nkubja or Kanaujia._--These are named after the old town of
Kanauj on the Ganges near Cawnpore, once the capital of India. The
Kanaujia are the most important of the northern groups and extend from
the west of Oudh to beyond Benares and into the northern Districts of
the Central Provinces. Here they are subdivided into four principal
groups--the Kanaujia, Jijhotia, Sarwaria and Sanadhya, which are
treated in annexed subordinate articles.

(_d_) _Maithil._--They take their name from Mithila, the old term
for Bihar or Tirhut, and belong to this tract.

(_e_) _Utkal._--These are the Brahmans of Orissa.

The five groups of the Panch-Dravida are as follows:

(_a_) _Maharashtra._--These belong to the Maratha country or
Bombay. They are subdivided into three main territorial groups--the
Deshasth, or those of the home country, that is the Poona tract above
the Western Ghats; the Konkonasth, who belong to the Bombay Konkan
or littoral; and the Karhara, named after a place in the Satara
District. [406]

(_b_) _Tailanga or Andhra._--The Brahmans of the Telugu country,
Hyderabad and the northern part of Madras. This territory was known
as Andhra and governed by an important dynasty of the same name in
early times.

(_c_) _Dravida._--The Brahmans of the Tamil country or the south
of Madras.

(_d_) _Karnata._--The Brahmans of the Carnatic, or the Canarese
country. The Canarese area comprises the Mysore State, and the British
Districts of Canara, Dharwar and Belgaum.

(_e_) _Gurjara._--The Brahmans of Gujarat, of whom two subcastes are
found in the Central Provinces. The first consists of the Khedawals,
named after Kheda, a village in Gujarat, who are a strictly orthodox
class holding a good position in the caste. And the second are the
Nagar Brahmans, who have been long settled in Nimar and the adjacent
tracts, and act as village priests and astrologers. Their social
status is somewhat lower.

There are, however, a large number of other subcastes, and the
tendency to fissure in a large caste, and to the formation of small
local groups which marry among themselves, is nowhere more strikingly
apparent than among the Brahmans. This is only natural, as they,
more than any other caste, attach importance to strict ceremonial
observance in matters of food and the daily ritual of prayer, and
any group which was suspected of backsliding in respect of these on
emigration to a new locality would be debarred from intermarriage
with