1. H. H. Risley, “Ethnographic Appendices,” in GOI, Census of India, 1901, vol. 1: India (Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1903), 55–57. Shudras and untouchables were listed under “Hindus”; the analagous terms for Muslims, according to Risley, were “ajlaf” and “arzal,” respectively, which together made up approximately 56 percent of the Muslim population—itself 15 percent of the total population. The numbers I have given in the text are for Hindus only; if we include ajlaf and arzal jatis, the actual size of the stigmatized population in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar would be much greater.

2. See James Hagen, “Indigenous Society, the Political Economy, and Colonial Education in Patna District: A History of Social Change from 1811 to 1951 in Gangetic North India” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1981), on the increasing levels of education and literacy among peasants in Bihar.

3. As a general rule, I employ the jati nomenclature prescribed in the reform literature itself; often, as is the case here, I simplify the jati names by dropping the term, “kshatriya.” Kurmi, Yadav, and Kushvaha should thus be read as Kurmi kshatriya, Yadav kshatriya, and Kushvaha kshatriya; together, they accounted for nearly half of the “shudra” population listed in the 1901 census.

4. This theme is touched upon in virtually every jati reform pamphlet of the period.

5. And mostly by way of sociology and anthropology: the organizational history of the Kurmi-kshatriya movement has been presented in K. K. Verma, Changing Role of Caste Associations (New Delhi: National Publishing House, 1979), esp. chapter 2, “The All-India Kurmi Sabha: Historical Perspective,” 13–35. On Yadav kshatriyas, see M. S. A. Rao, “Yadava Movement,” in his Social Movements and Social Transformation (New Delhi: Manohar, 1987), esp. part I (chapter 4), 123–48. More recently, reference to these movements appears in Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, 90–94.

6. The Kayasths were among the first to organize publicly for social and educational reform. See the work of Lucy Carroll, especially “Caste, Community and Caste(s) Association: A Note on the Organization of the Kayastha Conference and the Definition of a Kayastha Community,” Contributions to Asian Studies 10 (1977): 3–24; for an early consideration of Kayasth identity, see R. M. Shastri, “A Comprehensive Study into the Origins and Status of the Kayasthas,” Man in India 2 (1931): 116–59. See Karen Leonard, The Social History of an Indian Caste: The Kayasths of Hyderabad (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), on Kayasths in the Mughal and post-Mughal period.

7. See M. N. Srinivas, Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952). For a theorization of Sanskritization as a historical process, see Srinivas, “Mobility in the Caste System,” in Milton Singer and Bernard Cohn, eds., Structure and Change in Indian Society (Chicago: Aldine, 1968), 189–200.

8. There are, in addition, a host of other, primarily semantic, objections to the idea of Sanskritization. Some have questioned the appropriateness of a term associated with brahmanical elitism to describe what was, in many cases, a radically anti-Brahman phenomenon; see, for instance, Gail Omvedt, Cultural Revolt in a Colonial Society: The Non-Brahman Movement in Western India, 1873 to 1930 (Bombay: Scientific Socialist Education Trust, 1976). Others have objected to the epistemological misappropriation of the term Sanskrit; see J. F. Stahl, “Sanskrit and Sanskritization,” Journal of Asian Studies 22, no. 3 (May 1963): 261–75. As Stahl notes (p. 275), Srinivas himself was the first to encourage a move away from the oversimplified notion of Sankritization and toward a more culturally relevant terminology. On the inappropriate general usage of the term, see Lucy Carroll, “The Temperance Movement in India: Politics and Social Reform,” Modern Asian Studies 10, no. 3 (1976): 419.

9. E. A. Gait, “Report,” in GOI, Census of India, 1901, vol. 6: The Lower Provinces of Bengal and Their Feudatories, part 1 (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1902), 379.

10. Buchanan, Bihar and Patna, 1811–1812, 1:325. Buchanan’s remark implies that they thought of themselves as brahmans.

11. GOI, Census of India, 1901, vol. 6, part 1, 379.

12. Buchanan, Bihar and Patna, 1811–1812, 1:329. Notwithstanding his categorization, Buchanan noted (p. 329) that Kayasths in Bhagalpur District professed high status on the basis of their claim to descend from the holy dust that covered the body of Brahma.

13. Risley, “Ethnographic Appendices,” 56.

14. Risley, The Tribes and Castes of Bengal, 1:452.

15. Risley, “Ethnographic Appendices,” 55–56.

16. Risley’s Bihar hierarchy comprised “Brahmans, Other castes of twice-born rank, Clean Sudras, Inferior Sudras, Unclean castes, Scavengers and filth eaters”; “Ethnographic Appendices,” 56–57.

17. Buchanan, Bihar and Patna, 1811–1812, 1:326–27 (my emphasis).

18. Ibid., 337.

19. Buchanan, Shahabad, 1812–1813, 198–99. Buchanan (in Martin, Eastern India, 2:468–69) describes these Kurmis as saithawar and equates them directly with Ayodhya Kurmis of Bihar, noting that they constitute fully 52 percent of the Kurmis in Gorakhpur District. The exact meaning of the term saithawar is unclear: saita translates as auspicious moment, sai meaning prosperity; in Urdu sa’i describes one who is hard-working. The common Persian suffix, war, denotes having or possessing, suggesting that saithawar is more of a positive adjectival term describing one who is prosperous, diligent, or auspiciously born.

20. Buchanan in Martin, Eastern India, 2:468. The less-detailed observations of Henry Miers Elliot in the mid-nineteenth century resemble those of Buchanan three decades earlier. In his Memoirs of the History, Folklore, and Distribution of the Races of the North Western Provinces of India (London: Trubner, 1869), Elliot notes (1:157) that among the several Kurmi geocultural subidentities “in Oudh [a corruption of Awadh] . . . , the notorious Darshan Singh has ennobled his tribe by the designation of Raja.”

21. Richard Barnett, North India between Empires: Awadh, the Mughals, and the British, 1720–1801 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), 135–36. The more recent arguments of Dirk Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy, are of relevance here as well.

22. Buchanan in Martin, Eastern India, 2:468–69. Similarly, of the Kurmi population in Shahabad District, Buchanan, Shahabad, 1812–1813, 198–99, commented that “200 families perhaps can read and write, and 150 of them do not cultivate with their own hand, being descended of persons, who with the title of Chaudhuri managed the divisions into which the immense barony (Pergunah) of Chayanpur [in the southwest of the district] was divided.” Unfortunately, Buchanan failed to specify here the Kurmi subgroups from which this heightened concern with identity emerged. By the early twentieth century, kshatriya reformers would recognize and emphasize the dignity of labor and plowing, in contrast to this early rejection of shudra status.

23. VN, Patna District, Thana Barh, no. 200 (village Berhua). A general sense of the local political and economic influence of awadhia Kurmis in this region can be gleaned from village nos. 200–20.

24. Anand A. Yang, The Limited Raj: Agrarian Relations in Colonial India, Saran District, 1793–1920 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989), 47.

25. Buchanan, Bihar and Patna, 1811–1812, 1:310–11.

26. Buchanan, Purnea, 1809–1810, 196–97.

27. Elliot was secretary to the Sudder Board of Revenue, in what was then the North Western Provinces, and compiled a “supplemental glossary” designed for incorporation into a larger glossary of judicial and revenue terms then being assembled by Horace Hayman Wilson, entitled A Glossary of Judicial and Revenue Terms, and of Useful Words Occurring in Offical Documents Relating to the Administration of the Government of British India (London: Wm. H. Allen, 1855; reprint, Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1968).

28. Elliot, Memoirs of the History, Folklore, and Distribution of the Races of the North Western Provinces of India (reprinted under the unfortunate title, Encyclopaedia of Caste, Customs, Rites and Superstitions of the Races of Northern India [New Delhi: Sumit Publications, 1985]), 1:185.

29. Ibid., 187

30. M. N. Srinivas, Caste in Modern India and Other Essays (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1962), 66.

31. See Christopher Pinney, “Colonial Anthropology in the ‘Laboratory of Mankind,’” 252–63.

32. On Awadh, see Barnett, North India between Empires, 135–36; on the bestowal of kshatriya status by the Mughal emperor on “a spurious Rajput clan,” see Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy, chapter 4.

33. See Dirks, “Castes of Mind.”

34. Dilip Sinha Yadav, Ahir Itihas ki Jhalak [A Glimpse of the History of the Ahirs] (Lucknow, Allahabad, and Etawah: Krishna Press, 1914–15), 1. A sense of the overwhelming atmosphere of social and economic change is reflected in this phrase, yeh samsar parivartanshil hai, which was employed repeatedly by jati reformers throughout the early twentieth century.

35. See Verma, Changing Role of Caste Associations, 13–14; and Swami Abhayananda Saraswati, Kurmi Kshatriya Itihas [The History of the Kurmi Kshatriyas] (Banaras: Shivaramsinha, 1927), 114–17.

36. Government Order No. 251/VIII-186A-6, dated 21 March 1896, to the Inspector General of Police, Northwest Provinces and Oudh. Cited in Swami Abhayananda Saraswati, Kurmi Kshatriya Itihas, 117.

37. Devi Prasad Sinha Chaudhari, Kurmi Kshatriyatva Darpan [Reflections on Kurmi-Kshatriya Valor] (Lucknow: Kashi Ram Varma, 1907), cover and ii.

38. See M. S. A. Rao, “Yadava Movement,” part 2, 150.

39. See John Richards, “The Indian Empire and Peasant Production of Opium in the Nineteenth Century,” Modern Asian Studies 15 (February 1981): 59–82.

40. Swami Abhayananda Saraswati, Kurmi Kshatriya Itihas, 3–4. According to Saraswati, local meetings had been held in Danapur (the site of an important British garrison just west of Patna) in 1870, and Sonpur (the site of an important annual cattle festival just north of Patna) in 1890. Verma, Changing Role of Caste Associations, 13, mentions intermittent Uttar Pradesh meetings in Lucknow, Pilibhit, Barabanki, and Etawah.

41. See Verma, Changing Role of Caste Associations, 14–15 and 41. Verma cites Ganesh Swami Sadhu, Kurmi Bansabali [Kurmi Genealogy], but gives no bibliographic information.

42. Chaudhari, Kurmi Kshatriyatva Darpan, 7. The full bibliographic citation is Eustace J. Kitts, A Compendium of the Castes and Tribes Found in India: Compiled from the 1881 Census Reports for the Various Provinces, excluding Burmah and Native States of the Empire (Bombay: Education Society Press, 1885). Most authors of jati reform pamphlets relied in part on British surveys, gazetteers, and antiquarian compendia for historical and ethnographic detail in their efforts to revitalize their communities and, indeed, accorded those European texts nearly the same degree of authoritative respect as they would a textual source in Sanskrit.

43. In this context, Kurmi-kshatriyas claimed links with the Maratha Shivaji. See Rosalind O’Hanlon, Caste, Conflict, and Ideology: Mahatma Jotirao Phule and Low-Caste Protest in Nineteenth-Century Western India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), on one important proponent of social reform in Maharashtra. Cf. also D. F. Pocock, Kanbi and Patidar: A Study of the Patidar Community of Gujarat (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972). Notwithstanding the links with Kunbis claimed by Kurmi kshatriyas, the ideological content of Phule’s writing and that of kshatriya reform in north India was markedly different.

44. Chaudhari, Kurmi Kshatriyatva Darpan, 8–11. The author argues that the true name of Ramchandra’s Suryavamsh (solar lineage) was Kurmvamsh (Kurm lineage) and that the Kurmi descendants of Kush and Lav were in Gujarat described as Kushvamshi Kurmis and Lavvamshi Kurmis, respectively, whereas in Awadh they referred to themselves indiscriminately as Kurmvamshi Kurmis. Chaudhari further describes an ancient sage named Kurm whose descendants merged with the Chandravamsh (lunar lineage) of Krishna. According to Chaudhari Dipnarayan Sinha, Kurmi Kshatriya Nirnay [Rulings of Kurmi Kshatriyas] (Chunar: n.p., 1937–38), 81–83, this particular legend was also cited in support of Kurmi kshatriya identity by Radharcharan Goswami, who is described as the chairman of pandits (scholars) of Banaras and Vrindavan: “‘In the beginning a king named Prannath was born into the lineage of a sage named Kurmm. . . .’ From this 64th verse of the 33rd section of the Sahyadrikhand of the Skanda Purana, the Kurmvamsh is counted among kshatriyas.” Chaudhari, Kurmi Kshatriyatva Darpan, 11, also includes as Kurmi progenitors Raja Kuru and Raja Yadu, whose early descendants (the Kauravs and Yadavs, respectively) figure prominently in the Mahabharata; he details (11–12) several other miscellaneous lineages specific to western India.

45. Between 1810 and 1813 Buchanan made frequent reference to the genealogical ties to the “kshatriya tribe” of Krishna and Radha claimed by Goalas. Buchanan, Bhagalpur, 1810–1811, 234; Bihar and Patna, 1811–1812, 1:338; Shahabad, 1812–1813, 204; and Buchanan in Martin, Eastern India, 2:467–68.

46. See, for instance, Yadav, Ahir Itihas ki Jhalak; and Yadavesh (a quarterly newsletter of the Yadav kshatriya jati), first published from Banaras in 1935–36.

47. Yadav, Ahir Itihas ki Jhalak, 2–3, 16.

48. Kedarnath-ji Rohan, “Yadavon ka Itihas” [The History of the Yadavs], Yadavesh 1, no. 2 (1935–36): 3. It is possible that the Yadav focus on Krishna as a progenitor of a kshatriya lineage contributed to the martial reinvigoration of the Krishna myth, which, it has been argued, evolved into a nonpolitical tale of religious erotism-cum-pastoralism as a result of Muslim political dominance in north India; see David Haberman, Acting as a Way of Salvation: A Study of Raganuga Bhakti Sadhana (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 43–50; see also Lutgendorf, The Life of a Text, 310.

49. For example, Rohan, “Yadavan ka Itihas,” 3–4; and Yadav, Ahir Itihas ki Jhalak, 7–16.

50. As evidenced by the title of a tract by one Gangaprasad, Kushvaha Kshatriya, urf Koiri, Kachhi, Murao, Kachhvaha (Vivaran) [The Kushvaha Kshatris, also known as Koiri, Kachhi, Murao, and Kachhvaha (An Account)] (Banaras: Adarsh Press, 1921).

51. W. W. Hunter, Statistical Account of Bengal, vol. 12: Gaya and Shahabad Districts (1875–77; reprint, Delhi: D.K. Publishing House, 1973), 195; Risley, The Tribes and Castes of Bengal, 1:501. For the following sentence, see Risley, 1:503.

52. Buchanan, Purnea, 1809–1810, 228; Bhagalpur, 1810–1811, 253; Bihar and Patna, 1811–1812, 1:354; Shahabad, 1812–1813, 198; and Buchanan in Martin, Eastern India, 2:469.

53. Gangaprasad, Kushvaha Kshatriya, 2–3, 23; see also 21–24 for the portions cited below.

54. See the discussion regarding “memorials” received by E. A. Gait’s highly skeptical ethnography staff, GOI, Census of India, 1901, vol. 6, part 1, 378–84.

55. Nirgun Sinha (“Khali”), Varnashram Vichar-Dhara [Varnashram Ideology] (Maner, Patna: Nirgun Singh “Khali”, 1938–39), 74–75. The author cites (84–85) a speech by Dr. Munje, chairman of the Hindu Mahasabha, on the need for military training for kshatriyas, calling to mind Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s famous slogan, “Hinduize all politics and militarize Hindudom!”

56. Ibid., 71. For a brief synopsis of the life of Nirgun Sinha (“Khali”) see Shivpujan Sahay, Hindi Sahitya aur Bihar, 3:206–7.

57. Cited in Lalji Lal, Tantuvay Anveshan arthat Tanti Jati ka Itihas [A Study of the Tantuvay, or the History of the Tanti (weavers) Jati] (Sandalpur, Monghyr: Lalji Lal, 1929), 67; and in Nauvat Ray, Kahar Jati aur Varnavyavastha [The Kahar Jati and the Varna System] (Firozabad, Agra: Fakirchand, 1920), title page.

58. Ray, Kahar Jati aur Varnavyavastha, cover page.

59. “Contribution,” Kurmi Samachar 1, no. 2 (May 1895): 5–9, and esp. 7–8. This Lucknow publication only survived into its second volume (1896) before fading; see Verma, Changing Role of Caste Associations, 36. Vichar means “idea” and, since it is not generally employed as a name, suggests that the anonymous author of the dialogue designed that character as an ideologist for Kurmi reform.

60. Ray, Kahar Jati aur Varnavyavastha, 7.

61. For a classic description of this intensely popular festival, performed annually all over North India, see Norvin Hein, “The Ram Lila,” in Milton Singer, ed., Traditional India: Structure and Change (Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1959), 73–98; on vijay dashmi, 88.

62. Ray, Kahar Jati aur Varnavyavastha, 14–16. According to Hindu mythology, tretayug is the second (silver) and kaliyug the fourth and last (vice-ridden) age.

63. Karu Ram, Ramani Nirnay [Rules of the Ramanis] (Gaya: Magadha Shubhanker Press, 1906), 1. Risley, The Tribes and Castes of Bengal, 1:371, speculated that the designation Ramani Kahar is a geographic one referring to the headquarters of the jati in Ramanpur near Gaya. However, given the personalized nomenclature described ahead, it seems likely that Kahars began to link the fortuitous term Ramani to the identity of Ramchandra himself. Ramaraman means the beloved of Lakshmi, i.e., Vishnu; Ramaiya refers to Ramchandra, his avatar.

64. The former listed in Ram, Ramani Nirnay, 6–17, the latter listed on 2–5.

65. Kishan is colloquial for Krishna; “Chhote Ram Das” means either “little servant of Ram” or the “servant of the child Ram.”

66. Among those which conveyed the greatest meaning were Ayodhya Ram, Ramsharan Ram (Ramsharan meaning he who takes refuge in Ram), Sahai Ram (Ram’s helper), Keval Ram (only Ram), Lachhman Ram (Lachhman, colloquial for Lakshman, Ram’s devoted younger brother), Tulsi Ram (tulsi meaning basil, charged with important Vaishnava ritual connotations), Ganga Bishan Ram (Bishan, colloquial for Vishnu), and Narayan Ram (Narayan meaning Vishnu).

67. Raghunandan Prasad Sinha Varmma, Kanyakubja Kshatriyotpatti Bhushan [The Noble Origins of the Kanyakubja Kshatriyas] (Gaya: R. P. S. Varmma, 1924), 56–57. The term kanyakubj implies a geocultural tie to Kannauj, a town on the Ganga east of Etawah in western Uttar Pradesh.

68. Baba Ramchandra, cited in Pandey, “Peasant Revolt and Indian Nationalism,” 169. Although Siddiqi, Agrarian Unrest, 112 n. 29, cautions us not to make too much of the salutation “Sitaram,” his observation that “even Muslim peasants used this greeting in certain parts of Oudh, especially southern Oudh where the legend of Ram and Sita is widely prevalent,” speaks volumes for the extent to which Vaishnava rhetoric permeated the region.

69. Nathuni Prasad Yadav, Jatiya Sandesh (Darbhanga: Swami Nathu Bhagat Yadav, 1921).

70. The publication in question, Ahir Itihas ki Jhalak, was authored by Dilipsinha Yadav and published simultaneously in Lucknow, Allahabad, and Etawah in 1915.

71. Jamuna Prashad Yadav, Ahiroddhar, arthat Ahir Kul Sudhar [Ahiroddhar, or the Reform of the Ahir Line] (Jhansi: Jamuna Prashad Yadav Ahir, 1927), 38–39.

72. Janki Ballabh Das, Devivali Pakhand [The Heresy of Sacrifice to the Goddess] (Prayag: J. B. Das, 1937), see esp. 19–22, 38–39.

73. Gangaprasad, Kushvaha Kshatriya, 27.

74. Baijnath Prasad Yadav, Ahir-Jati ki Niyamavali [A List of the Rules of the Ahir Jati] (Varanasi: B. P. Yadav, 1928), 4–40.

75. Sinha, Kurmi Kshatriya Nirnay, 77–79.

76. Ibid., 79–83. Unfortunately, I have been able to turn up little more than this brief mention of this event.

77. Ibid., 80.

78. See van der Veer, Gods on Earth, 275–76, who lists thirty-seven such caste temples, mostly belonging to jatis formerly regarded as shudra and untouchable in the nineteenth century.

79. “Shrimate Ramanujaya namah.” Varmma, Kanyakubja Kshatriyotpatti Bhushan, cover and i.

80. Ibid., 2.

81. Ibid., ii.

82. Ibid., 47. Though Varmma describes in detail the miraculous life of the child Krishna, he emphasizes that Krishna’s true identity as Vishnu is more important as a religious concept (48–49). Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, is Vishnu’s consort.

83. The application of the tilak on the forehead in a vertical parabola is one of the most visible symbols of being Vaishnava. By contrast, Shaivas employ a marking of three horizontal lines.

84. Varmma, Kanyakubja Kshatriyotpatti Bhushan, 57.

85. Ibid., 58–60.

86. Swami Dharnidharacharya, Shri Awadhvamshi Kshatriya Martandah, xvii-xviii, 1–140. See Appendix 2 for a discussion of Dharnidharacharya’s tract.

87. The brief life narrative that follows is based on ibid., 140–61.

88. See, e.g., ibid., 149–50, citing the Garg Samhita (Ashvamedh Khand, section 61, verses 24–25).

89. Ibid., 149.

90. Again Dharnidharacharya cites the Garg Samhita (Ashvamedha Khand, section 61, verse 26).

91. Venkateshwar is an epithet of Vishnu; VibhishanVibhishan—a particularly apt title for a Ramanuji setting—is a younger brother of Ravana (and therefore a southerner) in the epic Ramayana who emerges as one of the more remarkable devotees of Ramchandra. This information is taken from an address given on the inside cover page of Dharnidharacharya, Shri Awadhvamshi Kshatriya Martandah.

92. Ibid., vi.

93. All this emerges in a letter from one Pandit Shri Dharmanath Sharma of Chapra, ibid., xiii.

94. The reverse side of the title page of Shri Awadhvamshiya Kshatriya Martandah gives the addresses of these institutions, in addition to the Awadhavamshiya Kshatriya Sabha office in Chapra.

95. Nevertheless, the complexity of sampraday boundaries makes any strict correlation between religious identity and social ideology difficult in the extreme. Peter van der Veer, Gods on Earth, 106, observed, for example, that while brahman as well as shudra Ramanandis chose to align themselves with the Ramanuji view, many brahman monks, “who might secretly have preferred to be Ramanuji, did not disown their Ramanandi affiliation, since that would have incurred considerable disadvantages in North India, where only the Ramanandis are strong.”

96. See Ghurye, Indian Sadhus, 153–65; Growse, Mathura: A District Memoir, 184–240. The Nimbaraki sampraday seems to have undergone ideological transformations not unlike those experienced by Ramanandis in the early twentieth century and that I have described in the previous chapter; see Ghurye, Indian Sadhus, 153–55. As with Ramanand, there has been substantial disagreement in this century regarding the identity and dates of Nimbark (he is usually placed in the twelfth century). Writing in the 1870s, F. S. Growse, Mathura, 194, claimed that Nimbarkis had “no special literature of their own, either in Sanskrit or Hindi.” By contrast, eighty years later Ghurye, Indian Sadhus, 153–54, would report that “Nimbarka was a great writer but he always wrote in Sanskrit. It was Sri Bhatta, 31st in the apostolic succession, who wrote in Hindi,” and “Harivyasadeva, 32nd in the list, turned his entire attention to promulgating the doctrines and observances of this sect into Hindi.” At the very least, the contrast between Growse’s and Ghurye’s observations suggests some major Nimbarki reinterpretations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Perhaps more importantly, in this century there have emerged elements within the sampraday that encourage greater religious liberalism with respect to untouchables; see Ghurye, Indian Sadhus, 155.

97. Indeed, an analogous situation is evident as early as 1810–13 in the surveys of Francis Buchanan, who noted that despite their genealogical affinity for Radha and Krishna, Goalas in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh looked for the most part to the demographically powerful Dasnami order for religious guidance. See Buchanan, Bhagalpur, 1810–1811, 234; Bihar and Patna, 1811–1812, 1:337–38; Shahabad, 1812–1813, 204; and Martin, Eastern India, 2:467–68. It is significant that the Shaiva orientation of their Dasnami gurus did not normally lead Goalas to abandon their Krishna-centered identity. Only on one occasion did Buchanan note otherwise, in Purnea district (Purnea, 1809–1810, 226–27) where Goalas had rejected “the worship of that deified hero [Krishna], and have adopted as guides the Dasnami Sannyasis, who teach them the worship of Sib [Shiva].”

98. Buchanan, Bihar and Patna, 1811–1812, 1:374: “The Ramanandis indeed will instruct their followers in the worship of any god of the side of Vishnu, such as Rama, Krishna, Nrisingha, and Bamana among the Avatars, or Narayan, and Vishnu among his heavenly forms. Although all these are considered as various forms of the same god, yet the mode of worshipping each is different; Vasudeva is considered as the same with Krishna. No separate worship is by this sect offered to the spouses of these gods; but their worship is always conjoined with that of the male, so that Krishna is never worshipped without Radha, nor Rama without Sita.”

99. Buchanan, “An Account of the Northern Part of the District of Gorakhpur, 1813.” The entire quote is from the topography and antiquities of Khamariya thana: “6/16 of the Hindus worship Rama, and 3/16 prefer Krishna; of these 4/16 are the followers of the Brahmans, and 5/16 of the Ramanandis, who even at Ayodhya do not scruple to deliver the form of prayer, by which Krishna is addressed.”

100. Jagannath Das, according to Buchanan “the only mahant in these districts who has studied grammar, or can be called a man of learning,” maintained “that the proper study of the Mahantas ought to be the Ramayan of Valmiki, the Sri Bhagawat [Purana], and the Bhagawat Gita” (Bihar and Patna, 1811–1812, 1:375).

101. Van der Veer, Gods on Earth, 276; Freitag, “Introduction” to part 1: “Performance and Patronage,” in Freitag, ed., Culture and Power in Banaras, 26.

102. See Kenneth W. Jones, Arya Dharm: Hindu Consciousness in Nineteenth-Century Punjab (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976), 204. Swami Dayanand Saraswati (1824–83), a Gujarati brahman, established the Arya Samaj at Bombay in 1875 and at Lahore (in the Punjab) in 1877.

103. Gangaprasad, Kushvaha Kshatriya, 3 (italics are added). Similar accounts can be found in Saraswati, Kurmi Kshatriya Itihas, 3–11, and 23; Ray, Kahar Jati aur Varnavyavastha, 7–13; J. P. Chaudhari, Kushvaha Kshatriya—(Kuiri, Kachhi, Murao, Kachhvaha) Parichay [An Introduction to Kushvaha Kshatriyas—(Koiri, Kacchi, Murav, Kachhvaha] (Banaras: Chaudhari and Sons, 1926), 1–5; Varmma, Kanyakubja Kshatriyotpatti Bhushan, 1–7; and Dilipsinha Yadav, Ahir Itihas ki Jhalak, 1–2.

104. Saraswati, Kurmi Kshatriya Itihas, 23, 27–28. Saraswati devotes 17–23 to an etymological/grammatical exposition of the word “Kurmi” and concludes that it is equivalent to bhupati, or noble; upon further examination he identifies the term kurmah with Indra and kurm with Brahma. (A similar argument is put forth by Chaudhari Dipnarayan Sinha, Kurmi Kshatriya Nirnay, 4–6.) Asking why members of the reputed Indra jati would begin referring to themselves with the word “Kurmi,” Saraswati notes (28) that “the scholars of this jati thought long and hard and decided to begin to refer to themselves by this Vedic term, a term denoting a kshatriya varna.”

105. For instance, Gangaprasad, Kushvaha Kshatriya, 3–4, 7.

106. See Jones, Arya Dharm, 202–5.

107. J. Chaudhari, author of Kushvaha Kshatriya—(Kuiri, Kachhi, Murav, Kachhvaha) Parichay. Dayanand Anglo-Vedic schools sprang up throughout much of north India in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a result of the efforts of the politically oriented Arya Samaji of the Punjab, Lala Lajpat Rai. The schools combined Western learning with the study of Sanskrit and the Vedas.

108. Rao, “Yadava Movement,” part 1, 134. Rao interprets the widespread practice of investiture with the sacred thread, however, as evidence that the Arya Samaj had gained significant inroads among Yadav kshatriyas in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in the 1910s and 1920s. I argue that such an assessment may be premature.

109. Yadav, Ahir Itihas ki Jhalak, 15.

110. Varmma, Kanyakubja Kshatriyotpatti Bhushan, 20–21.

111. See Lutgendorf’s discussion of the “eternal religion” in The Life of a Text, 360–70. Jwalaprasad Mishra, incidentally, also directed his attentions to questions of jati and varna status. See his Jatibhaskar [Illuminations on Jati] (Bombay: Khemraj Shri Krishnadas, 1917), a conservative work which comprises extracts from Sankrit texts on the strict divisions and social duties of Hindu society.

112. Lutgendorf, The Life of a Text, 367.

113. Chaudhari, Kurmi Kshatriyatva Darpan, 17.

114. Saraswati, Kurmi Kshatriya Itihas, 110.

115. J. P. Chaudhari, Kushvaha Kshatriya Parichay, 44, 45.

116. Sinha, Kurmi Kshatriya Nirnay, 80.

117. Varmma, Kanyakubj Kshatriyotpatti Bhushan, 16–173, 31.

118. Lal, Tantuvay Anveshan arthat Tanti Jati ka Itihas, 39–40.

119. Ray, Kahar Jati aur Varnavyavastha, 17.

120. Ibid., 17–18. Ray made no comment whatsoever regarding the question of palanquin-bearing, the occupation often attributed to Kahars.

121. Ibid., 1–3.

122. Hagen, “Indigenous Society,” 93. Hagen’s argument relies on Buchanan’s description of the political economy of Bihar in the early nineteenth century.

123. Nevill, Ballia: A Gazetteer, vol. 30 of the District Gazetteers of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh (Allahabad: Government Press, 1907), 106.

124. See the historiographical discussion in K. N. Panikkar, “Historical Overview,” in Sarvepalli Gopal, ed., Anatomy of a Confrontation: The Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhumi Issue (New Delhi: Viking, 1991), esp. 28–33; and Pandey, The Construction of Communalism.