The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India #248091

Kumhār, Kumbhār. - The caste of potters, the name being derived from the Sanskrit kumbh, a water-pot. The Kumhārs numbered nearly 120,000 persons in the Central Provinces in 1911 and were most numerous in the northern and eastern or Hindustani-speaking Districts, where earthen vessels have greater vogue than in the south. The caste is of course an ancient one, vessels of earthenware having probably been in use at a very early period, and the old Hindu scriptures consequently give various accounts of its origin from mixed marriages between the four classical castes. "Concerning the traditional parentage of the caste," Sir H. Risley writes, "there seems to be a wide difference of opinion among the recognised authorities on the subject. Thus the Brahma Vaivartta Purana says that the Kumbhakar or maker of water-jars (kumbha), is born of a Vaishya woman by a Brahma father; the Parasara Samhita makes the father a Malakar (gardener) and the mother a Chamar; while the Parasara Padhati holds that the ancestor of the caste was begotten of a Tili woman by a Pattikar or weaver of silk cloth. Sir Monier Williams again, in his Sanskrit Dictionary, describes them as the offspring of a Kshatriya woman by a Brahman.