The Tribes and Castes of The Central Provinces of India IV

Kumhār Kumbhār The caste of potters the name being derived from the Sanskrit kumbh a water-pot. The Kumhārs numbered nearly 120000 persons in the Central Provinces in 1911 and were most numerous in the northern and eastern or Hindustāni-speaking Districts where earthen vessels have a greater vogue than in the south. The caste is of course an ancient one vessels of earthenware having probably been in use at a very early period and the old Hindu scriptures consequently give various accounts of its origin from mixed marriages between the four classical castes. “Concerning the traditional parentage of the caste” Sir H. Risley writes1 “there seems to be a wide difference of opinion among the recognised authorities on the subject. Thus the Brahma Vaivārtta Purāna says that the Kumbhakār or maker of water-jars (kumbka) is born of a Vaishya woman by a Brāhman father; the Parāsara Samhita makes the father a Mālākār (gardener) and the mother a Chamār; while the Parāsara Padhati holds that the ancestor of the caste was begotten of a Tili woman by a Pattikār or weaver of silk cloth.” Sir Monier Williams again in his Sanskrit Dictionary describes them as the offspring of a Kshatriya woman by a Brāhman. No importance can of course be attached to such statements as the above from the point of view of actual fact but they are interesting as showing the view taken of the formation of castes by the old Brāhman writers and also the position given to the Kumhār at the time when they wrote. This varies from a moderately respectable to a very humble one according to the different accounts of his lineage.