MARIVARI, from Marwar, a country in Raj putana. In India, generally applied to a Rajput engaged in banking or trade. There are, how ever, various financing tribes, Saukar, Sarraff or Shroff, as the Marwari, the Bhatya, the Vaisya Komati, the Modi grain-seller, and the Banya. The Marwari arrange themselves into twelve tribes. The Mestri, the Urwar, Bijabargi, Kandalwal, and Porwal arc of the Vaishnava sect of Hindus ; the Agarwala are partly Vaishnava and partly Jain ; but the Sarogi and the Oswal are wholly Jain, and it is from amongst the Ossi tribes of Oswal that the Jain priests of Abu are chosen. These Jaina never use animal food, their offerings are fruits and sugar ; and the Oswal and Sarogi never eat the prasadh or meat offered to the idols. Marwari are less frequently of the .Saiva sect. The Marwari mercantile men and bankers hold almost exclusively the entire banking business of India, and regulate the exchange operations of almost all the nations of India. The Oswal is the richest and most numerous of the eighty-four mercantile tribes of India, and is said to amount to 100,000 families. They are called Oswal from their first settlement, the town of Ossi. They are all of pure liajput birth, of no single tribe, but chiefly Pura, Solanki, and Bhatti. Many profess the Jain tenets, and the pontiffs. of that faith must be selected from the youth of Ossi. These wealthy bankers and merchants, scattered through out India, are all known under the denomina tion of Marwari, which means belonging to Maru or .Marustlan, the desert. It is singular, Colonel Tod adds (Rajasthan, ii. p. 234), that the wealth of India should centre in this region of comparative sterility. The Marwari is essentially following similar mercantile pursuits to the Vaisya Koinati of Peninsular India, and those of the Wani or Bani or Banya, viz, banker and merchant, to which, however, the Komati add that of retail shop keeping. If a Marwari be asked as to his caste, he replies that ho is a Mahajan, a Banya, a Baia or Vais, meaning that his profession is that of the commercial people.. But, on further questioning, ho explains that the Marwari is a Rajput, that there are twelve great tribes, of whom are the Oswa, Messar, Agarwala, Bijabargi, Sarogi, Neddatwar, Parwar, and five others. These all
subdivide into numerous kap or clans ; in the Messar tribe alone are seventy - two, amongst whom are the Hatbi and Dhaga. All the Marwari of Rajputana adhere to the principle of reckoning their descent from a founder, and in their marriage ceremonies they abstain from blood relationship, never marrying into their own gotra. Their widows never re-marry. The mercantile tribes of Western India, of Raj put origin, sank the name and profession of arms when they became pro selytes to Jainism, in the reign of Raja Bheem Pmmar. The Chittur inscription of this prince (he was ancestor of Raja Mann, whose date, S. 770, A.D. 714) allows us to place this grand conver sion prior to A.D. 650. The Banya or Komati merchants and bankers are generally of the Vaish nava sect of Hindus, though some of them worship Siva. They are most numerous in Telingana and in Madras. In the north and east of Dekhau proper there is not one of them in twenty villages, their places there being taken by the Marwari race. There are, however, many in Punderpur and Sholapur. Those of the Komati who die un married are buried, all others are burned, whether belonging to the Saiva or Vaishnava sects. Their language in their families is Telugu, and it is spoken by them as far as Bombay. But, as the west is approached, Mahrati becomes mixed with it. Komati Banya are essentially shopkeepers, sellers of dry grains, doing a little in mercantile business, and cultivate, but do not hold the-plough. They are mostly dark men, of short stature. In their marriages the bridegroom may or may not be before or after puberty, but girls are under age, and the ceremonial is performed at the house by a Brah man. The death srad'ha rituals are conducted by Brahmans. Their Janawi or zonar is put on and the mantra taught when married. The Wani of the western coast will only marry with the Komati Banya. They are in considerable numbers in the northern part of Hyderabad, adjoining Berar.-2'od's Rajasthan, ii. pp. 134, 234.