HINDUS

Except for the small body of Jains who follow Jainism, the Hindus of the of the district belong to two main classes. One is Brahmanic Hindus including Brahmans and other small caste who worship Brahmanic gods and employ Brahmans as their priest. The other is low casts and backward Hindu who mainly worship non-Brahmanic and animistic deities.

The religion of Brahmans is Hinduism of which they are the priests and exponents. Most Brahmans are worshippers  of Shiva or Vishnu and also Rama  and Krishna, incarnations of Vishnu and Shakti, the female principle of energy of Shiva.

To describe the religious beliefs of Hindu of the lower castes, the term Animism is often used. Technically, it denotes collection of beliefs possessed by the Dravidian tribes who have not even nominally been admitted to the caste system or become Hindus. The general nature of Animism may  perhaps be explained as the as the beliefs that everything which has life or motion has also a soul or spirit and all natural phenomenon are cased by direct personal agency. Instances of animistic beliefs may be found in the daily practices of the Hindu. Before climbing a tree, it is customary to pray for its pardon for the rough usage to which it is subjected. Stones and rocks of peculiar or extraordinary shape suggesting the intervention of personal agency in their construction are considered the abodes of spirits and are consequently feared and revered. When women go out to the field they take a little sugar and place it on an anthill to feed the ants ; the veneration of the cow is proverbial. The customs of worshipping the implements of the caste trade should presumably be classified as animism. Such practices belong as much to the Brahmanical Hindu as to those of the Dravidian tribes.

Village Gods. -

The statistics of religion show that 85-75 per cent of the population are Hindus; 13-01 per cent have been returned as Buddhists who were formerly Hindus. Muslims are 1-86 per cent. There is noting notable about the local Muham- medans except that they are on quite friendly terms with the Hindus. Members of both religions alike join in celebrating the Holi and Muhrram. The rest are negligible. The Gonds and Halbas who are the principal forest tribes of Bhandara ,are comparatively civilised and inclined to return themselves as Hindus. As usual, the villagers have a set of minor or godlings of their own who in many cases impersonate animals or are spirits attached to various localities. Maruti or Hanuman is found in every village. Muthia is the god of the cattle-stand and is represented by a stone or a heap of stones where the cattle meet out-side the village. At the time of Divali, the Govaris dance and sing before him with drums. Sewarya is the god of field boundaries and is represented by a stone placed where three fields meet. He must be propitiated to secure the success of the crops and a goat or cock is offered to him before the winnowin of the rice harvest. Bhimsen is a Gondi god , but is also worshipped by Hindus. Pigs and other animals and liquor are offered to him with the object of averting disease and other calamities. Dulha Deo is a houschold god and is supposed to reside in an earthen pot suspended by a string to the main beam of the house. The god is represented by a piece of metal or stone. He is worshipped once a year with great ceremony, only the male members of the family being present . The god is taken out and placed on a betelleaf and offerings are made to him and afterwards eaten by those present, the refuse being buried. One Malguzar is reported to have related that on one occasion when a woman was present at the worship of the Dulha Dev in his house, the god vanished but returned on being propitiated with an offering. Belsamundar Raja dwells at the crossings of rivers and streams. He is believed to be a young Dhimar who drowned while fishing and the Dhimars make offerings to him when they go fishing and when the rivers are in flood.

Village Priest

The Village priests are the Joshi, the Garpagari, and the Bhumak. The Joshi is a priestly astrologer who points out lucky and unlucky days for commencing ploughing and sowing operations and for all agricultural business of importance. He also officiates at births, deaths and marriages and at religious ceremonies of all kinds. He is usually a Brahman and has a panchanga or almanac, the repository of all his knowledge. Formerly he held rent-free land, but now he is usually remunerated only by small presents of cash or grain in return for his services. When a man intends to sink a well, he goes to the Joshi who names an auspicious day and directs that the first cold is to be dug by some elderly person of the family who must stand facing the east. When the well is completed, its marriage is celebrated by making an imitation of the Mandava or marriagebooth over it and tying torans or strings of mango-leaves round the sides. Relatives and friends of the family then have a feast sitting round the well and after that its water may be drunk . A similar procedure is observed in case of fruit trees before the first fruit is eaten. Every Hindu has plant of tulasi or basil in his year and a few plants of avla ( Phyllanthus Emblica ) and the umbar ( Ficus Glomerata) trees. The umbar tree is held to be sacred because Dattatreya, an incarnation of Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma dwelt under it. The avla is worshipped twice a year on the 14^th days of Ashadha and Karttira as it is sacred to Vishnu. During the four months between these days, the gods are supposed to be asleep and no marriages may be celebrated during this period. Many Hindus, Particularly abstain, from sugarcane, brinjals, onions, garlic, radishes and wild plums. On the 12^th day of Karttira the marriage of tulasi with the Shaligrama or sacred stone representing Vishnu is celebrated and all these things are offered to her and afterwards consumed by the people.

Garpagari

The Garpagari’s business is to avert hailstorms and other calamities form the crops, for which he receives a contribution from every cultivator in the form of grain. He also drives away locusts and other insects and cures rust. When locusts come, he catches two of them and takes them to Maruti’s shrine, placing them before the god. Then he says ‘Fly away and I shall make you an offering’ and with that the whole flight of locusts is believed to vanish. Similarly he offers a rust-laden blade or two to Maruti. Another method of curing an attack of rust is for a woman in her menstrual period to sprinkle ashes over the crop. It is perhaps held that the rust in the crop resembles the menstrual period in a woman, and that this action would cause it similarly to disappear. To avert hailstorms, the Garpagari places a stone on the ground and calls on Maruti to come and sit on it. He then draws a large circle round the stone to represent the sky and runs round the circle brandishing a sword and calling on the hail to disappear. He then supposes that the clouds will leave the sky. Occasionally, the Garpagari steals a sheaf of corn from the field and the owner dare not complain of him as he is afraid that the Garpagari will retaliate by calling down hail on the crop.

Bhumak

The Bhumak or Pujari is usually a Gond or a Dhimar. He receives the same dues from the cultivator as the Garpagari. His business is to perform the customary worship of the village deities at the principal festivals and to attend on and provide for the wants of Government officials who visit the villages. On a Sunday or Wednesday in May, the Bhumak performs the Bidri puja, at which offerings subscribed for by the cultivators are made to all village gods for the success of the crop. He offers some seed rice to gods, placing it on a mango-leaf and then takes it all round the village giving a few grains to each cultivator who mixes them with his seed-grain and thereafter commences sowing. Again, when the rice plants are a foot high the Bhumak goes to the field, cuts a handful of blades and distributes them to the cultivators after which they may begin transplantation. When the cultivator has finished transplantation, he proceeds to the field, accompanied by his farm servants and makes five little heaps of earth, placing on each heap five bundles of rice plants. He makes an offering to them of vermilion and boiled wheat and gram and then of throwing up the plants, towards the sun, cries, "Oh Sun, fill the fields so that the axles of the carts may break under their loads". Then he takes his farm servants home and gives them a good meal of wheat and gram chapatis with liquor. When the crop is ripe for cutting, the Bhumak goes to the field and cuts a sheaf and places one or two ears on the roof of each tenants house and after this, the harvest may begin. When the crop is on the threshing floor, he offers a cock or goat to the field-gods so that the quantity of grain may be increased. On this occasion, the cultivators invite their friends and go out an take their food in the fields. When the mahua comes into flower, the Bhumak picks some flowers and worships them, offering a coconut and vermilion and then fixes a flower on the house of each tenant. Until this has been done, nobody picks mahua.

Bhagat

 Many villagers have also a Bhagat or priest of Devi who is generally a Govari or a Dhimar. The qualification for being a Bhagat is to be possessed by the deity, in which case the gifts of divination and prophecy are held to accrue. When a Bhagat goes to a village, people gather round him and the makes prophecies, telling those whose relatives are sick whether they will recover, or whether they will obtain property which has been lost or stolen and so on. Bhagats make a little hut in front of the Devi’s shrine and place a flag on it and from here they give oracles to those who come to consult them. The method of divination by swinging a lamp is also much practised, the answer being in the affirmative of negative according to the direction in which the lamp swings. The lamp is suspended from a stick by a sling made of human hair or of somebody’s case off sacred thread. If a man wishes to make inquiry about some other person from the Bhagat, he takes a handful of rice and carries it round him and then takes and places it before the Bhagat, to represent the other persons. If a man is bitten by a snake, the Bhagat comes and draws water from a well, and muttering some charm, gives it to the patient to drink; he will then recover and the symptoms of snake poisoning will apper in the Bhagat for an hour or two . people bitten by snakes are taken to the villages of Nag ki parsori in Tirora tahsil or Bhendala in Bhandara tahsil as it is thought that nobody can die of snake bite within the limits of these villages. If a man is bitten by a scorpion, the Bhagat comes and asks how far up his leg or arm the poison has gone . He then make the mark of the double triangle on he spot pointed out and puts his finger lower down, asking if the poison his gone back to there and so on. Thus he eventually brings it down to the tip of the leg or arm and expels it from the body . If a person has jaundice, the Bhagat takes two needles and a pot of water and keeps holding them up before his eyes and dipping them in water, when it is supposed that the water gradually becomes yellow and at the same time, the colour leaves the sufferer’s hands repeating charms and when the lime is rubbed off, it is found to have become yellow, while the skin is clear. If a man has tooth-ache, the Bhagat takes a nail and a piece of wood and keeps on twisting the nail and pressing it into the wood, saying as he does so ‘Tera dant baith gaya’ or ‘ Has your tooth sat down’, the belief apparently being that when the tooth aches, it rises in the socket.