Raut (caste)

Not to be confused with a Maratha clan of the same name.

Raut (also spelled as Rout) is an Indian caste, whose traditional occupation is herding.[1][2]

The Rauts are mainly found in the Chhattisgarh state, and the neighbouring states of Maharashtra, Odisha,West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh. Traditionally, they were predominantly distributed in the districts of Durg, Raipur, Bastar, Nagpur and Bhandara.[3]

Culture

Traditionally, the Rauts were involved in herding and milking cattle.[4]

The Raut men traditionally performed the local folk epic Candaini (or Chandaini) in a combination of dance and song. The epic tells the story of princess Candaini, who leaves her impotent husband and falls in love with a common man Lorik. Both the characters are from the Raut caste, and the epic seems to have originated in this caste.[5] As late as 1980, the Candaini performers used to be primarily from the Raut caste, but now people from other communities also take part in the performances.[4]

Routh surname is Indian kayastha surname in West Bengal

References

  1. ↑ Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger (1996). Gender and Genre in the Folklore of Middle India. Cornell University Press. p. 141. ISBN 0-8014-8344-1.
  2. ↑ Lidia Guzy (2013). Marginalised Music: Music, Religion and Politics from Western Odisha/India. LIT Verlag Münster. p. 147. ISBN 978-3-643-90272-6. ...the Raut/Gour (the caste of herdsmen), the dominant caste in Chhattisgarh...
  3. ↑ Kumar Suresh Singh; B. V. Bhanu (2004). People of India: Maharashtra, Volume 1. Popular Prakashan. Anthropological Survey of India. p. 1781. ISBN 9788179911006.
  4. 1 2 Margaret H. Beissinger; Susanne Lindgren Wofford, eds. (1999). Epic traditions in the contemporary world: the poetics of community. University of California Press. p. 137.
  5. ↑ Arjun Appadurai; Frank J. Korom; Margaret A. Mills (1994). Gender, genre, and power in South Asian expressive traditions. Motilal Banarsidass. p. 196. ISBN 9788120811782.

Bibliography

  • Lok Nath Soni (2000). The cattle and the stick: an ethnographic profile of the Raut of Chhattisgarh. Anthropological Survey of India. ISBN 9788185579573.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.