Musahars or Banbasi are the Dalit community found in the eastern Gangetic plain mainly eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Southern Nepal. Their traditional occupation is Rat catching Musahar is said to be derived from the Bhojpuri mūs- rat + ahar- eater.
Myth
According to a local legend, Lord Brahma created man and gave him a horse to ride. The first Musahar decided to dig holes in the belly of the horse to fix his feet as he rode. This offended Lord Brahma, who cursed him and his descendants to be rat catchers.
CULTURE of MUSAHARS
The Musahar are Hindu, and celebrate most local Hindu festivals like Holi and Diwali, They also believe in a number of tribal deities, including Dinabhadri and Buniya Baba. Musahars also have their own rituals like the kul pooja, in which participants bathe in boiling milk to worship ancestors. They also offer liquor during poojas and weddings.
They consist of three endogamous clans: Bhagat, Sakatiya and Turkahia. They are now mostly landless agricultural laborers and sometimes still have to resort to rat-catching to survive during lean times. They are one of the most marginalized castes in India, even among Dalits.
Language– Bhojpuri, Maghadi, and Maithili. The new generation also speaks Hindi.
Theory by Herbert Hope Risley, in his 1881 survey of castes and tribes of Bengal, speculated that the Musahars were an offshoot of the hunter-gatherer Bhuiya from the Chota Nagpur Plateau who migrated to the Gangetic plains approximately 6-7 generations prior to his survey, around 300-350 years before present.
