Devdutt Pattanaik: Descendants of Chitragupta

IllustrationDevdutt PattanaikAs an Odia child raised in Mumbai I am often asked about my roots My parents told me we belong to the karana caste No one in Mumbai had heard of this caste Later I learned that karana caste is what is known as karanam in Andhra Pradesh kayastha in the Gangetic plains and Bengal and as prabhu in Maharashtra This is a jati of people who served kings as scribes bureaucrats and accountants who went on to become influential courtiers and landowners While Pattanaik and Mohanty are common karana surnames in Odisha in the Gangetic plains there were surnames like Shrivastav and in Bengal there were surnames like Bose and GhoshThey served the Gupta kings of the Gangetic plains in the 5th century the Sena kings of Bengal in 12th century and the Gajapati kings of Odisha in 15th century They served the Sultans of Bengal and Mughals in Delhi and the Nawabs of Oudh They acquired Mughal habits in terms of clothing and diet Many ate meat but stayed away from beef A few even converted to Islam but were identified by the reverence they gave to the pen qalam and the inkpot dawaat Owing to the proximity to Muslim kings the British initially shunned them But by adopting Western education early they managed to establish powerful relations with the new rulers of the land At one point in Bengal nearly a third of millowners were from this communityThere are many mythological tales of how this jati originated In one story popular in the Gangetic plains the god of death Yama wanted a scribe to help him keep a record of peoples karma And so Brahma created Chitragupta he who knows the secrets of diagrams ie scripts who held in his hand a pen and inkpot From Chitragupta came the kayasthas In Maharashtra the story that became popular was that the Prabhus descended from the unborn children of Kshatriya women whose husbands had been killed by Parashurama who swore they would teach their children to use the pen instead of the swordThe British tried to map the hundreds of jatis of India to the Vedic fourfold varna system Where did this socially dominant group and its many subgroups come from In the 19th century rival communities tried to prove in the Calcutta High Court that they were actually shudras and not a mix of brahmins and kshatriyas as they claimed In Maharashtra the Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhus sought to prove they were kshatriyas with the additional right over Vedas making them quasiBrahmins who had helped Shivaji cement his Hindu empire Some said they were from the vaishya varna or the trading caste which made them good for negotiations Some said they were Niyogi brahmins or serviceproviding brahmins who are different from Yogi brahmins who act as ritual priestsIn the Buddhist Aganna sutta Buddha speaks of a similar division of brahmins and one wonders if he was referring to kayasthas while speaking of Ajjhayaka brahmins In most cases they were seen as kshatriyas in the sense of owners of fields kshetra not warriors though some still preferred being a higher rank a mix of brahmins and kshatriyas which annoyed both Brahmins and RajputsModern activists would prefer to call these communities savarna while the Indian state relegates them to general category This is a case in point that the classical fourfold Vedic varna division is inadequate to make sense of Indias complex jati system despite a cultural obsession to do soThe author writes and lectures on the relevance of mythology in modern times Reach him at devduttdevduttcomCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and also a complete guide on Mumbai from food to things to do and events across the city here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates