Koli
List of Paragraphs
1. General notice of the caste. 532
4. Widow-marriage or divorce. 535
1. General Notice of the Caste
Koli.—A primitive tribe akin to the Bhīls, who are residents of the western Satpūra hills. They have the honorific title of Nāik. They numbered 36,000 persons in 1911, nearly all of whom belong to Berār, with the exception of some 2000 odd, who live in the Nimār District. These have hitherto been confused with the Kori caste. The Koris or weavers are also known as Koli, but in Nimār they have the designation of Khangār Koli to distinguish them from the tribe of the same name. The Kolis proper are found in the Burhānpur tahsīl, where most villages are said to possess one or two families, and on the southern Satpūra hills adjoining Berār. They are usually village servants, their duties being to wait on Government officers, cleaning their cooking-vessels and collecting carts and provisions. The duties of village watchman or kotwār were formerly divided between two officials, and while the Koli did the most respectable part of the work, the Mahār or Balāhi carried baggage, sent messages, and made the prescribed reports to the police. In Berār the Kolis acted for a time as guardians of the hill passes. A chain of outposts or watch towers ran along the Satpūra hills to the north of Berār, and these were held by Kolis and Bhīls, whose duties were to restrain the predatory inroads of their own tribesmen, in the same manner as the Khyber Rifles now guard the passes on the North-West Frontier. And again along the Ajanta hills to the south of the Berār valley a tribe of Kolis under their Nāiks had charge of the ghāts or gates of the ridge, and acted as a kind of local militia paid by assignments of land in the villages.1 In Nimār the Kolis, like the Bhīls, made a trade of plunder and dacoity during the unsettled times of the eighteenth century, and the phrase ‘Nāhal, Bhīl, Koli’ is commonly used in old Marāthi documents to designate the hill-robbers as a class. The priest of a Muhammadan tomb in Burhānpur still exhibits an imperial Parwāna or intimation from Delhi announcing the dispatch of a force for the suppression of the Kolis, dated A.D. 1637. In the Bombay Presidency, so late as 1804, Colonel Walker wrote: “Most Kolis are thieves by profession, and embrace every opportunity of plundering either public or private property.”2 The tribe are important in Bombay, where their numbers amount to more than 1½ million. It is supposed that the common term ‘coolie’ is a corruption of Koli,3 because the Kolis were usually employed as porters and carriers in western India, as ‘slave’ comes from Slav. The tribe have also given their name to Colāba.4 Various derivations have been given of the meaning of the word Koli,5 and according to one account the Kolis and Mairs were originally the same tribe and came from Sind, while the Mairs were the same as the Meyds or Mihiras who entered India in the fifth century as one of the branches of the great White Hun horde. “Again, since the settlement of the Mairs in Gujarāt,” the writer of the Gujarāt Gazetteer continues, “reverses of fortune, especially the depression of the Rājpūts under the yoke of the Muhammadans in the fourteenth century, did much to draw close the bond between the higher and middle grades of the warrior class. Then many Rājpūts sought shelter among the Kolis and married with them, leaving descendants who still claim a Rājpūt descent and bear the names of Rājpūt families. Apart from this, and probably as the result of an original sameness of race, in some parts of Gujarāt and Kāthiawār intermarriage goes on between the daughters of Talabda Kolis and the sons of Rājpūts.” Thus the Thākur of Talpuri Mahi Kāntha in Bombay calls himself a Prāmara Koli, and explains the term by saying that his ancestor, who was a Prāmara or Panwār Rājpūt, took water at a Koli’s house.6 As regards the origin of the Kolis, however, whom the author of the Gujarāt Gazetteer derives from the White Huns, stating them to be immigrants from Sind, another and perhaps more probable theory is that they are simply a western outpost of the great Kol or Munda tribe, to which the Korkus and Nāhals and perhaps the Bhīls may also belong. Mr. Hīra Lāl suggests that it is a common custom in Marāthi to add or alter so as to make names end in i. Thus Halbi for Halba, Koshti for Koshta, Patwi for Patwa, Wanjāri for Banjāra, Gowari for Goala; and in the same manner Koli from Kol. This supposition appears a very reasonable one, though there is little direct evidence. The Nimār Kolis have no tradition of their origin beyond the saying—
Siva kī jholi
Us men ka Koli,
or ‘The Koli was born from Siva’s wallet.’
2. Subdivisions
In the Central Provinces the tribe have the five subdivisions of Sūrajvansi, Malhār, Bhilaophod, Singāde, and the Muhammadan Kolis. The Sūrajvansi or ‘descendants of the sun’ claim to be Rājpūts. The Malhār or Pānbhari subtribe are named from their deity Malhāri Deo, while the alternative name of Pānbhari means water-carrier. The Bhilaophod extract the oil from bhilwa7 nuts like the Nāhals, and the Singāde (sing, horn, and gādna, to bury) are so called because when their buffaloes die they bury the horns in their compounds. As with several other castes in Burhānpur and Berār, a number of Kolis embraced Islām at the time of the Muhammadan domination and form a separate subcaste.
In Berār the principal group is that of the Mahādeo Kolis, whose name may be derived from the Mahādeo or Pachmarhi hills. This would tend to connect them with the Korkus, and through them with the Kols. They are divided into the Bhās or pure and the Akarāmāse or impure Kolis.8 In Akola most of the Kolis are stated to belong to the Kshatriya group, while other divisions are the Nāiks or soldiers, the begging Kolis, and the Watandārs who are probably hereditary holders of the post of village watchman.9
3. Exogamous Divisions
The tribe have exogamous septs of the usual nature, but they have forgotten the meaning of the names, and they cannot be explained. In Bombay their family names are the same as the Marātha surnames, and the writer of the Ahmadnagar Gazetteer10 considers that some connection exists between the two classes. A man must not marry a girl of his own sept nor the daughter of his maternal uncle. Girls are usually married at an early age. A Brāhman is employed to conduct the marriage ceremony, which takes place at sunset: a cloth is held between the couple, and as the sun disappears it is removed and they join hands amid the clapping of the assembled guests. Afterwards they march seven times round a stone slab surrounded by four plough-yokes. Among the Rewa Kāntha Kolis the boy’s father must not proceed on his journey to find a bride for his son until on leaving his house he sees a small bird called devi on his right hand; and consequently he is sometimes kept waiting for weeks, or even for months. When the betrothal is arranged the bridegroom and his father are invited to a feast at the bride’s house, and on leaving the father must stumble over the threshold of the girl’s door; without this omen no wedding can prosper.11
4. Widow-marriage or Divorce
The remarriage of widows is permitted, and the ceremony consists simply in tying a knot in the clothes of the couple; in Ahmadābād all they need do is to sit on the ground while the bridegroom’s father knocks their heads together.12 Divorce is allowed for a wife’s misconduct, and if she marries her fellow delinquent he must repay to the husband the expenses incurred by him on his wedding. Otherwise the caste committee may inflict a fine of Rs. 100 on him and put him out of caste for twelve years in default of payment, and order one side of his moustache to be shaved. In Gujarāt a married woman who has an intrigue with another man is called savāsan, and it is said that a practice exists, or did exist, for her lover to pay her husband a price for the woman and marry her, though it is held neither respectable nor safe.13 In Ahmadābād, if one Koli runs away with another’s wife, leaving his own wife behind him, the caste committee sometimes order the offender’s relatives to supply the bereaved husband with a fresh wife. They produce one or more women, and he selects one and is quite content with her.14
5. Religion
The Kolis of Nimār chiefly revere the goddess Bhawāni, and almost every family has a silver image of her. An important shrine of the goddess is situated in Ichhāpur, ten or twelve miles from Burhānpur, and here members of the tribe were accustomed to perform the hook-swinging rite in honour of the goddess. Since this has been forbidden they have an imitation ceremony of swinging a bundle of bamboos covered with cloth in lieu of a human being.
6. Disposal of the Dead
The Kolis both bury and burn the dead, but the former practice is more common. They place the body in the grave with head to the south and face to the north. On the third day after the funeral they perform the ceremony called Kandhe kanchhna or ‘rubbing the shoulder.’ The four bearers of the corpse come to the house of the deceased and stand as if they were carrying the bier. His widow smears a little ghī (butter) on each man’s shoulder and rubs the place with a small cake which she afterwards gives to him. The men go to a river or tank and throw the cakes into it, afterwards bathing in the water. This ceremony is clearly designed to sever the connection established by the contact of the bier with their shoulders, which they imagine might otherwise render them likely to require the use of a bier themselves. On the eleventh day a Brāhman is called in, who seats eleven friends of the deceased in a row and applies sandal-paste to their foreheads. All the women whose husbands are alive then have turmeric rubbed on their foreheads, and a caste feast follows.
7. Social Rules
The Kolis eat flesh, including fowls and pork, and drink liquor. They will not eat beef, but have no special reverence for the cow. They will not remove the carcase of a dead cow or a dead horse. The social status of the tribe is low, but they are not considered as impure, and Gūjars, Kunbis, and even some Rājpūts will take water from them. Children are named on the twelfth day after birth. Their hair is shaved in the month of Māgh following the birth, and on the first day of the next month, Phāgun, a little oil is applied to the child’s ear, after which it may be pierced at any time that is convenient.
Notes
1 Lyall’s Berār Gazetteer, pp. 103–5.
2 Kāthiawār Gazetteer, p. 140.
3 Crooke’s edition of Hobson-Jobson, art. Koli.
4 Bombay City Census Report (1901) (Edwards).
5 Gujarāt Gazetteer, p. 238.
6 Golden Book of India, s.v.
7 Semecarpus anacardium, the marking-nut tree.
8 Kitts, Berār Census Report (1881), p. 131.
9 Akola Gazetteer (Mr. C. Brown), p. 116.
10 P. 197.
11 Hindus of Gujarāt, l.c.
12 Indian Antiquary, vol. iii. p. 236.
13 Bombay Gazetteer, Hindus of Gujarāt, p. 250.
14 Indian Antiquary, vol. iii. p. 236.