A Village Community in Central India
By L. S. Leshnik
Contents :
Introduction
1. Contemporary Cultural Setting
2. Social Organization
3. Occupations
a) Agricultural Castes
b) Artisan Castes
c) Menials
d) Others
4. Village Administration
5. Other Social Divisions
6. The Family
7. The Community
8. Land and Tenure
9. Village Animals
Conclusion
Introduction
The people with whom this study is concerned are cultivators of the
land, simple craftsmen, boatsmen and laborers. They live in three villages,
Navra Toli, Bothu and Sayta, strung along the south bank of the Narbada
River in the W. Nimar district of Madhya Pradesh State 1 . A few are persons
of moderate means (measured by local standards), most are poor. Their
language, called Nimari, is a dialect of Hindi, containing a strong admixture
of Rajasthani and Malwi as well as Marathi.
Since early days, the river Narbada has been the traditional boundary
between North and South India, and Nimar has been important due to its
1 This article represents a revised chapter of my unpublished Ph. D. dissertation,
Sociological Interpretation in Archaeology, at the University of Chicago, 1964. It is based on
field work done in the W. Nimar district in 1957-58 and in 1962-63. The second trip was
financed by grants from the U. S. Government, the University of Calcutta and the American
Institute of Indian Studies to all of which I am grateful.