Chhetri: Khas Origin & Nepal's Kshatriya

Chhetri is a Kshatriya (warrior) caste, and it is largely divided into the royal Thakuri and the warrior Chhetri internally (there are many different spellings such as Chhetri and Kshetri). Their roots are the non-Hindu Khas people who held power since before the founding of the nation, but they established their Kshatriya status by cooperating with Hindu forces. This article thoroughly examines the historical process through which the Chhetri, the largest caste in Nepal, transformed from a mountain people into a ruling force of the nation, as well as the Aryan complex and conflicts hidden within their inner minds. Thakuri is explained in detail in another article, so please refer to that as well.

The origin of the Chhetri: The Khas people

In the first place, before a large number of Hindus escaped the Islamization that occurred in the Indian subcontinent from the end of the 12th century and entered the foothills of the Himalayas, most of the area of present-day Nepal was non-Hindu. It was a flat ruling state where several kingdoms ruled by tribes based simply on lineage existed, rather than a discriminatory rule based on layers by the Varna status system.

Among them, there were the Khas people who lived in the western part of present-day Nepal. They were also non-Hindu. This is the origin of the Chhetri.

As proved by DNA analysis, the Khas people were a mixed-race group with a racial gradation. People with various different bloods were an ethnic group sharing one culture where they spoke the common language Khas (the origin of the Nepali language) and believed in Shamanism. Furthermore, there was even a period when they were influenced by Tibetan Buddhism at one time. In other words, the Khas people were a collection of people (an ethnic group) whose looks diversified in a gradation format, because non-Hindu Aryans who came along the mountains from the west mixed with local ethnic groups. It was the Chhetri that were born when these Khas people became Hinduized due to the inflow of Hindus, and discrimination occurred internally.

The background of the rise of the Chhetri

When a Hindu group consisting of various people such as Brahmins and Kshatriyas who escaped Islamization at the end of the 12th century came to the land of Nepal, how to live with the local people became a challenge. The first they met was the Khasa Malla Kingdom, a relatively strong country that was in the western part of present-day Nepal (it is different from the Malla dynasty of the Newar people that was in the Kathmandu Valley, and the era is also different). Therefore, the Hindu Brahmins took a strategy to persuade the local kings and chiefs and win them over by preaching the Hindu scriptures again and again. And eventually it succeeded. The royals made a decision to adopt Hinduism.

That being said, at that time, there was no reason for the Khas people, who were a huge force in the region, to adopt the Hindu system for no reason. The biggest purpose of the Khas side was probably to strengthen the stabilization of their own rule and legitimize their own authority into a more orthodox position (= Kshatriya) while systematizing the society, by importing the social structure based on the "Hindu scriptures (Varna system)" whose long-term stability had already been proven in India.

In other words, it can be said that the core was to import a proven governance system (package) and brand their own authority.

In this, even if the outsider Brahman was first in the religious ranking, the ones who held the real power were the royal families who became Chhetri (and Thakuri), and rather, the Brahman also could not exist without the economic and military protection of the Chhetri, so a strong "give-and-take" reciprocal relationship was born between the two.

By the way, the Brahmans at this time later became the Purbiya Bahun, a faction inside the Bahun group, and among them, those who mixed with the local people also naturally increased in number.

At the very time when the powerful people of the Khas people decided to Hinduize, most of the Khas people merged with the Kshatriya of the Hindu group and became ranked as Chhetri. This is the reason why there are various faces among the Chhetri, such as faces that look infinitely Indian or faces that look infinitely Tibetan. The difference is only the shade of which element appeared more strongly. And after they became completely dyed in Hindu body and soul, from the Hindu perspective, they naturally came to truly think that becoming Chhetri was an 'upgrading' before they knew it, and they continue to stick to that subjective 'status' until today.

In other words, it is a state where a person deeply takes in the attitudes of others and social values as their own, and after that, continues to conform without examining the information, as a kind of defense instinct.

The reason why they do not answer the fact that they 'look Mongoloid' and proudly stand tall as 'Chhetri' is because there is a historical background of structural reform that placed Aryans at an advantage as a result when they became Hinduized, and they cannot break free from that idea. For that reason, they cannot honestly say, 'Indeed, Mongoloid blood must be included historically as well.'

The reason why the Chhetri population is large

The reason why the Chhetri population is large is not only because the Khas people, who were the original mother group, were incorporated into the Chhetri as they were, but also because, for example, although Chhetri generally marry Chhetri, even if they married a different caste, unlike when a Bahun married a different caste and their caste dropped to Chhetri (if they married into the Dalit caste, they were considered as the Dalit caste), the Chhetri remained Chhetri even if they married other castes and there was no drop in caste, which is probably another reason why the population was most likely to increase.

The racial consciousness of the Chhetri

Disliking being seen as Mongoloid

Many Chhetris have faces that look racially mixed with Mongoloid, and they are highly diverse, ranging from faces where you feel a bit of Mongoloid likeness to faces that look almost Mongoloid. Even so, not a single Chhetri calls themselves Mongoloid. This must be convenient for the Bahun people as well. The soldiers (Chhetri) who call themselves Aryan and make it an honor make Aryans the population majority, and guarantee the Chhetri-Bahun system. What this means will be explained below.

First, let's start the story with a concrete conversation.

(In Nepal, Mongoloid people are called Mongolians. It is not used to mean Mongolian people. This time, I will replace it with the word Mongoloid to make it easy to understand.)

Let me give an example here. It happened when I was drinking tea with my Brahman and Chhetri young acquaintances.
"Does this guy look Mongoloid?"
The Brahman asked me what this Chhetri looked like.
Because it happened suddenly, to be honest, I hesitated to reply for a moment. Since I have lived in Nepal for a long time, I knew that the Chhetri people look down on Mongoloids and have a feeling that they do not want to be identified with them. I did not want to hurt the pride of the Chhetri youth who believes that he is different from Mongoloids.
"Yes. He looks Mongoloid."
The young man was dissatisfied with this and proudly insisted that he was Aryan. However, the Brahman, who had been abroad for a long time, said flatly, "If you know foreign countries, you can tell, but this guy is Mongoloid," and "But he just doesn't know it." The Chhetri young man looked very frustrated. He could not stand being seen as Mongoloid.

In fact, the Chhetri do not make it clear about their own looks. First of all, they want to be Aryan; that desire to be Aryan because Aryans were upper-level in the caste system comes before anything else. That must be the very realization that it is more advantageous to be Aryan, since their ancestors became dyed in the Aryan order that they became aware of while Nepal was becoming Hinduized in the past. No matter how you look at it, they have a mixed face, but they calmly declare 'I am Aryan' even though no one asked them.
No matter what, their thinking stops with 'I am a pure Aryan.' When someone tells them that they clearly have Mongoloid features, they stubbornly deny it. That behavior is somewhat rude, as if they are saying they do not want to be lumped together with Mongoloids because Mongoloids are a lower class.
What I have thought while living in Nepal so far is that while the Bahun have a strong caste consciousness, when it comes to racial consciousness, the Bahun often look at it more calmly without prejudice. What the Bahun have is strictly their own tribal consciousness. Instead, it is the Chhetri, who are in second place and whose race has become ambiguous, that have a complex and loudly call themselves Aryan. In that sense, the Chhetri youth can also be called a victim whose thinking is bound by the caste system.

Caste consciousness caused by their origin

The Chhetri have benefited the most within the caste system with the Bahun (Brahman caste) at the top. They have a class consciousness that they are higher in rank than the Mongoloids who rejected the rule of the caste system and were suppressed. This sense of being a chosen people comes out, for example, in the fact that the Chhetri absolutely avoid the word Mongoloid (Mongolian in Nepal) no matter how Mongoloid they look, or even if their parent is Mongoloid. When the parent's face looks like a different tribe no matter how you look at it, and you ask deeply, 'Oh? Are they from a different tribe?', it is not rare that they say, 'Well, actually one of my parents is from a different tribe...'. That is why they strictly answer 'I am Chhetri,' and implicitly suggest that they are an upper caste. The word 'Chhetri' is a convenient word that can lump them into an Aryan-like division for the time being, no matter what they look like. Also, when you go to the countryside, the Chhetri's worship of Bahuns is quite real, and from Bahun customs, Janai belief, worship of Pandits (Bahun priests), to entering and leaving houses and words and actions toward lower classes, they strictly follow Bahun rules. That is exactly their duty as the cardmen (soldiers) of the caste system.

Recently, the number of Nepalis is increasing in various countries, so if you see a Chhetri who looks like they have Mongoloid blood, you should ask them. 'You look Mongoloid, don't you?' They will always reply, 'But I am Chhetri.

The existence of Matwali Chhetri, the true Khas who rejected the caste system

Now, when the Khas people were becoming Hinduized in the past, there were also proud people who chose to hold onto their own identity. They chose to believe in indigenous gods rather than the Hindu scriptures preached by the Brahmans, and they chose not to change their past lifestyle of eating what they liked rather than forbidding alcohol. Although their lineage was truly Khas and completely the same as the people who became Chhetri, because they rejected casteism, their treatment was ranked below Chhetri. However, since the lineage itself could not be denied, the common name "Matwali Chhetri" was created by attaching the word Matwali, which means alcohol drinker. This original Khas people who should have been the legitimate ones, commonly known as Matwali Chhetri, came to be seen as lower in rank by the Chhetri. And after that, when hundreds of years passed and the constitution was made, their existence was never counted as Chhetri in the written caste system. Because they did not act together with the mainstream that later expanded to the east and finally built the Kingdom of Nepal, they still live mainly deep in the mountains of western Nepal today.

Chhetri surnames and their meanings

Adhikari, khatri (K.C), Karki, khadka, Kaji, Kunwar, gharti (G.C), Thapa, Thakuri, Baniya, Bhandari, Basnet, Hamal, Bisht (Bista), Bogati, Bohora, Budhathoki, Chhetri (Xetry), Chand, Lamichhane, Mahat, Malla, Rana, Ruwal, Raut, Shah, Shahi, Singh,

The original meanings of the surnames are written below. Just because someone has a certain surname does not mean they currently hold that occupation. Also, the Matwali Chhetri have not changed their names into Chhetri-specific surnames; they do not have unique names and use the same surnames as the Chhetri people, who were originally from the same group.

• Rana = high-ranking military officer/li>
• Adhikari = commanding official
• Kaji = commander
• Karki = financial official
• Khadka = swordsman
• Thapa = border soldier
• Bhandari = storekeeper
• Bista = baron
• Chhetri = warrior (Chhetri is the name of the caste, but it is also used as a surname)

There are also surnames that overlap with Bahun

• Adhikari
• Lamichhane

Surnames that overlap with Newar

• Baniya
• Malla
• Singh

Surnames that overlap with Magar

• Rana
• Khadka
• Thapa
• Several others

Surnames that overlap with Tharu

• Mahato

Surnames that overlap with Sarki

• Roka