Wednesday, March 31, 2010

[ZESTCaste] The Mithila attitude

http://www.himalmag.com/The-Mithila-attitude_nw4430.html

The Mithila attitude

April 2010
By: CK Lal


Traditionally, the caste system has functioned differently in the Nepali Tarai.


Everyone's god: Salhes's shrine and Brahma tree
C K Lal
Caste has such deep roots in Southasian society that it would appear
as if these divisions were primordial. Several equally plausible
theories about the origins of caste are prevalent in villages around
Janakpur, in Nepal's Tarai plains, a town believed to be situated at
the site of the mythical capital of the Mithila of Valmiki's Ramayana.
Hindu creationists, for instance, believe that the Brahmin emanated
from the mouth of the primeval man, the Kshatriya from his arms, the
Vaishya from his thighs and the Shudra from his feet. Rationalists, on
the other hand, attribute the evolution of caste to varna, translated
as skin colour in the Mahabharata, which says that a Brahman is white,
a Kshatriya red, a Vaishya yellow and all Shudras black. A variation
of the 'Aryan invasion' theory holds that the conquerors
institutionalised their supremacy by imposing themselves upon the
existing occupational groups.

In addition, there is the widely held belief that caste was originally
a system of horizontal differentiation, in order to assign
occupational duties in a coordinated manner. In this formulation, most
castes, except Brahmins at the top and Dalits at the bottom, were
fluid categories. Finally, the theory of karma propounds that one's
caste in this life is a result of the virtues of the previous one. All
that a person can do is acquire virtue in the present life, to be
rewarded with promotions up the caste ladder by the divine manager.

Whatever the theory, endless conflict appears to be built into the
system of caste divisions. Yet different castes have lived together in
the villages of the Nepali Tarai for millennia without major clashes.
Part of the explanation behind the 'peaceful coexistence' may lie in
the subordinate position of the 'low' castes in economic terms. At
least some role was played by the subsistence agriculture that made
cooperation a necessary condition of survival. However, a system of
layered stratification, rather than hierarchy, seems to have been the
mainstay of the caste system in the Mithila region. Different groups
live together because they were neither high nor low but merely
different, each with its own customs and deities. In the social arena,
they have had to cooperate for collective survival.

Water everywhere
According to legends in Mithila, the popular geographic term tarai
owes its origin to massive lakes that once existed below the Shivalik
(Chure in Nepal) foothills of the Mahabharata ranges. In all
probability, these were wetlands left by changes in the courses of the
mighty Himalayan rivers, which, once out of the mountains, meander in
the plains to meet the Ganga. Today, all cultural symbols of Mithila
are water-based. Makhan, lotus seeds, grow in shallow water; fish are
caught from rivers and ponds; and betel leaves grow best in the shade
of trees near watercourses. Makhan, machha and paan are essential
elements of almost all rituals of every caste in this area.

This also indicates that the earliest settlers of this area must have
been skilled fisherfolk. The hunter-gatherer ancestors of Mithila were
water-dependent, rather than forest-dwellers. That could be the reason
that the Mallahs figure high on the list of acceptable castes, though
they are not considered as one of the high castes. Naturally, the main
deity of the fisherfolks must have been water; today, their traditions
perhaps live on in the Judshital festival, which heralds the onset of
summer in the month of Baisakh, when elders bless young ones with
water.

Over time, wetlands tend to shrink and tall grasses begin to grow in
the resultant clearings. The groups that had long made their living by
collecting reeds and making huts are probably ancestors of the
present-day Doms, whose role in Mithila rituals continues to be
important. But what are known today as Dusadhs were probably the
people who began to settle along the riverbanks. Most likely, they
hunted animals with bows and arrows and, along the way, learned the
skills required to make bamboo rafts, reed huts and grass bins for
storing edible fruits.

The tradition of worshipping Salhes – a mythical Dusadh king who is
reputed to have fought valiantly, driven invaders across the Ganga and
then died defending his possessions – might have begun later. But
trees that are today worshipped as of Dusadh deities probably predate
the tradition of making earthen statues of Salhes. The oldest villages
of Mithila invariably have a Dusadh shrine, and all castes, including
the 'forward' castes, pay yearly tribute for ritual pujas of Salhes.

Tree-worship
The evolution of pastoral society created different castes in its
wake, of which the earliest ones seem to have been Dhanuks, Koeris and
Bhedihars. They worshipped mounds of earth as the Mother Goddess – the
term kali was probably imposed upon this practice much later. Unlike
the Doms and Dusadhs, who had a tradition of moving with the season
along the river, goat- and sheepherders tended to live in clusters.
Their lifestyle continues to have the most visible impact, as most
settlers of Mithila are still Kali worshippers; it was probably their
shamans who began the tradition of tree-worship as Brahma the eternal.
In most Mithila villages, Dhanuks and Koeris are considered to have
been earliest settlers; later settlers of affluence prefer people of
these castes as family attendants and consider them as equals in
society.

Cowherds and buffalo-rearing castes introduced the tradition of Shiva
worship, but these were not permanent settlers. Until quite recently,
they retreated into the forest with their cattle for much of the year.
Such a tradition, however, must have begun when pastures turned into
agricultural fields, and animals had to be taken wherever grass was
abundant. Strangely, farming communities do not seem to have
contributed their own deities. Instead, most adopted prevalent Brahma-
and Kali-worshipping traditions. The shrines of Sita and Ram that dot
the landscape are additions from the Bhakti age, when Buddhism went
into retreat and kings claiming divine mandate began to patronise
organised Hindu religion with land grants to temples. The Ram-Janaki
temple in Matihani, near Janakpur, is the main Vaishnava shrine in
Nepal, with its mahanth considered to be maan mahanth, a temple head
above all other priests of the country.

The retreat of Buddhism gave a fillip to Brahminism, and what the
sociologist M N Srinivas was to later call a process of
Sanskritisation. Caste divisions became entrenched, with Brahmins at
the top; farming communities accepted Vaishya status; and Dalits were
relegated to the bottom. This was the caste system that, in Nepal,
Jang Bahadur was to later institutionalise in the Muluki Ain – the
Code of the Land – with the help of two Brahmin priests from Mahottary
in Mithila. Strangely, there is no indigenous Kshatriya caste group in
this area, which confirms the hypothesis that the Kshatriya category
was an open group, admitting people with 'warrior attitudes' from all
castes.

Farming also institutionalised caste roles. In a fitting finale to the
caste conundrum, occupational castes have been some of the most
significant beneficiaries of the remittance economy, in Nepal and
elsewhere. Castes such as barbers, blacksmiths and carpenters possess
very particular skills, after all, and oftentimes have less hesitation
in taking up what are considered menial jobs. As such, their
contributions to economic vibrancy are generally greater than those of
the 'upper' castes, and their occupational dexterity has helped them
to move ahead in the modernising economy. It would be interesting to
watch the impact of resurgence of 'low' castes on the lifestyles of a
region that takes excessive pride in its cultural traditions.


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