Introduction

The traditional merchant castes of India have a total population of about three million, located for the most part in western India and especially in the adjacent states of Rajasthan and Gujarat. In this region, they constitute a small number of associated castes, commonly called Bania by the indigenous populace, though the castes in question tend to prefer the more honorific appellation Mahājan. About half the Mahājans of Rajasthan are probably Vaishnava Hindu and the remainder Jains. Collectively, Mahājans have dominated the industrial and commercial life of India for at least the last ioo years. As Erdman (1975) has indicated, they are popularly believed to possess an economic and political power quite out of proportion to their small numbers in the sub-continent. According to Timberg (1973) the greatest family firms in the sub-continent today trace their ancestry to Rajputana and Saurashtra, the former princely states now known as Rajasthan and Gujarat. These expatriates are also called Marwari, presumbly because the Marwar area of Rajasthan experienced the most sizeable outmigrations of the traditional merchant castes to the burgeoning colonial cities of Bombay, Calcutta and elsewhere in the second half of last century (Timberg, 1978; Kling, 1966). Consequently, in these places particularly, but also throughout India generally, the categories Bania, Mahajan and Marwari have become synonymous, usually with Jain, though obviously not all merchants are Jains, just as all Jains are not necessarily merchants. As I have mentioned elsewhere (Cottam, 1980: 331) the traditional merchant castes are rather like a mirage, in that they are more easily perceived as a social category from a distance.