TENSING RODRIGUES
Conventionally, Bramhans in India are categorised into two broad groups: those who originally settled to the north of the Vindhya Mountains, who are called Pancha Gauda Bramhans; and those who originally settled to the south of the Vindhya Mountains, who are called Pancha Dravida Bramhans. (The term Gauda is an ancient name for the region of Bengal; its relevance in this classification, however, is still not clear; Dravida clearly denotes connection with the south.)
The Vindhya Mountains do mark a dividing line; when the bramhans entered in the Indian peninsula, through the north western corner of the Indo-Gangetic plain and began moving eastwards, there were two barriers for their movement; the Vindhya Mountains and the Narmada River barring them from the south; and on the east – by a self-imposed ‘laksman rekha’, the River Sadanir, at the confluence of rivers Ganga and Yamuna at Prayag. [Bronkhorst, 2007: ‘Greater Magadha – Studies in the Culture of Early India’].
According to the sacred texts, the self-imposed constraint on the Aryavart expansion to the east arose not out of a physical barrier, but a ritual requirement: that the land to the east of River Sadanir was not yet purified by ‘agni’, the fire sacrifice; thus, it was ‘unclean’. This could be only a figurative way of admitting a bitter truth: that the bramhan were kept away by the resistance from the ksatriya or were scared of being corrupted by the ksatriya culture.
This becomes clear in the ‘Satapatha Brahmana’ (1.4.1.14-17) which gives an allegorical narration of the passage of the bramhan across the River Sadanir: “Mathava, the Videgha, was at that time on the [river] Sarasvati. He [Agni] thence went burning along this earth towards the east; and Gotama Rahugana and the Videgha Mathava followed after him as he was burning along. He burnt over [dried up] all these rivers. Now that [river], which is called Sadanira, flows from the northern [Himalaya] mountain: that he did not burn over. That one the Brahmans did not cross over in former times, thinking, ‘it has not been burnt over by Agni Vaisvanara’.” [Eggeling, 1882: ‘Satapatha-Brahmana’, volume 1, 105)
‘Satapath-Brahmana’ is dated around 700 B.C. The river was indeed a small physical barrier: ‘Satapath-Brahmana’ categorically states that ‘Agni dried up all these rivers, but Sadanir he did not dry.’ The name Sadanir itself means ‘perennially with water’. What seems to follow from this is that the other rivers constraining the eastwards movement of bramhan had diminished by this time, but Sadanir had not; and eventually that too
became fordable.
The Gauda and Dravida categories of Brahmans are further divided into five sub-categories each. The five types of Gauda Brahmans are Saraswat, Kanyakubja, Gauda, Maithili, and Utkala. Together they are referred to as Pancha-Gaudas, which means the five Gaudas. Similarly, Gurjara, Maharashtra, Andhra, Karnataka, and Dravida constitute the Pancha-Dravidas. By and large the Konkani-speaking Bramhan castes, identified themselves as being part of the Gauda category of Bramhans. Marathi-speaking Bramhans identified themselves with the Dravida category. But this norm should be applied after consideration of other factors.
Last time we looked into the age-old categorisation of bramhans in India into two broad groups; let us now go into the finer nuances of this classification. According to professor Madhav M. Deshpande this classification as found in the Sahyadrikhand section of the Skandapuran is approximately a thousand years old. C.V. Vaidya [Vaidya, 1920: Madhyayugin Bharat] refers to the Buland Shahar Gazetteer in connection with the term ‘gauda’. Evidently, this Gazetteer refers to a copper-plate, found in the village of Indur near Anoop Shahar, dated 465 CE which contains a mention of a Gauda brahmin. This would take the earliest use of the term ‘gauda’ referring to a brahmin to the fifth century CE.
However, Vaidya himself, disagrees with this conclusion and points out that the copper-plate contains the expression gaura-anvaya-sambhuta ‘born in the gaura family’, which is not in the context of the panca gauda classification. Vaidya comments: “The panca-gauda/dravida classification of the brahmins does not appear in inscriptions until 1,200 CE. It is no wonder that it does not appear even in the Skandapurana per se, which we have dated to the ninth century CE. It seems that this distinction developed after the 12th century. Most likely, this classification was intended to emphasise that the Gauda brahmins are not vegetarians, while the Dravida brahmins are.”
Expressing a similar opinion, Raychaudhuri (1953: 633) says: “The use of the term Panca Gauda as the designation of a territory embracing Northern India as far as Kanauj and the river Sarasvati is distinctly late and dates only from the 12th century CE. The term is possibly reminiscent of the Gauda Empire of Dharmapala and Devapala, and cannot be equated with the ancient realm of the Gaudas in the early centuries of the Christian era.” [Raychaudhuri, 1953: ‘Political History Of Ancient India, From The Accession Of Parikshit To The Extinction Of The Gupta Dynasty’]
More recent research on the inscriptional evidence provides us with a clearer understanding. While one does not know the exact delimitation of the term ‘gauda’, the Prince of Wales Museum Plates of Govindaraja, issued in Saka 732 (= 810 CE), refer to a Brahmin Bhobika who had migrated from the Gauda country to Baroda.
More than a century later, a Panca-Gaudiya-Mahaparisad of Samyana or Thane is mentioned in a grant of Rastrakuta Indra III in Saka 848 (= 926–927 CE). Referring to these two instances, Swati Datta (1989: 100) remarks: “Gauda in those days comprised a geographical region covering a larger section of Northern India and the Brahmanas of the two charters mentioned above, may have migrated from anywhere within its limits.” [Datta, 1989: ‘Migrant Brahmanas in Northern India: Their Settlement and General Impact’, c. AD 475–1030]
The expression panca-gaudiya-mahaparisad, referring to an assembly of Brahmins, is very significant, in that it points to the possible emergence of the panca-gauda/dravida classification as early as the 10th century CE, and it also points to the fact of migrations of Gauda Brahmins to the south, where they retained their distinct
Northern identity.
The migration of the northern brahmins to southern regions is known from many inscriptional sources, but these are the earliest inscriptional references using the term panca-gauda. [Deshpande, 2010: ‘Panca Gauda And Panca Dravida: Contested Borders Of A Traditional Classification’, in ‘Studia Orientalia’, 108, 29–58]
