Birla Khanp

What “Khanp” means for the Maheshwari

Maheshwari families call their clan name the khanp (also written khaanp or khap). Tradition counts 72 original khanps, and community lists now run to 80 or more. Each khanp is paired with a gotra name, and sub-khanps (also called nakh) sit under it. Khanps are exogamous.

Name and Origin

Nothing I could open explains where the name Birla comes from, and this page is about the clan, not the name. The Maheshwari origin account is told by the community itself in several versions. In the version on themaheshwari.com a king, Raja Sujat Sen of Khandala near Jaipur, has a son who, with 72 Kshatriya companions, is cursed and turned to stone by sages whose sacrifice they disturbed. Shiva (Mahesh) frees them on their wives' prayer, on condition that they give up fighting for trade. Those 72 are held to be the ancestors of the 72 original gotras. Another community page names the king Khadaksen and his son Sujan Kuvar and calls the 72 couples the first 72 khanps. The community pages place this about 4,000 years before the Vikram era. Wikipedia's article on the Maheshwari gives a different traditional date, the 8th century, and records a variant myth taken down in 1923 by Sivkaran Ramratan Darak. These are traditions. None of these pages says which of the 72 Birla was.

Historical Journey

Community directories place Birla among the khanps. The MMNA table, compiled from various sources by P. J. Rathi, numbers Birla 19 of 82 khanps and gives the gotra name Balaans; themaheshwari.com says it is one of the 72 khanps and gives Balans; a third list numbers it 17. The counts and the order differ from list to list, and no source found gives a count agreed by all. The best documented Birla family is the business family of Pilani. Wikipedia's article on the family, drawing on a 1940 Maheshwari community history and on K. K. Birla's memoir, records Shiv Narayan Birla (1840 to 1909) as the first to leave Pilani, for Bombay in 1863 (other accounts say 1857), where he and his adopted son Baldeo Das Birla traded, among other things, in opium with China. Baldeo Das founded firms at Bombay and Calcutta. His sons Jugal Kishore, Rameshwar Das, Ghanshyam Das and Braj Mohan carried on the business, and Ghanshyam Das Birla (1894 to 1983), born at Pilani, became the best known. The article describes the family as Maheshwari. Most Maheshwari families named Birla have no recorded tie to this one.

Migration and Diaspora

Marwari trading families left Shekhawati for Bombay and Calcutta in the 19th century. The Birla business family is recorded at Bombay from the 1860s and at Calcutta from 1887 or 1897, depending on the account. The ancestral home at Pilani is still kept by the family, per Wikipedia.

How the Khanp Is Kept

The khanp is exogamous. Mahesh Navami, on Jyeshtha Shukla Navami, is kept by Maheshwari families as the day of the community's origin. For the Birla khanp, themaheshwari.com names Jeen Mata (written there as Shri Jheen Mata Ji), whose temple is at Jeen Dham in Sikar district, as the kuldevi. The MMNA table gives a different name, Sanchaay, for the same khanp. The two lists do not agree and both are compiled by volunteers, so a family should check with its own elders and its ancestral records. MMNA's table lists the sub-khanps Dhuraya, Gathya, Dhubarya, Gurarya, Gauraya and Badaliya under Birla.

Presence Across Regions

Notable Personalities

Stories and Legends