Kharwar

Clans and Kinship

Risley (1891) lists the divisions as Patbandh, Daulbandh and Khairi in Palamau, and Deswari, Bhogta, Raut and Manjhia in south Lohardaga; Sinha (2000) and SCSTRTI give six: Suryavanshi, Daulatbandi, Patbandi, Kheri, Bhogta or Ganju, and Manjhia. A man may not marry within his own gotra. Sinha found that the Kharwars of Kaimur, Palamau, Gumla, Lohardaga and Hazaribagh still keep their gotras and totems and do not marry within them, while those of Bhagalpur, Katihar and Purnia mostly give their gotra as Kashyap and reckon kinship by blood. Descent is through the father. In Risley's time the eldest son of the senior wife inherited and provided for his brothers, and SCSTRTI records inheritance by primogeniture in the male line in Odisha. The Kharwar of Odisha have a village council (baithaki) and a regional council (chata).

Thirty-eight of the forty gotras Sinha (2000, Table 6, pp. 59-60) recorded in his field survey, in his order. The middle of the table is misaligned in the scan and two of its names cannot be read, so no totem is given for the twenty-two names in that part rather than guess; the totems listed there include the bahera tree, salt, tiger, iron, tortoise, rope, a fish, paddy, sandalwood and the karam tree. Sinha glosses Rawan only as the sign of a demon. Risley (1891) lists about seventy-five Kharwar septs, among them Aind (eel), Bag (tiger), Kachua (tortoise), Kerketa (a bird), Nag (cobra) and Tirki (a bird).

In the Official Lists

• Scheduled Tribe

  Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh

  Listed as: Kharwar

  In Uttar Pradesh entered as 'Kharwar, Khairwar' and only in the districts of Deoria, Balia, Ghazipur, Varanasi and Sonbhadra (order and Census 2011 table).

Checked against the 2011 census table of each state and Wikipedia's compilation of the order; amendments after 2011 were not checked. The 'Khairwar, Kondar' of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh and the 'Khairwar' of Maharashtra are separate entries and are not counted here; the sources used for this page do not say whether they are the same people.

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 Kharwars, Risley (1891) recorded after Buchanan, say their first seat was the fort of Rohtas, named after Rohitashva, son of Harishchandra of the solar line, and so call themselves Suryavanshi; Sinha's monograph (2000) found the same claim. SCSTRTI (2020) derives the name from khair, the catechu tree, or from Khairagarh, and its profile gives a legend that they came to Palamau from Khari Jhar. The Kharwars of south Lohardaga told Risley that the khar grass was the totem of the whole tribe and would not cut it while it grew. Dalton recorded a legend, which Sinha repeats, that the Kharwar and the Santal were born from two eggs of a wild goose.

History

Dalton, quoted by Risley (1891), wrote that the Kharwars were the most important people of Palamau when the Cheros came, and the Cheros left them the hill tracts toward Sarguja; Kharwars spoke of themselves as the eighteen thousand. In Dalton's view the rajas of Ramgarh and Jashpur were of Kharwar descent. In 1857-58 the brothers Nilambar and Pitambar, sons of Chemu Singh, a Bhogta jagirdar of Palamau, led a rising there with Kharwar and Chero support. Dalton reported their arrest in a letter of 4 April 1859, and what followed is told differently: Dalton's account, quoted by Risley, of 'two sons of the Bhogta head', who are probably these brothers though Dalton does not name them, says one was hanged and the other transported for life; the oral tradition published by the Ranchi institute in 2020 says both were hanged near Lesliganj, and notes that some historians doubt they were ever caught.

Faith and Worship

Dalton, quoted by Risley (1891), wrote that the Kharwars, like the Munda, offered a buffalo and other animals every three years in the sacred grove (sarna) or on a rock near the village, through a village priest called pahan or baiga, to the village god; in Palamau Kharwars themselves sometimes served as pahan. Landholding Kharwars, Risley adds, worshipped Mahadeo and Sitaram and employed Sakadwipi Brahmans, and performed sraddh ten days after a death and offerings to the ancestors in Aswin. In Odisha the baiga, a Kharwar or a Munda, leads Sarhul and Karma and propitiates the spirits (SCSTRTI).

Customs

Risley (1891) records that bride and groom were each first married to a mango tree or a branch of one and exchanged blood mixed with vermilion, though the binding rite was the groom's marking of the bride's forehead and hair-parting with vermilion. Bhogta and Manjhia families paid a bride-price and allowed a widow to marry, ideally her late husband's younger brother. In Odisha SCSTRTI found marriage by negotiation with a bride-price (dali-paisa), six days of birth pollution, both cremation and burial, and ten days of death pollution.