Tulu people have inherited surnames known as “bari” from their genetic antecedents. Bari is a unusual heritage word in Tulu acquired from older languages and cultures prevailed in their land. The word “bari” is unusual in the sense that in current Tulu it typically means a side, whereas the original meaning of the word, now lost, means the house or the original house from which the ancestors of the person in discussion came from. The word ‘bari’ (=house), originally from Munda languages (and probably also prevalent in Prakrit languages) still exists in some of the ancient languages derived from Munda/Prakrit languages such as Bengali.
Thus, there are matrilineal and patrilineal “bari” tags for each individual, denoting the ancient genetic lineage from which original house the persons originated.
Anyway, the baris’ have been overtaken by the castes and communities later in the history and consequently, now we find the people from same bari tags existing in different Tulu castes and communities. One of these interesting Tulu bari names is Banjan.
Sometime back, one of our reader friends requested details on the Banjan bari name. I have made an attempt to gather the available information in this post.
Banjan
Most of the Tulu bari surnames end with suffix –an which denotes person. For example Salian (=Sāli+an) means one from the Sali (= spider ; the weaver) bari. Thus, the banjan can be analysed as: banja +an. In Tulunadu we find many places associated with word banja or simplified to baja, such as: Bajape, Bajal, Bajatturu etc. The words banja (> baja) as found in Tulu place names essentially means dry or probably signifies the people immigrated from dry lands of the north such as Rajasthan.
Based on the analysis of words, the nearest migrant tribe, homonymous and analogous to the etymology of Banjan now in several parts of India, appears to be that of Banjaras.
Banjara
The Banjaras are a nomadic tribe travelling from place to place. Some consider that the nomadic gypsies are related to the Banjaras. The gypsies were considered to have originally migrated from regions like: Nubia, Turkey and Egypt from which they acquired their generic name. (Egypt. > Gypsy). The Banjaras were also known as travelling merchants, since they were selling commodities like salt. On the other hand they are also considered to be related to Lamanis, another wandering nomadic tribe now spread in different parts of India. It is said that the tribal name Lamani (or Lambani) came from transporting and selling ‘ lavana’ or the salt.
The Lambani and Banjara are probably related tribes. There is a legend that they served as soldiers of Rana Pratap Singh, who never surrendered to Mogals (Akbar) and escaped to forest to avoid capture. Rathod, a common surname in Gujarat and Rajasthan is also found among the Banjaras.
The term ‘banjara’ is said to have been derived from ‘vanijar’ or the merchant. The term Vanijar is said to have been adopted from Sauraseni Prakrit. A related trader community “banajiga” also stands for the merchant.
An alternate explanation for the derivation of the term banjara is: ban + jā + ra; wherein, the ban+ja appears to be ban/van = forest and ja =born.
Inference
In current day scenario there may not be any tangible connections between the Banjans of Tulunadu (or their equivalents in other parts of India) and the Banjaras. However, there is a possibility that in remote historical past days, about two or three millennia ago, that certain ancient tribes resident in the dry lands of the north migrated to southern parts of India, including the West coast, and were known as the Banjans. After all, the element of migration was a dominant feature among the ancient tribes.
One of our readers wants to know the equivalent of Banjan surname in Kundapur area. I request that anyone having the knowledge on this aspect may kindly share the information for the benefit of people genuinely interested in their heritage.
R.