Buksa

Clans and Kinship

Elliot, quoted by Crooke, describes the Buksas as having fifteen gotras: a Buksa may not marry within his own gotra but may choose any other. The census of 1891 returned the septs Jadubansi, Panwar, Partuja, Rajbansi and Tunwar. Among the Mahra Buksas of the Dehradun valley a man may not marry within his own gotra or into his maternal uncle's family for two generations. A tribal council heard cases of divorce and of breaches of custom. The Buksas' genealogists (Bhats) and Kanaujiya Brahman family priests were said to descend from followers of Udayjit and lived at Banbasa (Elliot).

The fifteen gotras in Elliot's list as quoted by Crooke (1896), in his order, followed by the five septs returned at the census of 1891. Elliot ranked the gotras and told stories of the origin of three of them; neither is repeated here. Spellings are from a scanned copy.

In the Official Lists

• Scheduled Tribe

  Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh

  Listed as: Buksa

The Buksa are one of the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs), listed for Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Checked against the Census 2011 tables and Wikipedia's compilation of the order.

Checked on 2026-11-07 against the sources below. The lists are amended from time to time and can differ by district; for a certificate, the current order or the state's list is what counts.

Name and Origin

Some Buksas told nineteenth-century observers that they were Panwar Rajputs whose chief Udayjit, driven from Dharanagar after a quarrel with his brother, settled at Banbasa on the Sarda and was invited into Kumaon after helping its raja (Elliot, quoted by Crooke); others said they came from the Deccan or from Delhi. The Mahra Buksas of the Dehradun valley said they came there at the invitation of Raja Sukh Das Sah of Tehri, about five generations before Crooke wrote.

History

Crooke (1896) found the Buksas in three sections: the Eastern Buksas between the Ramganga and the Sarda, where the Tharu country begins; the Western Buksas of the Patli Dun and Bijnor; and a group between the Ganges and the Yamuna. The census of 1891 returned 1,907 Bhoksas and Mahras in the districts it listed. They farmed the Tarai, some hunted and fished, and some washed gold from the sands of the Sona Nadi; their villages in Bijnor were built along one wide, straight street kept very clean (Stewart, quoted by Crooke).

Faith and Worship

Crooke records that the Mahra Buksas employed Gaur Brahmans as priests at marriages and funerals, as did some of the Eastern Buksas. The Eastern Buksas paid special devotion to Bhawani or Devi and honoured two local saints, Sarwar Lakhi (Sakhi Sarwar) and Kalu Sayyid; some were Sikhs, and one of the Tarai parganas is named Nanakmatha after Guru Nanak. They had medicine men of their own.

Customs

Among the Mahra Buksas the sixth day after a birth is kept for Bihai, who makes children laugh or cry in their sleep, and the child's head is shaved after a month. At a wedding a booth (manro) is put up in the courtyard and the couple walk five times round the sacred fire. The dead are cremated, at the Ganges where possible; on each of the thirteen days of mourning a cake is given to a cow, and every year in Kuar the relatives of married daughters are feasted for the dead (Crooke).