Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 2.djvu/125

 BHAT. (91)

HAT, also Bharat and Bhattu, is the Hindoo equivalent for bard, herald, genealogist, and chronicler. In former days he was the son of a Cshatriya father and Vaisya mother; but the modern Bhat is sometimes said to have been born of a Brahmin widow by a Cshatriya father. He is to be found all over India, and fulfils the same office as his prototype, but with inferior dignity, although in Western India, where he is identified with the Charun, his personal security is held sufficient for the payment of a debt or the fulfilment of an engagement, its violation being followed by the voluntary death, either of the Bhat himself or of some member of his family, the retribution of which falls on the defaulter. In some parts of India Bhats are distinguished as Birru-bhat and Jaga-bhat; the former being hired on special occasions to recite the traditions and sing the praises of the family; while the latter are family chroniclers by hereditary descent, and visit the members periodically to take note of all occurrences regarding them.

The Bhats are respected for their reputed sanctity, but equally dreaded for their rapacity. It is indeed noteworthy that when measures were adopted to abolish female infanticide among the Rajpoots of the North-Western Provinces—one of the main inducements to the crime being the enormous expense of weddings—the issue of an order to the police to prevent Bhats forcing themselves on wedding parties and extorting money, under threat of a curse, from the master of the wedding feast, was one of the first steps taken.

In some parts of India the Bhats form village communities. Some have become converts to Islam, but this is rare. The village Bhat is a person of wholly inferior class.

Among all classes and tribes in which the crime of dacoity is followed as an hereditary profession, there is none whose proceedings are characterised by such boldness and skill as the Bhats. The Bhat dacoits claim to be of the same descent as the Bard Bhats, and imitate their calling, but in an inferior degree of perfection, and "Improvisatori" are seldom found among them, though they are competent reciters. Among this class, however, recitation is but a cloak for their hereditary profession; and it is to that their whole energies and intelligence used to be devoted until the operations against them of the Department of Thuggee and Dacoity,