One book that I have
extensively referred to for my learning (if not for this blog) is “The Origin
of Bombay” by J. Gerson da Cunha published in 1900. Bimbakyan (Chronicles of Bimb or
Bhim), is presumed to have been written in 1139, and
is referred to by J Gerson da Cunha in his work, Raja Bhimdev established
his capital at Mahikawati (Mahim). “ “With
the king, came a sizable group of Pathare Prabhus, Palshis, Pachkalshis and
toddy tapper Bhandaris, who comprised the first wave of immigrants to Bombay.
Members of agricultural communities like the Vadvals, Malis, Bhois and Agris,
Brahmans and traders from nearby regions were also thought to have settled in
Bombay during this time.” See figure below (click to expand) for location of early
settlements in an 1849 map and Fig 13 of previous blog for their location with
repect to present-day Mumbai.
Burell (“Bombay
in the days of Queen Anne”)would write “Banderes
(his spelling for the Bhandaris)
,,, that look after these trees ... will
swarm up with incredible swiftness, having a basket hanging on the right side
into which they put the toddy ... The basket ... work'd so closely together
that although it hath no lining, [it] will not emit one drop, so well are they
contrived.”
After Raja Bhimdev “... took possession of Bombay. His immediate successor was
dispossessed of his authority by a Bhandari chief, Shetya of Chaul, who in turn
wa dispossessed by Musalmans. Upon the arrival of the Portugese the Bhandaris
were once more in power and assisted the invaders against the Musalmans.
Thereafter at Mahim a Bhandari kingdom was established Bhongules or Bhandaris.
With the help of the Portugese several petty kingdoms seem to have been
established by the Bhandari on the western coast.” One may therefore assume
that the Bhandaris were among the major early influences on late (after, say,
the European Dark Ages) Maharashtrian
culture. “Some of them possessed houses”(!!). Bhandari is said to be a
combination of the Prakrit word Band
and the Sanskrit word ari and “appears to have been invented by those
anxious to assign a higher origin to the caste than it can probably claim.”
The Bhandari “Bhongulee”
One of
the more lasting influences of the Bhandaris seems to be (to me, at least; I
have not researched enough) their unwitting role in the Shiv Sena’s slogan “lungi hatao, pungi bajao”. One assumes
that the pungi is something one
associates with typical Marathi culture. The internet does not readily identify
what pungi is in this context. The pungi is identified as as a “... pipe or nose-flute composed of a gourd or nut-shell into which two
wooden pipes or reeds are inserted. It emits a droning or humming sound, and is
the instrument commonly used by snake-charmers.”
(fig 14 top left; the numbering of figures continues from the previous blog).
Such a pungi is not peculiar to
Maharshtra alone.
“Of the Bhandaris the most remarkable usage is their fondness for a peculiar species of long trumpet called Bhongulee,which ever since the dominion of the Portugese, they have had the privilege of carrying and blowing on certain state occasions. Fryer, in a letter written between 1672 and 1681, describes the Bhandaris as as forming a sort of honorary giards or heralds to the Governor, and even to this day they carry the union flag and blow their immense trumpet before the High Sheriff on he opening of the Quarter Sessions.” From these descriptions I imagine that the bhongulee is the name for the immensely popular symbol of Marathi-ness, the Tutari (Fig 14 top). Like the Bhongulee of earlier times, the Tutari is blown in Mahrashtra to announce arrivals of kings or palkhis.
Before I continue any
further I am asserting at this stage that the Bhongulee orTutari is what Bal Thackeray may have meant in an onomatopoeia-ic
poon-poon sense when he exhorted the marathi
manoos to poongi bajao. The word poongi is actually a trans-Indian word for a “...pipe or
nose-flute composed of a gourd or nut-shell into which two wooden pipes or
reeds are inserted. It emits a droning or humming sound, and is the instrument
commonly used by snake-charmers.”
(Fig 14, top left).
On searching the internet I
have not found much connection between the Bhandaris and tutari, In the
neighbouring state (The Castes and Tribes
of H R H the Nizam’s Dominions by Syed Suraj Yl Hassan, 1926) the Bhandaris
are described as temple musicians “ ... and
play on the sanai, a pipe, samhal, a drum, and cymbals, and blow the shinga or
conch at the worship of the temple deity.” The Shinga or Shringa are Tutari-like instruments. An Wikipidia
article “History of primitive and non-Western trumpets” has the “tutari (Marathi), tuttori (kannada), bhongal
(Marathi)” as “... Indigenous straight
trumpets (that) have been made in India
since the Neolithic and are
still found today ...” 
The immediate point of my jumping-to-conclusion
tendencies is to look for a connection between the word bhongulee and bugle, if
only because the names sound so similar. During one of my forays through the
juna bazaar of Pune I had found a bugle (fig 15) which was not kept in the best
of shape and whose sound my dog did not particularly approve of. It had the
British Empire insignia on it. There is a tendency for the layman like me to
think that the bugle is just another version of the trumpet. I educated myself from the internet.
From
http://historyday.crf-usa.org/1811/music2/advancements.html I
learnt that the Greek trumpet, salpinx, was used In 396 B.C. Greek Olympic
Games. These trumpets were
made of ivory and had or. They
had bronze on the bell and mouthpiece. Something similar to the salpinx were found in Egyptian tombs as early as
3000-2000 bc. There is, however, a distinction to be made between a bugle and a
trumpet.
In an
article titled An Introductory History of the Bugle From its
Early Origins to the Present Day, Jari
Villanueva says that
“... the
basic difference between bugles and trumpets is found in the shape of the bell.
The musical definition of a trumpet (natural trumpet) is that of a horn which
has two thirds of its length in the form of a cylindrical tube – usually it is
five sixths of the total length. A bugle has a conical shape through-out. We
can therefore make the general assumption that a trumpet is cylindrically
shaped with a cup-shaped mouthpiece, while a bugle is conical in nature with a
funnel-shaped mouthpiece. .... The bugle first appears as a hunting horn with the distinctive coil ... In the late 18th century the
bugle then took on the form we know today.”
By this definition the Tibetan
horn (Fig 15) would be a bugle; so would the tutari, or shringi. The kombu depicted in Fig 15 would not be
a bugle nor would the Roman Tuba or Cornu (Fig 14).
It seems natural to think that
the Bhongulee would have been a bugle. In
this case, it is perhaps of historical importance to realize that the humble
Bhandari bhongulee or bhongal gave the
bugle even if one calls it the Tutari now.
The lungi
Inevitably,
the lungi is worn by the muslim community, although my father as well as my
elder brother would not trade it for anything when they wanted to lounge around
in the hot summer climate of Madras (now Chennai). The predominantly muslim
association with the muslim community is roughly true if one considers that the
lungi is typically worn primarily by the Islamic community of the kingdom of
Travancore (now kerala), Bengal (Bangladesh), Burma (longyi, Myanamar) malay
peninsula (Malaysia).
The difference between a lungi and a veshti is
that both ends of the lungi are stitched together while in the veshti it is not. I have no idea why muslims
should wear lungis and not dhotis or veshtis.
It is probably derived from the Arab dress thawb which
is something like a male version of the burqua except
that the men do not cover their face. The lungi would
then be a top-less thawb that was propagated in the coastal regions
of the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere.
In
highly humid weather one sweats considerably. One can then fold the lungi up
and allow the sea-breeze to ventilate and cool your body. In Fig 16 top right,
there is bare-bodied man who is sweating. He is wearing a mundu or vesti.
Because his hands are not free he has a belt around his vesti to make sure it
does not fall down. A man by his side carrying a broom wears a lungi. In Fig 16
extreme right there is a man lifting up his mundu and one can see his white
cloth is wet probably by being in contact with his wet legs.
The folding up of a lungi is shown in the bottom middle of Fig 16. The
bottom right of Fig 16 shows the relaxed body language of the veshti-wearer. At the extreme left is a scene from
a village near Shirali, near Mangalore in Karntaka (the sloping roof uses Mangalore
tiles). The majority are wearing the window-pane-patterned lungi. There is a lady in burqua (mulim). There is man in white veshti (non-muslim). And there is a fisherwomman
selling fish much as a koli fisherwoman would. The whole scene is typical of a
community of diverse people living together in easy harmony.
In its original form the lungi was probably known as veshti or mundu in
kerala, It was a white garment and Tanuk fishermen were involved in its export
to what is now the mainly islamic Middle-east countries. The transition from
white fabrics to the now popular coloured windowpane (see Fig 16, top) pattern
fabrics of the lungis does not not seem to have been documented
clearly. One may speculate that it is the British who exploited the weaving skills
of the people around Bombay to set up mills for making coloured windowpane
cotton fabrics instead of the windowpane woollen fabrics that they were
familiar with in England.
I have not found any reference to the origin
of the word lungi
on the internet. I have a feeling
it comes from the word “lounge” which itself comes from the word “lawn” or
early English “laund”. The lungi
was earlier known as 'Veshti', a white colored garment. Historical evidences
point out that the Muslin cloth of Veshti was exported to Babylonia by
fishermen from Tamil Nadu. Writings in Babylonian archaeological articles
specify the word 'Sindu', which in Tamil means 'garment'. The English word lungis itself comes from Longinus or Longius the
soldier that pierced Christ’s side with a spear and “fell into a dreaming
luske, a drosie gangrill” (from Dictionary of Word Origins by by Joseph T.
Shipley).
One may look at tthe lungi-sation of the common people of early Mumbai. In Fig 17 left (click to expand) an old scene of native Maharashtrians from what seems to be the Bhuleshwar-Byculla part of the coast. They did not have the Congress cap then and wore a white cloth on their head either loose or as a turban. Thir dhoties were usually folded up. In the right of Fig 17, the bearers of Palanquin are seen with their veshtis folded up (see also Fig 18, right). The palanquin bearers are associated with the harbour and were probably required for transporting the lazier European aliens.
The
mode of the dress of palanquin bearers are the same later (Fig 18 left). The
features of the palanquin bearers seem to me to (I have no idea of the
anthropological sytem of classification) be Dravidian in an “aboriginal” Koli-Tamil
sense (see Fig 18 right). These palanquin bearers are in the Bombay greens.
They must have participated in other “empire”-building activites of Bombay and
were probably as Marathi-speaking as anyone else. One may not draw an ethnic
distinction between Tamil and non-Tamil Marathi speaking people indigenous to
the regions around Mumbai. They were not immigrn\ants. As Bombay city grew and
commerce led to a cosmopolitan-isation the dress of the people changed (Fig 18,
middle). One cannot make out from their bottom- wear what religion or caste
theybelong to. If one attempts to distinguish them by their head-wear they seem
to be seamless homogeneous as friends.
The lungi
hatao slogan cannot be allowed to apply to the
so-called south Indians as many assume including Shiv Sainiks.
There could instead be another historical
aspect in the lungi
hatao Pungi bajao saga.
Given
the historical antagonism between the Bhandaris of early Bombay and the
Mussalman from Malabar one may interpret the lungi hatao pungi bajao slogan as a slogan which could be several
centuries old. For this one has to associate lungi with muslims. Since the
Bhandris themselves are also temple musicians from the present
Hyderabad-Telengana region and the muslims are from the Malabar region the lungi-hatao-Pungi-bajao slogan is
actually an ancient south-south, “telengana-kerala” conflict.
I do
not know whether the Thakurs referred to in the early (1849) “Hindu map” shown
in the beginning are the present-day Thakres. They don’t seem to be.
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