Jaunsari

Clans and Kinship

Majumdar (1962) found that no gotra or clan exists among any of the castes of Jaunsar-Bawar. In its place the aal, a lineage of families descended from a common forefather who was an early settler of the village, regulates marriage as an exogamous unit. It is divided into bhera, sub-lineages traced to the division of an earlier family, and the aals of a village or of neighbouring villages may be joined by a fictive brotherhood, dai chara, within which marriage is also barred. At Lakhamandal the lineages are called thok. Descent is patrilineal and residence patrilocal, and the household was traditionally a joint family in which brothers shared a wife. The people of Jaunsar-Bawar include Brahmin and Rajput families, known together as Khasa, and Kolta, Bajgi, Lohar and other communities, each with lineages of its own.

Aals are lineages of particular villages rather than clans of the whole people, so no list is given; Majumdar names, for example, the Raichan, Luman and Gauryan thoks of the Brahmins of Lakhamandal.

In the Official Lists

• Scheduled Tribe

  Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh

  Listed as: Jaunsari

  The Census 2011 table for Uttarakhand spells the entry 'Jannsari'.

Checked against the Census 2011 tables and Wikipedia's compilation of the order. The Jaunsari are not a PVTG.

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

The Brahmins and Rajputs of Jaunsar-Bawar trace their origin to the Pandavas of the Mahabharata, whose monuments are believed to stand at Lakhamandal on the eastern border of the region, and from them they also trace their custom of polyandry (Majumdar). Stone sculptures excavated at the Lakhamandal temple site point to an old settlement there.

History

Jaunsar-Bawar was divided into 35, later 39, khats or hill sectors. Each had a Khat Sayana who answered for the whole khat to the government, above all for its revenue; village sayanas served under him, and four leading sayanas, the chauntras, distributed the revenue among the khats. The British revenue settlements of the nineteenth century were made with the khats through their sayanas (Majumdar). Majumdar worked in the region from 1937, partly for the census of 1941, and published his study in 1962.

Faith and Worship

Every village has a temple of Mahasu, the guardian deity of Jaunsar-Bawar, whose holy seat is at Hanol; it usually stands in an open space with a flat ground, the angan, for dancing and village gatherings. Villages also have a temple of Shilguru, the protector of herds, and other shrines (Majumdar).

Deities named in the sources: Mahasu

Customs

Marriage was traditionally fraternal polyandry, the wife of the eldest brother being the wife of all his brothers, and Majumdar found it mixed with monogamy and with households of several wives. He names Magh (January-February), Bissu (April), Jagra (August) and the Jaunsari Diwali (November or December) as the four main festivals. Magh is a month of feasting after the winter sowing, when every house kills a goat set aside and fed since the year before.

Festivals