G’BYE GOA: ASURAS/GAWDAS By Valmiki Faleiro Next to arrive in Goa were the Asuras. They marked a change. While earlier settlers, Mhars and Gonvllis, came from South India, Asuras pioneered an influx from central India. They came from Chota Nagpur. Originally belonging to North-East India, some believe Goa’s Asuras migrated via South India. Asuras subjugated the older settlers. They tilled land and, by trial and error, developed Goa’s marvels called ‘khazans’ (reclaimed mud flats that can also take in tidal water.) They planted trees, made utensils of clay and stone, and produced salt. They pioneered paddy cultivation, sown by villagers in rotation, thus developing the village commune, or ‘Ganvkari’ system of collective ownership of village lands. They founded the institution of ‘Bara-zan,’ under which a cluster of 12 villages formed one administrative unit. Subjugated by Kols centuries later, Asuras dissipated into diverse occupations. Some became potters (‘Kumbhars,’ reckoned to be Goa’s oldest craftsmen), some turned into blacksmiths (‘Kamars’), a few took to trading and became Vanis, some continued to produce salt (‘Mitt Gawde,’ a term that in later usage covered people from other castes, including Brahmins, who owned vast salt pans.) The rest toiled as land labourers (the ‘Gawdas.’) There is much confusion between this tribe and the Kols/Kunnbis who followed them. Both are of the same racial stock, worship the same gods and bear near identical customs, but are different social groups. Gawdas will abhor being called Kunnbis, and vice versa. Some believe the difference between Kunnbis and Gawdas lies in their racial origin – while Kunnbis are of pure South Indian stock, Gawdas had their bloodlines mixed with Indo-Aryans! This was echoed in German anthropologist, Gustav Oppert’s postulation that ‘Gawda’ came from ‘Gau’ or ‘Go,’ the cow, which is closely linked to Indo-Aryan traditions, as in ’Panchagauda’/‘Gaud’ Saraswat Brahmins. Gawdas, they say, were cowherds. The Gawda-Kunnbi confusion gets confounded among Goan Catholics. The Portuguese began that confusion. Alien to local language and lore, their own inability to pronounce much of the local idiom, further limited by the Roman alphabet versus the versatile Devanagri, they recorded native words the best way they could. Often, in the process, murdering the original word or its nuance. As in “Curumbim/Curumbina” – an umbrella word that made Gawdas synonymous with Kunnbis. Portuguese-speaking locals continued the ‘Curumbim’ tradition. Some believe that Kunnbi is the Hindu version of the Catholic Gawda. Others think reverse: that a Gawda, on conversion to Christianity, became a Kunnbi. In parts of Salcete, Catholic Gawdas and Kunnbis are bracketed as ‘Kunnbis’ while Hindu counterparts are called ‘Kokon- Kunnbis.’ The Gawda-Kunnbi mix-up was also aided by other similarities between them. Like the near identical ‘kapod’ (coarse sari) their womenfolk wore, the subtle difference in colour and style of draping indiscernible to non-tribal eyes. Like their common chief deity: Mallikarjun, adapted from the Dhangar god they captured, Moko/Makhajan. Festivals of both were common, but with slight differences in the manner of their celebration, like the song-dance ‘Fugddi.’ And ‘Zagor’ (which became ‘Khell’ in the Portuguese era.) Gawdas consider themselves ‘superior’ to Kunnbis. They exist in large numbers in Karnataka and Orissa. Their tribe name is often invoked pejoratively in Goa. It is honorific elsewhere. One of them, Deve Gowda, was Prime Minister of India. Indo-Aryan Goans equated the Gawda with a ‘reddo’ (a water buffalo, unintelligent.) Salcete Catholics compared Gawdas of one village, Loutulim, to a land-tilling section of caste Brahmins of another village, Curtorim. Even if the village nickname (‘redde’) belonged to a third, neighbouring village, Chandor! Like Mhars, Asuras believed in the existence of spirits, via their encompassing deity, ‘Rouduro’ (absorbed as ‘Rudra’ by Indo-Aryans into their own ‘Trimurti’ in the Vedas, changed to ‘Shiva’ in latter-day Upanishads.) This was Goa’s first community to offer human sacrifice – later toned down to hanging men from wooden stakes, with iron hooks pierced into their backs. (More on this in ‘Kols’ next Sunday.) Animal sacrifice was common, particularly of he-goats and roosters – like Kols, in different colours for different divinities! After all, both lived in and came to Goa from the same geo location in central India. (ENDS.) The Valmiki Faleiro weekly column at: http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=330 ====================================================================== The above article appeared in the May 10, 2009 edition of the Herald, Goa
