Beria, Bedia
[Bibliography: Sir H. Risley’s Tribes and Castes of Bengal; Rājendra Lāl Mitra in Memoirs, Anthropological Society of London, iii. p. 122; Mr. Crooke’s Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh; Mr. Kennedy’s Criminal Classes of the Bombay Presidency; Major Gunthorpe’s Criminal Tribes; Mr. Gayer’s Lectures on some Criminal Tribes of the Central Provinces; Colonel Sleeman’s Report on the Badhak or Bāgri Dacoits.]
1. Historical Notice
A caste of gipsies and thieves who are closely connected with the Sānsias. In 1891 they numbered 906 persons in the Central Provinces, distributed over the northern Districts; in 1901 they were not separately classified but were identified with the Nats. “They say that some generations ago two brothers resided in the Bhartpur territory, of whom one was named Sains Mūl and the other Mullanur. The descendants of Sains Mūl are the Sānsias and those of Mullanur the Berias or Kolhātis, who are vagrants and robbers by hereditary profession, living in tents or huts of matting, like Nats or other vagrant tribes, and having their women in common without any marriage ceremonies or ties whatsoever. Among themselves or their relatives the Sānsias or descendants of Sains Mūl, they are called Dholi or Kolhāti. The descendants of the brothers eat, drink and smoke together, and join in robberies, but never intermarry.” So Colonel Sleeman wrote in 1849, and other authorities agree on the close connection or identity of the Berias and Sānsias of Central India. The Kolhātis belong mainly to the Deccan and are apparently a branch of the Berias, named after the Kolhān or long pole with which they perform acrobatic feats. The Berias of Central India differ in many respects from those of Bengal. Here Sir H. Risley considers Beria to be ‘the generic name of a number of vagrant, gipsy-like groups’; and a full description of them has been given by Bābu Rājendra Lāl Mitra, who considers them to resemble the gipsies of Europe. “They are noted for a light, elastic, wiry make, very uncommon in the people of this country. In agility and hardness they stand unrivalled. The men are of a brownish colour, like the bulk of Bengalis, but never black. The women are of lighter complexion and generally well-formed; some of them have considerable claims to beauty, and for a race so rude and primitive in their habits as the Berias, there is a sharpness in the features of their women which we see in no other aboriginal race in India. Like the gipsies of Europe they are noted for the symmetry of their limbs; but their offensive habits, dirty clothing and filthy professions give them a repulsive appearance, which is heightened by the reputation they have of kidnapping children and frequenting burial-grounds and places of cremation.... Familiar with the use of bows and arrows and great adepts in laying snares and traps, they are seldom without large supplies of game and flesh of wild animals of all kinds. They keep the dried bodies of a variety of birds for medical purposes; mongoose, squirrels and flying-foxes they eat with avidity as articles of luxury. Spirituous liquors and intoxicating drugs are indulged in to a large extent, and chiefs of clans assume the title of Bhangi or drinkers of hemp (bhāng) as a mark of honour.... In lying, thieving and knavery the Beria is not a whit inferior to his brother gipsy of Europe. The Beria woman deals in charms for exorcising the devil and palmistry is her special vocation. She also carries with her a bundle of herbs and other real or pretended charms against sickness of body or mind; and she is much sought after by village maidens for the sake of the philtre with which she restores to them their estranged lovers; while she foretells the date when absent friends will return and the sex of unborn children. They practise cupping with buffalo horns, pretend to extract worms from decayed teeth and are commonly employed as tattooers. At home the Beria woman makes mats of palm-leaves, while her lord alone cooks.... Beria women are even more circumspect than European gipsies. If a wife does not return before the jackal’s cry is heard in the evening, she is subject to severe punishment. It is said that a faux pas among her own kindred is not considered reprehensible; but it is certain that no Berini has ever been known to be at fault with any one not of her own caste.” This last statement is not a little astonishing, inasmuch as in Central India and in Bundelkhand Berni is an equivalent term for a prostitute. A similar diversity of conjugal morality has been noticed between the Bāgris of northern India and the Vāghris of Gujarāt.1
2. Criminal Tendencies in the Central Provinces
In other respects also the Berias of Bengal appear to be more respectable than the remainder of the caste, obtaining their livelihood by means which, if disreputable, are not actually dishonest; while in Central India the women Berias are prostitutes and the men house-breakers and thieves. These latter are so closely connected with the Sānsias that the account of that caste is also applicable to the Berias. In Jubbulpore, Mr. Gayer states, the caste are expert house-breakers, bold and daring, and sometimes armed with swords and matchlocks. They sew up stolen property in their bed-quilts and secrete it in the hollow legs of their sleeping-cots, and the women habitually conceal jewels and even coins in the natural passages of the body, in which they make special saos or receptacles by practice. The Beria women go about begging, and often break open the doors of unoccupied houses in the daytime and steal anything they can find.2 Both Sānsia and Beria women wear a laong or clove in the left nostril.
3. Social Customs
As already stated, the women are professional prostitutes, but these do not marry, and on arrival at maturity they choose the life which they prefer. Mr. Crooke states,3 however, that regular marriages seldom occur among them, because nearly all the girls are reserved for prostitution, and the men keep concubines drawn from any fairly respectable caste. So far is this the rule that in some localities if a man marries a girl of the tribe he is put out of caste or obliged to pay a fine to the tribal council. This last rule does not seem to obtain in the Central Provinces, but marriages are uncommon. In a colony of Berias in Jubbulpore4 numbering sixty families it was stated that only eight weddings could be remembered as having occurred in the last fifty years. The boys therefore have to obtain wives as best they can; sometimes orphan girls from other castes are taken into the community, or any outsider is picked up. For a bride from the caste itself a sum of Rs. 100 is usually demanded, and the same has to be paid by a Beria man who takes a wife from the Nat or Kanjar castes, as is sometimes done. When a match is proposed they ask the expectant bridegroom how many thefts he has committed without detection; and if his performances have been inadequate they refuse to give him the girl on the ground that he will be unable to support a wife. At the betrothal the boy’s parents go to the girl’s house, taking with them a potful of liquor round which a silver ring is placed and a pig. The ring is given to the girl and the head of the pig to her father, while the liquor and the body of the pig provide a feast for the caste. They consult Brāhmans at their birth and marriage ceremonies. Their principal deities appear to be their ancestors, whom they worship on the same day of the month and year as that on which their death took place. They make an offering of a pig to the goddess Dadaju or Devi before starting on their annual predatory excursions. Some rice is thrown into the animal’s ear before it is killed, and the direction in which it turns its head is selected as the one divinely indicated for their route. Prostitution is naturally not regarded as any disgrace, and the women who have selected this profession mix on perfectly equal terms with those who are married. They occupy, in fact, a more independent position, as they dispose absolutely of their own earnings and property, and on their death it devolves on their daughters or other female relatives, males having no claim to it, in some localities at least. Among the children of married couples daughters inherit equally with sons. A prostitute is regarded as the head of the family so far as her children are concerned. Outsiders are freely admitted into the caste on giving a feast to the community. In Saugor the women of the caste, known as Berni, are the village dancing-girls, and are employed to give performances in the cold weather, especially at the Holi festival, where they dance the whole night through, fortified by continuous potations of liquor. This dance is called rai, and is accompanied by most obscene songs and gestures.
Notes
1 See article on Badhak.
2 Kennedy, p. 247.
3 Crooke, art. Beria.
4 The following particulars are taken from a note by Mr. K. N. Dāte, Deputy Superintendent, Reformatory School, Jubbulpore.