Ascetic and Mendicant orders: Punjab, 1883
This article is an extract from PANJAB CASTES SIR DENZIL CHARLES JELF IBBETSON, K.C. S.I. Being a reprint of the chapter on Lahore: Printed by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab, 1916. Indpaedia is an archive. It neither agrees nor disagrees |
The Ascetic and Mendicant orders
I now turn to the consideration of that section of the community which is commonly included under the generic term of Faqir. I must first point out that our figures, though representing with fair accuracy the total numbers of this class, are wholly imperfect so far as the details are concerned. The divisional offices included the various orders under the general term, but that was easily remedied. I have had them picked out again, and have given the numbers to be added on this account to the figures of Table VIIIA in each case in the following paragraphs. But the real reason of the failure of our figures to show details is, that the great mass of these faqirs entered the name of their order not under tribe but under sect ; and as we were forbidden to tabulate any sects except Shiah, Sunni, Wahabi, and Farazi, the details were not worked out at all.
If I had known how largely this had been the case, I should not have tabulated separately even the few orders that are shown in Table VIIIA, as the figures are utterly misleading ; and for this reason I do not give details of Faqirs in my Abstract on The figures for Faqirs comprehend at least three if not four very different classes of people. First come the religious orders pure and simple. Many of these are of the highest respectability ; the members are generally collected in monasteries or shrines where they live quiet peaceful lives, keeping open house to travellers, training their neophytes and exercising a wholesome influence upon the people of the neighbourhood. Such are many at least of the Bairagis and Gosains. Some of the orders do not keep up regular monasteries, but travel about begging and visiting their disciples ; though even here they generally have permanent head quarters in some village, or at some shrine or temple where one of their order officiates. So too the monasterial orders travel about among their disciples and collect the offerings upon which they partly subsist. There is an immense number of these men whose influence is almost wholly for good. Some few of the orders are professedly celibate, though even among them the mle is seldom strictly observed ; but most of the Hindu orders are divided into the Sanyogi and Viyogi sections of which the latter only takes vows of celibacy, while among the Musalman orders celibacy is seldom even professed. Such however as live in monasteries are generally if not allways celibate.
The professed ascetics are called Sadhs if Hindu and Pirs if Musalman. The Hindus at any rate have their neophytes who are undergoing probation before admission into the order, and these men are called Chela. But besides these both Hindu and Musalman ascetics have their disciples, known respectively as Scwak and Mnrtd, and these latter belong to the order as much as do their spiritual guides ; that is to say a Kayath clerk may be a Bairagi or Pathan soldier a Chishti, if they have committed their spiritual direction respectively to a Bairagi and Chishti guru and pir. Now it is not probable that such men have returned the name of the order as their caste, though this may occasionally have happened ; and it is certain that none of them have returned themselves as Faqir.
Thus so far the orders are made up of men who have voluntarily entered them, renouncing caste and worldly pursuits. But these men marry and have bindi or carnal children ; while their nadi or spiritual children, the chela s just mentioned, may after admission to the order return to their homes. And it often happens that the descendants whether carnal or spiritual of a Bairagi, for instance, will grow into a separate caste known by the name of Bairagi, but having no connection whatever save by origin with the order of that name. Such men would return their caste as Bairagi, and will have been included under Faqir. How far this custom is general I cannot say ; but we have just discussed one instance of it in the case of the Chisti of Montgomery, and I know of villages held by Bairagis under precisely similar circumstances in Karnal.
I have said that many of the members of these orders are pious, respectable men whose influence is wholly for good. But this is far from being the case with all the orders. Many of them are notoriously pro fligate debauchers, who wander about the country seducing women, extorting alms by the threat of curses, and relying on their saintly character for protection. Still even these men are members of an order which they have deliberately entered, and have some right to the title which they bear. But a very large portion of the class who are included under the name Faqir are ignorant men of low caste, without any acquaintance with even the general outhnes of the religion they profess, still less with the special tenets of any particular sect, who borrow the garb of the regular orders and wander about the country living on the alms of the credulous, often hardly knowing the names of the orders to which the external signs they wear would show them to belong. Such men are mere beggars, not ascetics ; and though their numbers are unfortunately large, we have no means of separating them. Besides the occupations described above, the Faqir class generally have in their hands the custody of petty shrines, the menial service of village temples and mosques, the guardianship of cemeteries, and similar semi-religious offices. For these services they often receive small grants of land from the village, by cultivating which they supplement the alms and offerings they receive.
The subject of the religious orders of the Hindus is one of the greatest complexity ; the cross divisions between and the different meanings of such words as Jogi, Sanyasi, and Sadh are endless ; and no one who was not deeply versed in the sectarian system of Hinduism could hope to deal with the subject fully. I shall therefore not attempt to do more than jot down a few rough notes on some of the most important orders. The student will find a mass of information on the subject in Wilson's Sects the Hindus s while Trumpp in his introduction to his Adi Granth, and Cunningham in an Appendix to his History of the Sikhs give many particulars about the Sikh sects and orders.
