1903.] Satis Chandra Vidyabhusana — The Saraka caste of India. 57 



H. H. Risley, was perhaps the first scholar who gave a systematic ac- 

 count of the S'araka caste which, according to him, is a Hinduised rem- 

 nant of the earlv Jain people. Mr. Streatfield. (Deputy Commissioner of 

 Kanchi), observes that the S'araks are purely Aryans in blood and seem 

 originally to have been Jains though, however, they do now worship 

 Hindu gods. Mr. E. A. Gait, who regards them as Buddhists, has given 

 an elaborate account of them in the last Census Report of Bengal. 

 Mahamahopadhyaya Haraprasad Shastri says that they are reciters of 

 " Baudh mantras " or Buddhist formulas. In the Brahma-vaivarta- 

 purana they are regarded as a mixed Hindu caste born from a father 

 who was a Mleccha weaver and a mother who was a Hindu weaver. 

 Taking their own evidence we find that they call themselves Hindus, 

 have priests of their own caste and also occasionally employ Brahmans. 

 The S'arakas of Chota Nagpur as a rule are well-to-do land-holders and 

 money-lenders, while those of West Bengal and Orissa are mostly excel- 

 lent weavers. Dr. Dalton, in his Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, men- 

 tions an Assamese hill tribe called S'araka, that is a branch of the Hill 

 Miris inhabiting the north of Bordoloni on both banks of the hill course 

 of the Subanshiri river. They entered Assam by plundering some of 

 the villages there, obtained under the Assam Raj a sort of prescriptive 

 right to levy black-mail, and now receive annually from the British 

 Government an equivalent in the form of a money-payment. Their reli- 

 gion consists in the belief in sylvan deities. 



In the North-Western Provinces and Central India there are classes 

 of people called Saraogies. They live in great number in Muzaffernagar, 

 Mainpuri, Benares, Jaipur, Hoshangabad, &c. They are very rich and 

 influential, and are Jains by religion. 



The scholars, whose opinions have been quoted above, almost un- 

 animously hold that S'arakas and Saraogies are identical in race, and 

 that these two names are mere corruptions of Srdvaka which is a Jain 

 or Buddhist technicality for a religious devotee. While expressing my 

 indebtedness to the abovementioned scholars for the interesting accounts 

 they have given of the S'araka and Saraogie castes, I beg altogether to 

 differ from them in respect of the origins of the castes themselves. 



In my humble opinion neither the term S'araka nor Saraogie can be 

 derived from S'ravaka. The Pali form of Sravaka is Savalca, which can 

 hardly assume the form S'araka or Saraogie in which ra is so prominent. 

 I believe the name S'araka is derived from Serike, which was a vast pro- 

 vince in Central Asia. The chapter which Ptolemy has devoted to 

 Serike has given rise to various unprofitable controversies. The land of 

 Serike is variously supposed to have lain in one or other of the many 

 countries that intervene between Eastern Turkistan in the north and 



