounds called ther, sleeping villages

Already in 1915 the place was to some extent excavated by nomads and nearby villagers. Tej Dan brought two slabs on ox back home to Chelana and it was from these and Tej Dan's narrations that Tan Dan got interested in the Kalibangan site.

The slabs Tej Dan brought were squares, one times one feet, and four inch thick. Slabs of baked red clay coated with a layer of yellow soil. On all slabs there were three parallel lines on the front side. Probably drawn by fingers, when the clay was wet.

Tej Dan told Tan Dan that he had been grazing his cattle around 23 mounds in the Nali tract in the centre of which Kalibangan is situated.

Such a mound is called _ther_ in the local language, which means a desolate 'sleeping' village, an abandoned village. The villagers had several stories about their origin and destruction. Each such mound contain a cluster of houses completely covered by earth only visible as a small rounded hill on which grass is growing.

The clay tablets with three lines

The big tablets outside the houses

Tan Dan sent pieces of the one by one foot square stone slabs to a laboratory in England for carbon-dating, which informed that the samples he had sent was 5,200 to 5,300 years old.

Tan Dan saw such clay plates in front of almost all excavated houses in Kalibangan, leaning towards the wall of the house near the door on the outside. On all the plates there were three parallell lines, all of them either three straight lines or three curved lines, curved in the same way. He saw sixteen such slabs.

The small tablets inside the pots

In 1974 inside the excavated houses Tan Dan also found small clay slabs of 1.5 x 1.5 inch with three parallell lines on one side. These lines were always drawn in a curve. These small slabs had been put in clay pots that were smashed.

The slabs with the three lines were only of these two sizes, as far as Tan Dan could see. The large size slab was like a slab of the house itself and the small ones in pots. Stored like an ornament that could be taken out and carried around by its owner.Not more than one small slab in each pot.

Why so many such clay tablets and what did the three lines mean to those who lived at Kalibangan in those days? Most likely related to beliefs and cults. Lines as symbols in worship of deities are used very frequently in Rajasthan of the present age.

They furnished their houses with clay pots

They were found by Tan Dan in clay pots, which were smashed. The pots were put on the ground in one or the other of the mostly three to four rooms of the excavated houses. As the roofs had fallen in and everything was mixed up and in pieces, it was difficult to figure out what was what.

In those days not only water and food were kept in pots but all household belongings. The clay pot piles were of universal use. Some pots were round in shape like small matkas. They had short and wide mouths in which various household belongings were kept. Ornaments, clothes and household items were kept in these pots, judging from excavations. Ornaments of clay, bone and metals such as copper, iron and bronze. Bangles of clay painted in beautiful colours.

The round clay pots were piled one above the other, with big ones at the bottom and small ones at the top. Such clay pot piles could still be seen in the houses of ordinary villagers in northwestern Rajasthan in 1978. Also in villages not far from the excavation site at Kalibangan. All over India, probably.

Most pots at the excavation site had two types of openings. The household pot with a short and wide round mouth, and the pot with a long narrow neck that was flat on one side and rounded on the other. The banjara pack caravans used to keep the latter kind of pot, with the flat side of the neck turned towards the flank of the animal and the rounded side away from it.

In the house ruins there were also flat big troughlike pots for various household purposes.

The terracotta bulls

Tan Dan dug in two mounds in the Kalibangan area with the help of three labourers. While digging out the remnants of a three room house in one of the mounds he found a terracotta clay statue of a bull with a big hump. It looked like a bull of the _red sindhi_ breed, the habitat of which is in northern Sind and Pakistani Punjab. The _red sindhi_ , _rathi_ and _afghani_ breeds are similar.

The terracotta bull Tan Dan found was 15 cm long, 11 cm tall including the hump, which is 3 cm. The width was 6 cm at the back leg part of the bull. Over the head it wore a kind of necklace or garland. Another garland fell from the upper neck over the ears down to the forehead. The eyes had been made of separate pieces of clay. Small clay rings applied on the surface of the head. According to Tan Dan, this way of making eyes on terracotta clay statues of animals and human beings was used from the ancient days some 5,000 years ago up to recent centuries in the whole region from Egypt to India, and also elsewhere, for example in Greece. (Such eyes can be seen on statues of rams and birds such as the eagle.) The big hump is situated close to the head, which is characteristic of the breeds of _red sindhi, rathi_ , _sahival_ , and the _afghani_ breed.

In addition to the terracotta bull Tan Dan found himself, he has saw another such a bull and a clay ball dug out of the soil at Kalibangan. These items were found while houses were built in a new colony along the Rajathan Canal near Kalibangan. Tan Dan saw children of such colonies playing with terracotta statues and ornaments from house construction sites including bulls. Without anybody bothering or understanding the importance of the unusual toys of the children.

Tan Dan has seen pictures of such terracotta bulls from Harappa and Mohanjodaro. (Or Moanjodaro. There are different explanations of the meaning of that name.) Similar terracotta bulls he also saw at the National Museum of Archeology in New Delhi.

As bull statues are common at these excavating sites, Tan Dan thinks that terracotra bulls might be a simpler variant of the sacred bull of the Egypt civilization. In ancient Egypt bull statues were sometimes made of gold. It is possible that the bull also were sacred for the people of Kalibangan and the rest of the Indus Civilization. Cattle was one of the pillars of the economy, and for the maintenance of a cattle herd the fertility of the bull was crucial. To subdue the ferocious wild bull was a cult in ancient West Asia that also might be related to bull worship.

Ritual funeral of zebu bulls at Chelana

There used to be one or two stud bulls in the village for serving the cows of the villagers. Farmers did not keep bulls, only bullocks.

On village stud bulls the villagers all over western Rajasthan branded the mark of _suraj_ , the sun, depicted by a round circle. The sun and the sun god was one and the same thing for western Rajasthan villagers.

When the stud bull died it was buried. Only the village stud bull was buried, not other bulls roaming around in the village. The village stud bull was buried under rituals and _puja_ , worship of the bull.

Tan Dan has heard villagers at Chelana and other villages of western Rajasthan say that 'the bull of the sun god is very sacred.' _Suraj ro sand gano pavitra hai._

Sand means zebu bull, the indigenous Indian bull with a big fat hump on the back. In modern time European cattle breeds have been introduced by crossbreeding for increased milk production. Villagers also regard crossbred bulls as sand without much thought about it. But not male water buffaloes, which were all uncastrated including the ones pulling carts. Dead buffalo bulls of individual farmers were given to the Harijans to be carried away and fleeced just like any other animals.

Tan Dan did not know whether any ritual funeral procession at all was arranged for buffalo bulls. There was one old buffalo village stud bull at Chelana in 1981. 21 years old, and likely to die within the next few years. It might be given a funeral procession similar to that of the zebu bull that died in April 1981, as he had been of much help to many Chelana buffalo owners. He was gentle and peaceful and liked by everybody in the village.

Burying custom of Kalibangan and present day low caste Hindus

The people who lived at Kalibangan in ancient time had graveyards. They buried their dead. The Hindu's of today burn their dead in cremation fire. A later custom which started during the Vedic time, when the use of the sacred fire became common for beginning and finishing all kinds of action. That is insisted on in the Agni Purana.

These rules and codes for rituals and customs were laid down in oral hymns to be repeated through generations in a comprehensive systematic way covering the whole life. They are in the Puranas, which explain the hymns of the Rigveda to which the hymns of the Puranas often refer.

Many ideas such as burning the dead were new customs on the Indian soil. Cultural traits that might have been brought to India from other regions along with the Indo-Aryan newcomers.

The purpose of the hymns might have been meant to give these customs a more stable shape. Customs that were framed by Aryan priests and the Brahmins. That is why the Purana hymns are so thorough and insistent, Tan Dan thought.

A distinct shape was given to customs, which nowadays are known as Vedic, Aryan, and Brahmin. North India became a cultural melting pot some three thousand years ago, in which old customs of Aryans from Central Asia merged with various old pre-Aryan customs of the Indian subcontinent. In addition, entirely new customs were created, customs formulated by the Brahmin priests themselves in the drawn-out attempt to crystallize their amorphic all-embracing religion, which both include a strict social system and a profusely fabulating mythology.

*

Anyhow, the people at Kalibangan buried their dead four five thousand years ago. The civilizations of that time in Egypt, Sumeria and the Indus valley had similar customs and rituals for burying their dead. They were buried in graveyards and next to the dead body in the grave they put all personal and household belongings, which are necessary in daily life, including food and clothes. The people of the three civilizations evidently believed that the soul again would enter the body down in the grave, which were made like a kind of room completely covered by earth. The idea might have been, that the person would live his own life down in the darkness, after the soul had entered the body again.

Such underground chambers were found on all the five grave chambers Tan Dan visited at Kalibangan in 1974. More affluent families seem to have provided their dead with more belongings in the grave chambers. The amount of belongings varied. It is possible that the poor ones buried their dead in the earth itself without building any chambers, but Tan Dan did not see any such grave at Kalibangan. The grave chambers he saw most likely belonged to the top class of the society they lived in, as these grave chambers were situated near the site of the palatial buildings.

In Egyptian grave chambers the bodies were mummified, but not at Kalibangan. In some of these graves Tan Dan saw skeletons of more than one person lying orderly, as if the whole family would come alive again. In one grave mother and son were lying beside each others, and the father a little away. Together with other belongings also the small hand size three line clay tablets were found lying beside the dead persons. Tan Dan saw in Kalibangan two such small tablets, each of them in a different grave.

Tan Dan did not find any response among the archaeologist

Many interesting findings had been made at various places around Kalibangan without coming to the knowledge of either archaeologists in India nor elsewhere, Tan Dan thought. In his opinion the government officers were too passive. He tried to talk to them but they were not interested. To get some information out of the Government officers at the Archaeological Division of Rajasthan and of the Central Government was very difficult. They were neither prepared to listen to Tan Dan nor to tell him anything , as he could not properly explain his qualifications and designation. He was a villager who had passed intermediate schooling, but had no further formal training. That he had read a lot on his own was difficult to show those who did want to start listening, being busy in their own daily routines.

It was easier for Tan Dan to people living close to Kalibangan to talk about the sleeping villages, the _ther_.

Tan Dan had read old archeological reports from the British pre-independence era, and felt that the British archaeologists made more serious studies than Indian ones did in the 1970s.

Nitre for sale to contractors

At some mounds no grass could grow due to formation of _'shora'_ in the earth at such places. It was a chemical formed by decomposition of soil. This chemical is called nitre, or saltpetre. The nitre from here was used in various chemical industries as raw material for manufacturing gun powder and dyes, according to Tan Dan. For extracting nitre the Government had been contracting buyers of nitre to excavate several of the mounds at Kalibangan. Most likely to the detriment of seriously intended archeological research. It was in two of these mounds Tan Dan had made his excavations and findings in 1974.

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### Chapter 16 Tan Dan's comments on his Baldia group classification

There are many groups in Rajasthan, Sindh and Baluchistan with a common origin as nomadic tribes in the distant past, probably in Baluchistan or further to the west. In India these tribes or clans have become gotras. A group of gotras with marital relations became a Hindu caste of nomadic origin.

There are ten castes with a nomadic origin that could be thought of as a group. They appear to have their roots in the baldia (bhat, banjara, charan) pack oxen caravan people, and Tan Dan therefore call them the baldia group. The ten castes of the baldia group are -

Bhat - banjaras, oxen caravan transporters since ancient time

Rav - bahi bhat, genealogists - dhadi

Dhadi - singers in praise of Rebaris and Bharvads

Gavaria - handicraft, settled in villages such as Chelana

Charan - cattlebreeders later also bards at princely courts

Rebari - shepherds rearing sheep, goats and camels

Bharvads - sheep and cattle breeders. Mostly in Gujarat. Not so much known by Tan Dan

Gadolia lohar - nomadic blacksmiths

Kalbelia - more simple, nomadic , gypsylike. Might hail from wrecked ox caravan traders that became destitutes after facing some calamity.

Jogi - similar to kalbelia, more Sufi, saintly. (Nath)

Old people in several of these castes talk with each others about their common origin as warrior nomads, Tan Dan told in 1978. They thought castes such as charans, rebaris, bharwad and dhadi stemmed from banjaras. On the other hand, there were charans, bharwads, gadolia lohars and yogi nath kalbelias who did not agree that they were related to the banjaras. Dhadis told Tan Dan they did come from the banjaras, but they seldom talked about it and did not think they were related to any other caste.

Up to one or two centuries ago people of all these castes lived in kinship groups moving around in the open grasslands between towns and villages of western Rajasthan. Also the Dethas and many other Charans such as those in Gujarat. The very name Charan indicates a life as livestock herders rather than bards as the original occupation.

The legends of a few castes in Rajasthan tell they could not carry on with the old livestock herding profession due to drought or other calamities. Then they started some petty trade or service for their survival and some of them formed their own caste _(jati)_ , i.e. only married among themselves.

*

The oxen caravan transporters were called bhat, banjara, baldia and charan depending on region. These four names of ox caravan carriers and related pastoral nomads were used somewhat differently in different regions and by different people, but they referred to the same kind of nomadic ox caravan trading clans. Oxen caravan groups who lived in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh were called _charan_. In western Rajasthan they were mostly called _bhat_. There, those of the charan caste reared cattle and horses and kept camel caravans.

The ancient nomadic culture of northwestern India

Nomadic groups rearing cattle, sheep, goats, camels, and horses moved all over the north-western part of the Indian subcontinent including Pakistan. In this dry open landscape livestock rearing groups have formed their own traditions and customs, which they have in common. Groups which until recently had cultural traits more similar to pre-Muslim groups in west Asia than to the mainstream Hindu traditions in India. In the old days the basin of the river Indus, and the somewhat higher arid land to the east of the Indus valley, was a vast grassland savannah area. Hilly Baluchistan in the west belonged to the same ancient nomadic culture.

Muslim livestock nomads also keeping tharparkar and red sindhi cattle breeds

In addition to the ten baldia groups mentioned above associated with baldia customs and Hinglaj worship, there are Muslim nomads in western Rajasthan. They are more similar to Baluchistan Muslim nomads than to the Baldia group. It is possible that these Muslim nomads originally were baldias and later converted to Islam. One of these Muslim nomadic groups is called _jath_. They are cattle herders specializing in the Tharparkar breed. They do not sell any other animal of their herds than male calves after castration. The other Muslim nomadic tribe living in western Rajasthan is _jalukha_. They are also cattle herders but with red sindhi thoroughbred cattle. _Jaths_ live in Mirpus Khas area of Pakistan, Barmer and Jaisalmer, and also in Kutch and Kathiavar in Gujarat, while the _jalukha_ tribe is concentrated to Bahavalpur in Pakistan, Ganganagar and Bikaner. Thus, both the jaths and the jalukas live close to the habitat region of the cattle breeds they rear.

On the large stretches of uninterrupted grassland in Sindh and western Rajasthan there were grass species with a very good nutritional quality. Some thousand years ago it was probably one of the best areas for livestock breeding in this part of the world. Excellent cattle breeds have evolved such as the _tharparkar_ reared by the baldias and the Muslim jaths. It had been bred in the first place for the pack-oxen caravans, Tan Dan thought. Tharparkar in Sind and bagnari in Baluchistan were essentially the same breed. Greyish white and with long horns.

Some baldia castes have customs indicating a past relationship

The bhats and ravs show fellow-feelings, and the rebaris and charans show that, too. However, they have no marital relations, as they are different castes. There is more flexibility as for marriage relations between kinship groups in different geographical regions. Belonging to castes with the same traditional occupation but with different names. In that case the definition of caste borders could vary.

Bhats and bahi bhats (ravs) eat together as equals but not as brothers

Banjaras (bhats) and ravs (bahi bhats) exchange food with each others in the sense that each caste can accept food offered in the others house.

They can eat at the same time, both accepting food from each others in a spirit of equality. Feeling they have the same caste rank.

The usual custom, when persons from two different castes meet, is that only the person of the low ranked caste can accept food from the higher one, not the other way round.

But banjaras and ravs (bahi bhats) do not eat food together from the same tray, soup or chappati. That way of eating is called _bhojhan bav_ , and shows you are really from the same caste. Coming from the same gotra and baradri. Baradri means brothers, the group of all close and less close brothers, such as cousin brothers.

The relation between rebaris and charans as mama and bhaneja (i.e. maternal uncle and sister's son)

The rebaris and charans have been related to each others kinshipwise in the past, judging from the way traditional members of the two communities greet each others.

The charans call the rebaris they meet _mama rebari_ , mama meaning maternal uncle both in Hindi and in Rajasthani. The rebaris call the charan, _bhaneja charan_ , i.e. sister's son, even if the Charan is very old.

It does not mean, that rebaris feel themselves superior as a community to charans, feeling senior and elderly. At least nowadays both castes regard each others as equals in western Rajasthan. They are completely separate castes with no marriage relationship.

In Gujarat are rebaris senior to charans, who are cattle breeders there

In Gujarat, the charans have kept more of their traditional cattle breeding life style. There, a charan greets a rebaris as his senior relative also today (in the 1970s). He grabs the stretched arm of the rebari with affection and reverence. Rebari ladies take care of _charan_ men in their homes with special care and hospitality, as if he really was their maternal younger relative. In Gujarat _charan_ is a scheduled caste, but Tan Dan does not know the status of the _rebari_ caste in this regard. In Haryana _rebari_ is a scheduled caste.

About Rebari-Charan gorni celebration custom. Inviting 24 unmarried girls

Every married Charan and Rebari woman, once in their life must carry out the _gorni_ ceremony. It includes a fast for one day. The woman has to collect 24 sets of female outfits. Each set has one _billia_ (bangle), one _kanchli_ (a brassier or cloth for making a brassier), _kajal_ for the eyes (black powder), and _tiki_ , the red spot on the forehead for beautification, and a pot for eating food, and a few more things. 24 sets of these items should given to unmarried girls. That was the custom within the Rebari and Charan castes at Tan Dan's village Chelana and in western Rajasthan as a whole.

The Charan woman gave 23 sets to unmarried girls within her own kinship group. As girls marry early within these castes, the sets are usually given to small girls. Their parents will keep the gift, until they get married. Especially among rebaris early child marriages were common also around 1980, while among the charans the girls married a little later, mostly in their teenage.

The 24th set was given to a Rebari girl, if possible unmarried, otherwise before her _muklava_. She got the gift, as if she was a distant relative. A symbolic gesture, showing that the Charan woman regarded the Rebaris as her distant relative, in spite of the caste difference.

At the gorni celebration the 24 girls are invited to have a meal in the in-law house of the married woman. She will eat together with them, although she has a fast, as fast in Chelana for Charans and most other villagers, mean eating only once on the day of fast, instead of the usual three times. This kind of fast is called _ekasno_. Chelana villagers, except perhaps Brahmins and Baniyas, never observe the full fast common in other parts of India. Full fast is called _upvas_ in Hindi.

The rebari woman does the same for a charan girl

The same tradition is also carried out among the Rebari women at some time in their life. The Rebari married woman invites a Charan girl as a symbol of distant relationship in the same way as the married Charan woman does. Thus the Gorni celebration is done in excactly the same way in both castes and may be a sign of a closer affinity of these two pastoral groups in the past, when they were nothing but nomadic clans or tribes outside the savarn Hindu dominated caste rituals.

It is partly due to this gorni celebration that many Rebaris and Charans think they have a common origin. It is also due to that custom that Tan Dan started to think that the Rebaris might be a part of the baldia group. The caste group of desert pastorals for whom the Hinglaj godess of the Makran was important.

Hinglaj worship among Baldia castes

Among the ten groups, all members of the banjara, charan, rebari, and bharvad castes worshipped Hinglaj, while among rav, gavaria, dhadhi, some did and others did not worship that godess. Among gadolia lohar most people worshipped Hinglaj but not all. Among kalbelias nobody worshipped Hinglaj, as to Tan Dan's knowledge. After 1947 Hinglaj worship has declined, as her temple is in Makran in Pakistan, out of reach for most Indians.

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### Chapter 17 A caste with different names in different regions

Bards with different names in different regions form one caste

The caste which in western Rajasthan is called charan or rather, _maru charan_ , is in Madhya Pradesh called _rav_. _Barot_ in Gujarat is also a caste with the same functions and religious customs as the charans of Rajasthan. Hence _, charans_ in western Rajasthan, _barots_ in Gujarat and _ravs_ in Madhya Pradesh belong to the same bard type of caste. That bard caste has a high rank in the caste hierarchy.

The three groups form one caste, as they have marital relations with each others, being on the same social level. Hence, charans of Rajasthan, barots of Gujarat and ravs of Madhya Pradesh are three parts of one single caste with three different names.

In this large region maru charans, barots, and the ravs of Madhya Pradesh have been bards at courts. In spite of that they have a livestock herding origin and a baldia culture including Hinglaj worship .

All ravs and charans are not a part of this bard caste. There are groups with these names that have other functions. Ravs in western Rajasthan are genealogists, also called bahi bhats. Charans in Madhya Pradesh are by tradition pack ox caravan transporters and akin to bhats in western Rajasthan.

Rav, gavaria, and dhadhi castes have other names outside western Rajasthan

_Banjara_ , _rav_ , _gavaria_ , and _dhadhi_ in western Rajasthan have four specific functions on which their caste professions are based. Castes performing these functions with cattle herding background and culturally belonging have other names in most cases in North-East Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, parts of eastern Rajasthan adjoining to Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

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### Chapter 18 The same name for different castes

Ox caravan keepers in eastern region are called charans and charan bhats

In the eastern region ( Madhya Pradesh and adjacent areas), the ox caravan traders were given grazing land by the local Hindu and Muslim rulers as well as the Moghuls. Some centuries ago. They came to be known by the local people as _charans_ , i.e. those who graze their cattle. As their bhat origin from the Indus region was not forgotten, they were also called _charan bhats_.

The word _charan bhat_ for baldia pack oxen caravan traders has spread to books, magazines and newspapers, as many Hindi authors belong to the eastern region.

It happened that a self-confident official of a superior caste in the eastern region unintentionally annoyed an equally status minded _maru charan_ officer from western Rajasthan by telling that in his home district of Madhya Pradesh there were charans, too, and they moved around with their cattle as nomads.

Charan bhats and banjara bhats were different but married each others as one caste

In the eastern region there are two banjara ox caravan trading groups. In addition to the _charan bhat_ also the _banjara bhat_. The latter was until recently engaged in clay transportation business of three different clays, i.e. _pandu_ (white clay), _geru_ (red clay), and _multani_ (a clay used by women for washing hair). In addition they transported salt. Charan bhats and banjara bhats consider themselves to belong to the same caste and have marital relations. Then there is a third bhat group with a caste of their own. The bahi bhat. They are genealogist, pedigree recorders keeping track of the family trees for kinship groups of a number of castes.

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### Chapter 19 Bahi bhats as family pedigree recorders

Baldias as genealogists

Some banjara caravan traders left the transportation business, when they saw an opportunity to make a living on keeping genealogical records for other groups. They became bhats with books, and formed the _bahi bhat_ caste. They kept handwritten books. Bahi means book.

They started to keep genealogical records for low caste Hindus and many savarn Hindus as well. Such record keeping was evidently important for many castes in the Hindu coreland more than thousand years ago. A need that was not met by the Brahmin genealogists, the _ravs_ , as they only kept records of the Brahmins. Vanshavali, lineage records, going back to the distant past.

Some old kshatriya and baniya castes kept genealogical records of their gotras from very old times. Before the bahi bhats started their genealogical services. Old ruling dynasties such as the Aggarvals from Agarva in Haryana have very old gotra records. Tan Dan told he did not know so much about it, though.

Bahi bhats kept pedigree records for most people

Bahi Bhats in the region to the southeast of Rajasthan lived close to the social upheavals and clashes of communities during the uneasy period after Gupta dynasty rule. There the people in general were in danger of social downgrading by competitive neighbouring castes and communities. They had to prove their good family background. Genealogical knowledge might also have been more in this Brahmin dominated area. It seems more likely that bhat transporters started pedigree work in the eastern region than in northwestern India.

The Bahi Bhats managed to provide quite a good genealogical system for the masses and got good recognition for it in a later period, when the British legal system started to function. Several court cases referred to records of bahi bhats for tracing out the genuine legal successor of the property. But the Brahmins never appreciated this threat to their supremacy over the masses and tried to discourage their work. They treated the _bahi bhats_ as untouchables of an inferior caste.

Bahi bhats active close to the Brahmin dominated Gangetic plains faced opposition to their work from the Brahmin pandas of the pilgrimage cities along the river Gangas. The Brahmin pandas at Hardvar, Prayag and Varanasi kept books recording the names of pilgrims castewise. One panda and book for each gotra.

The pandas felt that the bahi bhats encroached on their record keeping activity. They did not care for the difference between their own pilgrim recording and the genealogical work of the bahi bhats. Perhaps they thought that for non-Brahmins no genealogical records were needed.

Kanoji's arguments for the pedigree work of the bahi bhats

Some centuries ago Kanoji was a leader of the _bahi bhats_ living in north central India. Kanoji opposed the attempts of the Brahmins to stop the genealogical work of the bahi bhats. Tan Dan got to know about Kanoji from Goroji, a charan bhat Tan Dan met in the Morena District of Madhya Pradesh in 1977. Seventy years old and widely travelled in the ox caravan trade between Jaisalmer and Patna.

Kanoji told his people that the bhats had long been filling the gaps in both the scarcity service and the service of the Brahmins. By scarcity service he meant that the banjaras were active in ox caravan trade, selling bulky items for mass consumption among poor people. Work that the baniyas did not do.

In addition, the bahi bhats provided genealogical records for people who did not get any help from the brahmins. Thus they did not compete with the Brahmins nor did they take away any _jajmani_ from them. Therefore the rulers should not be persuaded by the Brahmins to stop the useful work of the banjaras, Kanoji argued.

Reasons for castes, gotras and pedigree records

The cementation of the gotra and caste system among Hindus is most likely a reaction against the heavy inflow of culturally alien invaders and other settlers creating uneasiness among the already established Hindu communities at various points in history.

The Gupta age of blossoming Hindu culture, priestcraft and philosophy might have increased the emphasis on lineage and caste among royal families and among their subjects.

After the fall of the Gupta dynasty and the arrival of the white Huns there were turbulent conditions in north India for centuries. From 460 A.D. to 1000 A.D. only the Harsh rule 600-650 A.D. was a settled period. In the unsettled periods in north India more than one thousand years ago, people felt a need of keeping pedigree records as a means of identification. Keeping track of their forefathers was a way preserving group identity. To maintain social status by not being mixed up with lower groups.

Formation of a stricter caste hierarchy as a part of the Hindu culture revival might have induced various caste groups ( _jati_ ) to take care of pedigree records. When the Gupta age was gone. These were Tan Dan's general assumptions.

Keeping genealogical records might have started already in those early days. The lineage identification developed into gotra records, which was used to straighten up the marriage relations within the caste system. No gotra records have been found from the time before 6-8th century A.D., Tan Dan told in 1981.

Clans became gotras also among baldias

During the last centuries clan group feelings have been fortified into gotras also among the baldias, although later than other Hindu communities. Even now many _baldia_ type groups have more of a clan feeling than a gotra feeling, Tan Dan told in 1978.

Also the gotras of the baldia castes were in the 1970s ranked according to social status like in more established Hindu castes.

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### Chapter 20 Praisers and glorifiers related to the baldias

Glorification as a profession

Nomadic groups facing hardships in the wilderness far from settlements might approach well settled people and sing their praise in order to get something from them. It has been done in Rajasthan for centuries, especially in years of drought and famine. Umar Dan Lalas, a highly skilled _dingal_ poet, has made a long poem about the devastating famine year 1899, in Rajasthan called Vikram Samvat 1956. He describes how groups of destitute villagers move around on the roads from house to house singing the praise of God and the family visited in the hope of getting some food. Singing songs of praise in exchange of food, and even land, is an old begging practice that was carried out with great talent by some groups in the feudal age. Also many baldia kinship groups switched to a more settled life at various times, by adopting the laureate type of profession.

Charans as Dingal poets at the royal courts

It seems that Charans at the royal forts first were associated with the main gate of the fort, the _pol_. It is easy to imagine a development from livestock herders attracted by the busy powerful forts to make themselves useful as gate keepers. Later on, when opportunity arose, some Charans moved closer to the ruler and the royal court. They became advisors on the proper conduct of rajput warriors. Some charans made poems in praise of the rulers and his deeds, and these Dingal poems were kept by the rulers as historical descriptions. The Rajput ruler often rewarded poets he liked by giving them jagir land rights. (Shanshan land.)

Families lower down in the society than the rulers wanted their own praisers. Those could sing songs about their glory at family functions and when guests were to be entertained. Against reward. Also Charan families had by tradition jajman relations with such laureates, who used come to their house now and then.

Laureate castes

There are a few laureate castes in western Rajasthan that seem to hail from the baldia ox caravan traders. One of them is dhadhi. It is close to the baldia group genealogists that both is called _bahi bhat_ and _banjara rav_.

Dhadhi caste of villager praisers

The caste profession of the dhadhis is to recite in praise and sing in praise of other lower castes, such as rebaris, bharvads, jats, and sirvis. Dhadhi caste consider themselves to be an offshoot of the banjara caste.

The Merasi caste of laureate entertainers

The muslim _merasi_ is a community praising, singing and reciting poems for _rebaris_ and also for the Detha gotra of the _charans_.

There are many narrations about their origin, but the most likely one tells they have migrated from west Asia as Muslim laureates. In Irak, Iran and Afghanistan there are merasi tribes engaged in similar singing and praising professions. Also the _merasi_ songs in western Rajasthan have a strong influence of Arabic music.

As the merasis are associated with rebaris and the Detha gotra of the charan caste, it seems likely these two livestock herding groups have come from West Asia during rather late centuries, especially as rebaris are sheep and camel herders.

The one humped camel is not an indigenous animal to the Indian region. Probably not sheep either.Sheep husbandry as well as camel herding is likely to have increased in northwestern India, when the region has become more arid.

Decorating with plastic strips as a new petty business

Tan Dan met Ramzan in Jodhpur 1979. He was a Muslim Merasi. Ramzan's father lived as a laureate. Ramzan himself, however, had left that not very profitable begging type of flattering profession. He found a new way of getting an income in the modern urban world of Jodhpur far away from his home village in Pali District. He sold colourful plastic strips for cycles and steering wheels on trucks. The craftsmanship involved in tying the pattern was a part of the payment. Thus he did not only sell the plastic strips, but also the decoration patterns. Also on hockey sticks and lathis.

Dhadhis and Merasis have the same client groups

Both the Hindu Dhadhi caste and the Muslim Merasi caste are laureates for Rebaris. They are praising reciters with a remuneration jajman relationship for certain inherited Rebari families. In Marvari _jachak_.

They visit the their client family and sing about the great deeds of their forefathers for them. That way the laureate tradition is an essential part of cementing caste feelings in western Rajasthan.

Why the ravs thought they were superior to the dhadhis

The raws (bahi bhats) tell that the _dhadhi_ caste is an offshoot from them. They think dhadhis are lower than ravs because dhadhis accept donations from non-jajmans. Hence, they accept donations and favours not only from their traditional jajman clients, but also from others. The dhadhis should not do that, according to the rules of the feudal system, the bahi bhats tell.

They mean that the dhadis earlier were genealogists, but now sing songs about the families they visit by using the information of their genealogical records.

It is unacceptable from a Hindu caste point of view, as a Hindu should stick to his inherited caste occupation and take up tasks which belongs to other castes.

That rule is difficult to follow in the modern society with new professions coming up all the time. Rather, the whole range of baldia type of caste have shown great keenness in finding out new ways of livelihood, starting new subgroups with new jobs. The ravs have done it themselves being genealogists instead of caravan transporters.

Dhadhis more similar to Banjaras than to ravs

The external apparels of the dhadhis resemble those of the banjaras more than of the ravs. Also their customs are similar to the banjaras. For example, Hinglaj worship. Both banjaras and dhadhi moved around as nomads, whereas the ravs (bahi bhats) lived a more settled life. Whether the dhadhi laureates have split away from the banjara pack oxen caravan traders or from the bahi bhat genealogists is difficult to know, Tan Dan thinks. At any rate, the _dhadis_ stem from the _banjaras_ , directly or indirectly.

Two more groups with banjara roots

Niharia - the sweepers who lived on disappeared gold fragments

Gold is a sacred metal for the villagers and gold ornaments are important at weddings for all Hindus who can afford it. Goldsmith workshops are common in western Rajasthani villages, and at Chelana there are a few goldsmith families. Small pieces of gold fall on the floor in their shops, when they work on their ornaments. In the dust disappear fragments of gold and silver so small that the goldsmith can not take care of it. The Niharias knew how to extract such gold with methods of their own. They formed a small caste of itinery gold dust sweepers moving between villages and khasbas in western Rajasthan making a modest living. Whatever gold and silver they could extract by cleaning the workshop they were allowed to keep.

In 1978 Tan Dan met a man of the Niharia caste at Chelana. He was cleaning a goldsmith shop with his own equipments. The man told Tan Dan that his people earlier had been a part of the Banjara nomadic caste. Their original place was Multan in Pakistan. His forefathers had come to Rajasthan centuries ago. They were Muslims, but still lived like a jati group (caste).

He collected the sand he had thoroughly swept away from the floor. Then he isolated the gold dust particles with his own secret method, using cloth and small pieces of tin, while sieving and washing. Whatever he managed to extract he melted and purified and sold back to some of the goldsmiths. That was the only remuneration for his work. The goldsmith got a clean shop.

Gavaria - peddlers in small female items in the villages

It is the general opinion among the _gavarias_ that their caste stem from the _banjaras_. That their forefathers left their life as nomadic pack oxen caravan traders. The Gavarias have specialized in handicraft work. They make wooden combs for women, useful when there are lice in the hair. In the old days they made needles for sewing, an item that was difficult to get hold of in feudal Marwar. In addition the ladies of the _gavaria_ caste still today in western Rajasthani villages sell female outfits including mirrors and bangles. In remote villages they were still the only sellers of such things in 1981.

The gavarias are thus like the banjaras involved in commerce, although on a petty scale as peddlers in small areas. Many have settled in villages such as Chelana, where their women sell bangles at the bus station. At Chelana they are called ganvaria banjara, i.e. banjara nomads who have settled in villages.

All over northwestern India the gavarias make straw/grass huts for others and camping material such as grass mats called _'sirki'_ of strong grass that is considered snake-proof. Snakes are supposed to avoid crawling over sirki mats, as the cut reedgrass has sharp edges that may wound the snake.

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### Chapter 21 The east-west division among baldias

Baldia and baldia-like groups, such as the charan, rebari, and kalbelia communities are all divided into two parts. One in the west, especially Sind and western Rajasthan, and another further to the southeast, in Gujarat and Southern Rajasthan.

The ones living to the west call themselves _maru_ and they think they are superior to those living in the east, known as _godvara_.

South-eastern section people living in Gujarat are called _gadvis_ and _kacchalas_.

*

Maru banjaras, maru charans, maru rebaris etc. do not accept any marital relations ( _betibhavar_ ) with gotras of their corresponding godvara caste such as godvara banjara, godvara charan, as they are considered too low. Still they can accept food from them and eat together with them ( _bhojanbhavar_ ).

*

People of the godvari gotras to the east had very similar customs and costumes to the western ones, the _marus_ , but it was a common belief among maru communities, that the _godvari_ tribes had migrated from the maru region and in their new land had changed slightly under influence of the already settled local Hindu groups. These changes were probably appreciated by Hindus in Godvar, but the _maru_ baldias thought it made the _godvari baldias_ inferior.

The rebari women in western Rajasthan had a characteristic pointed raised hairstyle by inserting a wooden thing at the top of their head under the _chuni_. Rebari women living to the east of Maru (western Rajasthan) did not keep that. Therefore rebari women in Godvar looked more similar to ordinary hindu women, which _rebaris_ in the west felt was a sufficient reason for looking down on the _godvari rebaris_.

The difference in west east status has been formed in the last one thousand years, Tan Dan thinks. The superiority feeling among baldias in general in north-west India was strengthened by the low status of the rulers of Godvar state, as they belonged to a dynasty from south India.

The Solanki dynasty in Godvar, locally called Songara

The Songaras were originally a group of invaders coming all the way from the kingdom of Chalukya, a large kingdom in South India in the region of North Tamil Nadu, South Karnataka, and South Andhra Pradesh.

They hailed from warriors of the south with different culture and customs than the rulers of northwest India. The Songaras thought they were Aryan Kashatriyas, as the Chalukya rulers used to call themselves Aryan Kshatriyas. It is possible that an Aryan kshatriya dynasty did rule the area before the chalukyans. A dynasty that the chalukyans, a local tribe, defeated in warfare. Then they took over the throne. They were a local tribe under Hindu influence, but not Aryan kshatriyas. They adopted vedic customs and rites and made themselves kshatriyas of Aryan descent with the help of the already in south India by that time well established Brahmins and their thoroughly disseminated vedic culture.

That is roughly the picture of the forefathers of Songara rulers at Godvar that Tan Dan had got from narrations among people in north India. Following this description, the Dravidian Chalukyas might have borrowed back from the Aryans some of the cults and rites, which the Indo-Aryans adopted during their migration into India three thousand years ago. From people already living in India at that time. People whom the Aryans in their hymns called Dravidians.

Dravidian groups might have been associated with the Harappan urban centres of the Indus valley, which had disappeared, when the Indo-Aryans tribes migrated into the Indian subcontinent.

The Chalukyans after some time became strong expansionist rulers and attacked kingdoms in the north. Some warrior groups from Chalukya managed to defeat rulers in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh. They even defeated the Rathore Rajputs in their place of origin, Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh.

They also defeated the ruler at Sirohi, southern Rajasthan, and established a kingdom there, which became known as Godvar. Although military strong in North India, they never became accepted as rulers on the same level as the other North Indian rulers, as they were not as efficient in fighting on horseback, and to handle horses, as the north Indians. They did not appreciate north Indian music, so the people of Rajasthan thought they were uncultured. Their low status was further confirmed, in the eyes of the common man, by not using turbans. They did not even know how to tie a turban, people used to tell.

As the Songara rulers neither were kept in regard by other rulers nor by the common man, their subjects were considered backward, too, by people in western Rajasthan.

That reputation was also reflected in the low esteem of baldia groups living in the Godvar region, Tan Dan thought.

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### Chapter 22 Nomadic groups different from the baldias

There are in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, several non-Muslim nomadic tribes which do not seem to have much in common with the baldia group of nomadic tribes and castes. These nomads herd cattle, sheep, goats, camels and donkeys. They are evenly distributed over northern India. Tan Dan has been less in touch with these groups, partly because they reluctant to make friendship with people outside their clans. Especially after partition in 1947, these groups and even more the Muslim nomads, have become very suspicious of strangers that may have harming intentions. They have heard many stories about massacres and butchering of people for religious reasons. Atrocious acts by enemies of both Muslim and Hindu sects. But Tan Dan has observed that they have different customs from the Baldia groups with regard to costumes, ornaments, housing arrangements and cooking. Their gotra systems are also different from the baldias. They do not have any gotra names in common with the baldia groups.

On the other hand, the various castes and tribes within the baldia group have several gotra names in common. These gotra names occur in more than one caste. Another indication of close association between baldia group castes.

The Bavria tribe of hunters in the Rajasthan desert

Between 1965 and 1970 Tan Dan Detha visited groups of the _bavria_ tribe near Raisinghnagar, Anupgarh, Pugal, Phalodi, Pokaran, Bakhasar in Rajasthan, and the area between Tharad and Bhuj in the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat.

Although the _bavrias_ earlier could be found all around the Rajasthan desert from the Rann of Kutch to Ganganagar, they everywhere speak a dialect, which can be found in North-Western Gujarat from where they probably have originated. They have no special religion, but sometimes worship their forefathers under the influence of Hinduism.

For generations the _bavrias_ have lived out in the desert without any belongings, sleeping on the bare ground, living completely on an animal diet. They are highly skilled in trapping animals like deers, rabbits, the big bustard bird, and partridges. They have different traps for each animal. The _bavria_ hunters know the footpaths the deers use in the desert wilderness, and put traps hidden in the sand on such paths. When the deer steps on the trap it breaks its leg. Then the hunters rush out from their hiding place and kill it. In the 1970s big games as deers had become scarce, and were protected by the government. Therefore the the Bavrias mainly lived on lizards. Every member of a Bavria family went out hunting lizards for the whole day. They brought the lizards to their camp in baskets towards the evening.

When Tan Dan Detha visited a group of Bavrias in 1965 in the Bikaner District, he found an interesting way of preserving food in the desert. The Bavrias simply broke the backbone of the lizards with a big wooden hammer, and after that the lizards could not run away. In this way the Bavrias had a fresh food supply for several days and were less dependant on their luck in hunting. The two men showed Tan Dan their morning catch of lizards on whom they had broken the backs. The lizards were roasted on fire and eaten in the same way as maize cobs.

As their lonely life in the desert got more and more disturbed by the growing number of irrigation schemes and colonisers with other ways of living, the Bavrias find it increasingly difficult to eat their lizards in peace in the new environment of vegetarian Hindus. As they also got suspected by the police for killing protected animals, they were leaving their old way of living and tried to find employment as agricultural labourers.

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### Chapter 23 Banjara smallscale transporters in the 1970s

Birdoji, oxen caravan leader of the Baldia caste

Birdoji was the head of a nomadic group of about fifty persons, who still lived as caravan transporters. He was the old respected patriarch of his caravan group. He told Tan Dan that he was a young boy at the time of the Chapanna drought in 1899 A.D. In that case Birdoji was about eighty years, when Tan Dan met him in 1973.

He was riding on a cow, something practically unknown in India, even among non-Hindus. But it was often done by the Baldias, according to Tan Dan. They did not care much for Hindu sentiments. The Baldias used barren cows in their oxen caravans, as they were cheap to buy.

Birdoji's oxen caravan of about one hundred pack animals carried white clay used for whitewashing houses. They had dug the clay themselves in the clay quarries of Chokari in Jodhpur District, and now they carried the clay on the backs of their oxen and cows in bags of goat hair and sun hemp . In the old days the Baldias carried their goods in _ankala_ bags made of bark of the _akara_ plant, a xerophytic plant common in the Rajasthan Desert. The fibres inside the bark of the akara plant were spun and woven into sturdy and longlasting bags, which were very suitable for loading on camels and cattle as the fibres of the bags are very soft. This cottage industry was in 1973 a thing of the past. Some families in the desert still used the fibres of the akara plant for making ropes.

Tan Dan bought some ankala fibre bags in 1971 at a price of twenty Rupees each.

Hinglaj worship

The Banjara ox caravan community was the ethnic group besides the Charans who in the 1970s still made Hinglaj worship in a very definite manner, according to Tan Dan.

They did not consider her interchangable with other godesses.

To many other western Rajasthani castes with a Banjara-like background the godess Hinglaj was hardly in living memory any longer. Except among old people, who remembered the pilgrim journeys to Baluchistan before the formation of Pakistan in 1947. After that the Hinglaj temple at Makran has been difficult to reach.

Different seven sisters in different regions

All Baldia type groups worshipped the seven sisters. In Rajasthan they were thought of as Karni and her sisters, mainly, but in Gujarat the seven sisters were mostly worshipped as Khodiar and her sisters. (Except tribal parts of Gujarat. There the seven sisters were not worshipped.)

In Gujarat, especially Kathiavar, the main Khodiar worshippers were Charans, Rebaris, Bharwads, and Ahirs.

Both Karni and Khodiar were thought of as avatars of the godess Hinglaj.

A Banjara boy worshipping bayansa godesses

In 1979 Tan Dan met a boy of a Banjara group at Tilvara fair with a big silver amulett around his neck. On the amulett was a picture of eight small figures. The seven sisters and their brother.

Smallscale pack oxen transport in north India in the 1970s

Ox caravans still carried out short distance transport of salt, Tan Dan told in 1977. In remote areas with no roads. Both at the production end and that of consumption. The long distance transport in between had been taken over by trucks going on tarmac roads.

The cost of an oxen caravan of one hundred animals was about forty to fifty thousand Rupees at that time.

Pack-oxen caravans were in the 1970s owned by two or three close relatives, mostly. They moved around together with their families. Ox caravan business have always been joint family enterprises and in the old days the banjaras generally moved around in big kinship groups.

In the 1970s the Banjaras still carried out the transportation of clay and salt to the Chamba town in the Himachal Pradesh. (Told by a relative to the Chelana Thakur, who used to visit that area.)

Banjaras in Pandu clay barter trade in the Chambal valley

In 1977 Tan Dan met Banjaras still carrying out their oxen caravan trade in inaccessible regions of the Chambal valley area in northern Madhya Pradesh. Where trucks could not reach. The pack oxen could carry their load to areas with no roads at all. With plenty of ravines in a much degraded landscape, where dacoit robber gangs could hide.

The pack oxen carried jute bags with pandu. It is a clay of white or light colour used in many homes all over India. Pandu was used for decorating strips and patterns on walls and whitewashing parts of walls.

The Banjaras returned with foodgrain they had bought in barter trade at interior settlements. It could be sold for cash elsewhere.

Tan Dan accompanied such a Banjara group to a remote village some six kilometers from Joura, Morena District, Madhya Pradesh, near Chambal Valley. There the Banjara trader carried out his barter trade with his balancing tool. He started by putting grain in the right pan and pandu in the left. When even, he moved the pandu of the left pan to the right pan. Then he balanced the grain plus pandu in the right pan against more pandu in the left until the balance was even. That way he got thrice as much pandu as foodgrain. He gave his customer all the pandu and kept the grain. Thus the barter price was thrice as much weight of pandu as of foodgrain.

This method worked well where there were neither balancing weights nor money. Sharp accuracy, all the same.

On his way back Tan Dan met two Banjara boys sitting on a heap of pandu, brought by a truck. At an open field with no village nearby. The boys had been told by their parents to keep watch over the clay heap. It would later be carried further by oxen to almost inaccessible regions. In the traditional Banjara ox caravan way. There were also a heap of foodgrain bags, which these Banjaras would sell to people in villages elsewhere. The stored foodgrain they had got in barter trade against pandu, the white clay.

At the camp the men later on cooked food on the _chulha_ and filled tobacco in their _chilam_ pipes. That pipe was common among Banjaras and other nomads and also among those who lived a settled life in western Rajasthan villages. Small and easy to handle compared to the water pipe hooka popular in Haryana. The men told Tan Dan their Banjara kinship group used to get together once a year for a month or so in the rainy season. That they did at a village near Bilara in Jodhpur District. There they carried out social functions such as marriages, muklava and sacrificial feasts, usually to Jagdamba. To some extent they also carried out Hinglaj worship.

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### Chapter 24 After the age of pack-ox caravans

Cattle traders continued to be banjaras after having lost their caravans

Most pastoral nomads around the world has a shrinking support base. The banjaras, too. With no demand for the service of pack oxen caravan traders such kinship groups had to find some other livelihood. Some clans switched to new activities and even started new castes, others remained cattle traders but without pack oxen caravans.

Bullocks from the western grasslands to farmers to the east

Bullocks bred on western Rajasthani grasslands were in demand from farmers in agricultural regions further towards the east in Rajasthan and beyond. To simplify, the bullock producers and the grasslands were in the west and the users of these bullocks in the east, where crop fields were more. Over the centuries trees had been cut down and bushland cleared in forest regions of the Indian mainland. By villagers in need of farm land.

Villagers in these regions required strong bullocks as draught power on reclaimed agricultural land. That is how the food demand of a steadily growing population was met.

The Banjara trade bullocks for sale to farmers

Bullocks they got from cattle traders who had bought the animals at cattle fairs in western Rajasthan. Cattle traders such as the banjara group Tan Dan had met at Tilvara in 1977. They had left there pack oxen caravan trade a generation earlier, as the pack oxen caravans had become obsolete in the age of trains and trucks.

Unfortunately for the Banjaras, bullock trade was not a secure livelihood either in the age of agricultural mechanization. More and more farmers used tractors instead of bullocks. Tractors they owned themselves and tractors hired from others.

Little scope for an itinery life

In 1977 most bhats had left their migratory life with oxen caravans altogether. Many tried to live on petty trade. Often under difficult improvised living arrangements at the fringe of the village or urban society in a semisettled life.

They continued to live, as if they were nomads, although they had done away with most of their oxen. At least formally they had to stick to one place in order to satisfy police regulations and get written permits of stay.

Banjaras in gum trade

_Gund_ is a kind of gum, a dry hard material, which is eaten and considered nutritious. It is a secretion from trees such as _babul_ , _dhav_ , _khair_ , _kumta_.

It is given to women in western Rajasthan and other parts of India after pregnancy, when she is in the _japa_ condition during one month after child delivery. The japa is a period of recovery, when she has to eat special food, including gund.

Gund is also considered good for back ache. It is eaten by both men and women against that ailment.

Gund is in short supply and the demand is high. The Banjaras therefore used to bring it to western Rajasthan from Mevar on their nomadic journeys. From the Aravalli hill deciduous forest region, where they collected gund themselves. Sometimes they bought it from Saharias, a jungle tribe living in the Chambal valley and in Mevar.

In 1979 Tan Dan met a Banjara kinship group selling _gund_ at Chelana. They were about twenty persons and had collected the gund in the forests of Mevar towards south-east. Among them was a woman wearing a silver ornament that caught Tan Dan's attention. It was a big ornament worn on the forehead. A _choga_. It was still common among banjaras and earlier also among Charans, Rebaris, and Gujars of western Rajasthan and Gujarat.

While selling gund in the Detha mohalla, Manna and his wife came to Tan Dan's house to get c _hach_ , buttermilk. Villagers churning milk for making _ghee_ , butteroil, give buttermilk free to anybody asking for it. It is an old custom.

Tan Dan thought the features of Manna's wife resembled women of the Saharian tribe of Chambal and parts of Mevar. It is a forest tribe this banjara kinship group used to meet now and then due to the _gund_ trade. Banjaras and Charans as a rule have more Iranian-Afghani resembling features and rather light complexion.

While the couple talked to Tan Dan in the pleasant early morning, their daughter danced for herself in a corner of the _angan,_ feeling free and happy at that moment. She liked the papaya trees and the greenness of the garden and the sunshine. She was about ten years old and spontaneous in her expressions.

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### Supplements

The Chelana Detha clan pedigree (Tan Dan's kinship group)

Kan Dan Detha living at Devli got feudal grazing rights at Chelana in the first half of the 19th century. Three of his sons settled at Chelana. They were Budh Dan, Dalpat Dan and Ishar Dan. Budh Dan had two sons. Jugti Dan and Kim Dan. Yugti Dan's five sons were Sabal Dan, Fateh Karan, Radmal Dan, Tej Dan and Mahesh Dan.

Tej Dan got seven sons,

Sukh Dan, Ravi Dan, Savai Singh, Nath Karan, Kishore Singh, Tan Dan, and Raghunath Singh.

Tej Dan had seven nephews,

Sumer Dan, Naru Dan, Sire Dan (sons of Sabal Dan),

Bhir Dan and Ganga Dan (sons of Radmal Dan), and

Mehar Dan and Hamir Dan. These fourteen cousins started Detha Brothers Agricultural Farm in the 1950s.

Jugti Dan's brother Kim Dan had no son of his own. Therefore he adopted Mahesh Dan.

Kan Dan's second son Dalpat Dan got Mun Dan, the father of Chiman Dan.

Kan Dan's third son Ishar Dan was the grandfather of Shiv Dan, a poor cattle herder who never became a farmer. All the other Detha families switched over to agriculture.

Tej Dan's brother Fateh Karan never got a son. He had two daughters Hapu and Ramu. They are the only women shown in this pedigree. (Hapu was Tan Dan's cousin who married into a Mehru Charan family at Chelana.)

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Tan Dan's parkinsonia hedge at the wall built by Jugti Dan

Tan Dan's cousins and brothers often scold Tan Dan for having pulled down a part of the wall near his house. Tan Dan did that because the wall at that place had become full of cobra nests, which were a threat and menace to everybody, not least to Tan Dan's children when playing near the wall. Besides, Tan Dan thought the wall was too big, wide and clumsy for his needs. Therefore, he replaced it with a straight hedge row of the thorny Parkinsonia tree. With many thorny twigs it provides excellent protection against unwanted animals when they pass by his fodder fields and cattle yard. They are also a good windbreak useful in both hot and cold seasons, as well as a good source of fuel wood due to its prolific growth. The row of Parkinsonia trees helped Tan Dan's family to be self-sufficient in fuel wood in 1978.

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Cattle breeds in and around western Rajasthan

Approximate original areas of various cattle breeds in western Rajasthan and adjacent regions of South Asia can be figured out from their names in most cases. Sahival, Sind, Gir, Sanchor, Tharparkar, Bhagnari, Haryana, Nagaur are all names of regions. As a rule, the habitats of the milk breeds were to the west in the direction of the the Indus river. The home tracts of the draught cattle breeds were towards the interior of the desert region towards to the east. Such as the nagori cattle with fast bullocks in Nagaur district.

red milk cattle (Sahival, Rathi, Red Sindhi, Gir, Sanchori)

white milk cattle (Tharparkar, Bhagnari, also Kankrej)

draught cattle (Hariana, Nagori, Malani)

Most breeds are more or less dual, i.e. good for both draught power and milk. Tan Dan thinks that Tharparkar and the similar Bhagneri in Baluchistan were strong, hardy and economical pack oxen suitable for the oxen caravans kept by the Banjaras (Bhat, Charan) transporters.

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Some useful grass species in the semi-arid climate of western Rajasthan

_Cenchrus ciliaris_ and _C. setigerus._ Both are called dhaman, according to Bhandari (1978). Local name of C. ciliaris in western Rajasthan is also dhamanio. Ambsta (1986) states that this grass is considered to be one of the most nutritious grasses. It can be fed green or turned into silage. Hindi names are: Anjan, dhaman, baiba, kusa. It is a common grass in dry soils, particularly in neglected enclosures and fields, according to Bhandari (1978). C. setigerus is also useful as a fodder grass. (Ambasta, 1986), and is one of the most common grasses on rocks, gravel or sand; often gregarious and growing in tufts. (Bhandari, 1978). Tan Dan called _Cenchrus ciliaris_ a clone of cenchrus grass. However, cenchrus grass probably refers to _Cenchrus cilliaris_ rather than to the whole _Cenchrus_ genus. This perennial grass spreads from rhizomes, by new shoots emerging from the rhizome nodes. Especially when the grass plants are cut or stimulated by moisture. It promotes vegetative growth. (Seedless propagation.)

_Cynodon dactylon._ Called _dob_ by Tan Dan. In Hindi 'dhub' and 'hariali', in English bermuda grass (Ambasta, 1986). It is an important pasture grass and a good soil binder, but can also be a difficult perennial weed.

_Diacanthium annulatum._ This grass is called _karad_ in Marvari, according to Tan Dan. Ambasta (1986) states that D. annulatum is esteemed among the wild fodder grasses in India. Cattle eat the grass readily both when young and in flower.

_Panicum antidotale._ The grass is called gramno in Marvari, according to Tan Dan. According to Ambasta (1986) it is called 'gunara' in Hindi, and 'bangagli', 'banvari', 'gramna'. in Rajasthan. Ambasta (1986) states that P. antidotale is grazed by cattle only when young. It is useful in scarcity areas. In USA it is used for erosion control and as windbreak. Also used as an antidote hydrophobia, according to Ambasta.

_Saccharum spontaneum_. A tall grass used as thatching material. In Hindi _kans_. It is a tough hairy grass growing on waste sandy land with long roots. It requires deep ploughing with tractor to get rid of it.

Hay of grass cut at young stage when green, and then dried, has another and for cattle more nutritious dry matter composition than grass which dries up at the end of its life cycle after setting seed.

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Cazri Experimental Grassland Unit at Chelana

In the 1970s the Central Arid Zone Research Institute of Jodhpur carried out grassland experiments in the big fenced grassland area at Chelana.

They also had a seed multiplication programme of selected grass seeds, mostly of the Cenchrus varieties, and roughly the same varieties each year from the start of the experimental station in the 1950s, as these varieties suit the semi-arid conditions of Chelana, and the rest of western Rajasthan. These Cenchrus grasses now spread on their own in the natural grasslands around Chelana. Cenchrus spp. grasses grew at Chelana also before this scheme, but the increased cattle population pressure on the diminishing grazing land resulted in overgrazing, and reduced availibility of the most palatable species such as Cenchrus grass.

The CAZRI staff put a fence around their 200 acres (80 ha) experimental unit at Chelana. It was further subdivided into separate grazing blocks. The CAZRI grazing station took heifers from the villagers, one from each farmer, for trial grazing on the grassland station.

It was a useful demonstration of improved grassland management for the farmers at Chelana and surrounding villages. Inspired by the work they saw on the station, several Chelana farmers started to build fences around their own overgrazed pastures. They also used seed from the Cenchrus seed multiplication programme.

They were not the first ones to practice fenced grazing at Chelana. It had been done by Jugti Dan Detha already in early 20th century.

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Ox caravan trade in between the Indus valley and Sumeria in ancient time?

Pack oxen caravan trade from the Indus valley towards the west, perhaps all the way to the ancient urban civilization of Sumeria, is one of Tan Dan's many interesting speculations. Crossing the Iran highland with pack oxen would require water and fodder all the way. The area is dry and cattle can not walk long distances without water. Was enough water available along the caravan routes at least part of the year? Were there ponds such as those of the Rajasthan desert?

Along the caravan routes in the old days in western Rajasthan there were dug ponds, where the travellers could water their animals. Many of them had been dug by kinship groups of the Beldar caste (Odh), paid by Banjara ox caravan traders. Also the village pond at Chelana, Tan Dan had been told by villagers and Banjaras. In the monsoonal climate of India, pack ox caravans could cross dry regions, such as the Rajasthan desert, most of the year. But it was risky. In years of severe drought and famine due to monsoon failure ox caravans could be wiped out. Some small castes living as poor nomads without livestock in western Rajasthan might have faced such calamities. That is what their own stories tell.

The one humped camel ( the dromedar) is much better than oxen, when there is extreme water scarcity, but in the days of Harappan and Sumerian civilizations the camels had not yet been domesticated.

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Sitting positions in Rajasthan

In Chelana and Rajasthan people have many different ways of sitting and there is a special word in Marvari for each type.

Sitting on your back end and feet, both in a restful position, holding your hands over your knees, is called _gati bethna_.

Sitting a little more bent forward so that your back end is up from the ground, and you only sit on your feet is called _okru_. It is a common working position.

Sitting on your knees is called _godian_. It is also used as a working position, and also in a defending position in lathi fights, as it reduces the surface on which your enemy can hit.

Sitting with your legs spread on the same side is a sitting position which in western Rajasthan is called _baskian_. It is used when begging for mercy like a beggar or a labourerwhen he with folded hands approaches a master. A soldier unable to fight any longer sit down in baskian to show that he has given up. Then his enemy will save his life, if he follows the _kshatriya_ code of fighting. It is only a custom in western Rajasthan, not in the regions further to the east in India. It indicates the impact of West Asia on northwestern India, as worshipping to Allah in this position holding up your hands with your face towards the sky often is depicted on Muslim paintings of religious persons.

_Dhinchi dalna_ is a sitting position similar to _gati bethna_ , but more leisurely with back bent more backwards, and your arms held straight forward over your knees.

Sitting crosslegged in the typical Indian position is in Marvari called _palgoti_.

Sitting with the knees in right angle like when sitting on a chair is called _kursi hano bethna_ , whether the person really sits on a chair or not.

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_Indian words used in this book (Hindi and Marwari)_

bajra. _Pennisetum typhoides_. A cereal.

baldia. ox caravan transporters. The group of pastoral nomad castes that may have been associated to the baldia banjara caste in the past.

gotra. A group within a caste that only marries with other groups (gotras) within their caste, not their own.

jovar. _Sorghum bicolor_. A cereal. In western Rajasthan mainly grown for fodder.

kabadi. A traditional sport game with two teams.

khera. A caste panchayat for a group of 24 villages

lakh. One hundred thousand.

tanda. The camp of the pack ox caravan of the banjara bhats. The whole group.

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Reference

Ambasta, S.P. 1986. The useful plants of India. Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, New Delhi. 918 pp.

Bhandari, M.M. 1978. Flora of the Indian Desert. Jodhpur. 471 pp.

CAZRI, 1976. Fifteen years of Arid Zone research (1959-1974). Central Arid Zone Research Institute, Jodhpur.53 pp.

Gupta, B.L. 1993. Trade and commerce in Rajasthan. Jaipur. 274 pp.

Maloo, K. 1987. The history of famines in Rajputana. (1858-1900 A.D.) Udaipur. 296 pp.

Tod, J. 1920. Annals and antiquities of Rajasthan or the central and western Rajput states of India. London. 1862 pp.

Ujwal, K.D.S. Undated. Bhagwati Shri Karniji Maharaj. A biography. Ujlan (Marwar), Rajasthan, India. 151 pp.

Cover image

Tilvara cattle fair in the 1970s.

Photo: Tan Dan Detha.

***

That was all for the time being, but Tan Dan has more to tell.

If you have any comments on this book, please mail to me. Any suggestion for improvement is most welcome.

My e-mail adress is sonlal41@hotmail.com

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