Lohar

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Lohar (Urdu: لوہار ) is a caste in Hindus in Northern India and tribe in Pakistan.

[edit] Etymology

The word Lohar comes from the Hindi word, Loha (Iron). The members of this group are traditionally blacksmiths.

Lohars are blacksmiths. According to H. A. Rose and Denzil Ibbetson, Lohars are descended from Rajputs and Jats. Although considered a lower caste than Tarkhans, Lohars have been accepted into Tarkhan tribal affiliations.

In Hushyarpur They are said to form a single caste called Lohar-Tarkhan, and the son of a blacksmith will often take to carpentry and vice versa; but it appears that the two castes were originally separate, for the joint caste is still divided into two sections who will not intermarry or even eat or smoke together, the Dhaman, from dhamna "to blow", and the Khatti from khat "wood". In Gujranwala the same two castes exist; and they are the two great Tarkhan tribes also (see section 627). In Karnal a sort of connection seems to be admitted, but the castes are now distinct. In Sirsa the Lohars may be divided into three main sections; the first, men undoubted and recent Jat and even Rajput origin who have generally by reason of poverty, taken to work as blacksmiths; secondly the Suthar Lohar or members of the Suthar tribe of carpenters who have similarly changed their original occupation; and thirdly, the Gadya Lohar, a class of wandering blacksmith not uncommon throughout the east and south east of the Province, who come up from Rajputana and the North West Provinces and travel about with their families and implements in carts from village to village, doing the finer sorts of iron work which are beyond the capacity of the village artisan. The tradition runs that Suthar Lohars, who are now Musalman, were originally Hindu Tarkhans of the Suthar tribe (see section 627); and that Akhbar took 12,000 of them from Jodhpur to Delhi, forcibily circumcised them, and obliged them to work in iron instead of wood. The story is admitted by a section of the Lohars themselves, and probably has some substratum of truth. These men came to Sirsa from the direction of Sindh, where they say they formerly held land, and are commonly known as Multani Lohars.

Ibbetson

This would explain why some Tarkhans/Lohars have similar surnames to Jats and Rajputs.

Many Tarkhan clans are also cross-listed as Jat and Rajput, due to Tarkhans having the same racial lineage and racial type as these castes. It is not entirely clear in the case of many clans and surnames as to which subdivision of the Kshatriya caste they belong to. Eventually, Scythian, Parthian, Greek-Bactrian, and various other Central Asian tribal peoples (such as the Hephthalites, and the Tocharians or Yuezhi) were absorbed into the Kshatriya caste, given their warlike nature, and thus became one of the subgroups or in many cases, assimilated completely into older Indo-Aryan clans. It is probable that Aroras, Gujjars, Jats, Kamboj, Khatris and Rajputs, have varying degrees of both foreign and indigenous Indian stock. In many parts, it is largely due to familial tradition that some members of a certain clan dub themselves Rajput and others of the same clan are Arora, Gujjar, Jat, Khatri, Kamboj and Tarkhan. This is more often the case in the Punjab, where there was already a large indigenous Kshatriya population when the invading tribes arrived.

[edit] Phrase

The Urdu and Hindi phrase:

Sau hath sonar ke to ek hath lohar ka

(Hundred hands (taps) of jeweller then (compared to) one hand (strike) of blacksmith)

Since the jeweller taps slowly to make jewellery while blacksmith strikes the iron hard. The phrase means that the hundred insults of a person could be countered with only one insult by another person.

[edit] External links

• Lohar Community Portal

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