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| Nagar Brahmins | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Nagar Brahmins in Western India (c. 1855-1862) | |
| Religions | Hinduism |
| Languages | Gujarati, Hindi, English |
| Country | India |
| Populated states | Gujarat, Rajasthan |
| Region | North West India |
| Ethnicity | Indian |
The Nagar Brahmin are a Hindu caste of India. They are primarily found in Gujarat but have a history of migration to Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, in the north and central, Maharashtra and Karnataka further west and into the south, and as far as West Bengal in the east.
In North India, the Bias Brahmin community includes Nagar Brahmins and two other Brahmin groups from Gujarat: the Audichya Brahmins and the Bardai Brahmins.
One notable member of the community was the educationist Hansa Jivraj Mehta, whose inter-caste marriage to Jivraj Narayan Mehta in the 1920s provoked what historian John R. Wood describes as a "mild sensation". Her husband was from the Bania caste.[1]
They are known for travelling and settling across the subcontinent, adopting the local language but writing in their own Nagari-variant of Kaithi instead.[2] This is the case in Sindh, Multan, Sylhet and Varanasi. Baitali Kaithi was a former script used to write Hindustani at a similar time, and it was identical to Sylhet Nagri with the exception that the latter had a matra (upper horizontal line used in Brahmic scripts).[3] Many converted and became Nagar Muslims, though retained the practice of the Nagri script (named after them) for poetry.[4]
References
- ↑ Wood, John R. (November 1984). "British versus Princely Legacies and the Political Integration of Gujarat". The Journal of Asian Studies. 44 (1): 65–99. doi:10.2307/2056747. JSTOR 2056747.
- ↑ Nagendranath Basu (ed.). "Devanagar". Bangla Bishwakosh (in Bengali). Vol. 12. p. 731.
- ↑ Saha, RN (1935). "The Origin of the Alphabet and Numbers". In Khattry, DP (ed.). Report of All Asia Educational Conference (Benares, December 26-30, 1930). Allahabad, India: The Indian Press Ltd. pp. 751–779.
- ↑ Basu, Nagendranath (1933). "Bengali Section: Presidential Address". Proceedings And Transactions Of The Sixth All India Oriental Conference, December 1930. Patna, Bihar: Bihar and Orissa Research Society. pp. 262–264.