Compiled by London swaminathan

Date: 20^th August 2016

Time uploaded in London:  12-12

Post No.3076

 

Pictures are taken from various sources; thanks for the pictures.

 

Part-5 on caste Proverbs. For proverbs on Brahmins, Banias, Jats, Carpenters, Blacksmiths, Goldsmiths and agricultural castes, please read the first four parts.

 

 

 

Anti – Weaver Proverbs

 

Weaver’s loom being sunk in the ground, he is said to dig a pit and fall into it himself.

 

If the weaver has a pot of grain he thinks himself a Raja/king.

 

He finds the hind peg of a plough, and proposes to star farming on the strength of it.

 

If there are eight Jolaahaas (Mohammedan weavers) and nine huqqas (things), they fight for the odd one.

 

The Jolaahaa goes to see a ram fight and gets butted himself.

(The stupidity of the weaver is the staple subject of proverbial philosophy through out India)

 

Being one of a company of twelve who had safely forded a river, he can only find eleven, as he forgets to count himself and straight goes off to bury himself in the belief that, as he is missing, he must be dead.

A crow snatches a piece of bread from a Jolaha’s child and flies with it to the roof, the prudent father takes away the ladder before he gives the child anymore.

 

A Jolaahaa hears the Koran being read and bursts into tears; on being asked what passage moves him so, he explains that the wagging beard of the Mulla, reminded him of a favourite goat that he had lost.

When his dog barks at a tiger he proceeds to whip his child.

He will steal a reel of thread when he gets the chance.

He has his own standard of time; he lies like a Chamaar; and even if you see him brushing the newly woven cloth, you must not believe him when he says that it is ready.

Anti – Shoemaker/tanner/cobbler Proverbs

 

He is as wily as a jackal, he is so stupid that he sits on his awl and beats himself for stealing it.

 

He laments that he cannot tan his own skin.

He knows that nothing beyond his last, and the shortest way to deal with him is to beat him with a shoe of his own making.

 

Old shoes should be offered to the shoemaker’s god

Stich, Stitch is the note of the cobbler’s quarter; Stink Stink of the street where the tanners live.

 

The Chamar’s wife goes barefoot, but his daughter, when he has just attained puberty, is as graceful as an ear of millet.

There is no hiding the belly from the midwife (Chamar’s wife knows everything)

 

Chamar is inquiring after the health of the  village headman’s buffalo ( a humorous allusion to the practice of poisoning animals with arsenic)

 

Anti- Doms (Scavengers,Executioners, Basket makers, Professional burglars; in Tamil Nadu they were called Pariahs; in Maharashtra Mahars, the Dheds)

 

Dom is the Lord of Death (they supply wood for the funeral pyre)

He is ranked with Brahmans and goats as a creature useless in time of need.

 

He is a friend of all castes:-

Kanjar steals his dog;

Gujar loots his house;

Barber shaves him for nothing;

Jolaahaa makes him a suit of clothes.

 

If donkeys could excrete sugar, Doms would no longer be beggars.

 

A Dom in a palanquin and a Brahmin on foot (Society turned upside down)

Every village has a Brahman’s street and every village has a Pariah street

 

A palm tree casts no shade; a Pariah has no rule or castes

 

He that breaks his word is a Paraih at heart

 

If a Pariah offers a boiled rice, will not the God take it?

My comments:–

Foreign invaders described this caste as the remnants of a Dravidian tribe crushed out of recognition by the invading Aryans and condemned to menial occupations. Sir Grierson said that they are the ancestors of the European Gipsies and the Rom or Romany is nothing more than a variant of Dom. This shows how hard the foreign invaders tried to drive a wedge between different Hindu castes; one would wonder whether they are scholars or crooks. Every society, every culture has people of different vocations. Some foreigners have said that Indus Valley Civilization is the source of Caste system.

 

These were recorded 100 years ago in the book:

The People of India by Sir Herbert Risely, London, 1915.

 

……to be continued

–Subham–