d in the city each of the others contributed a brick
and five rupees, which formed a stock sufficient for the merchant to
recommence trade with advantage. The Agarwalas trace their descent
from a Raja Agar Sen, whose seventeen sons married the seventeen
daughters of Basuki, the king of the Nagas or snakes. Elliot considers
that the snakes were really the Scythian or barbarian immigrants,
the Yueh-chi or Kushans, from whom several of the Rajpat clans as the
Tak, Haihayas and others, who also have the legend of snake ancestry,
were probably derived. Elliot also remarks that Raja Agar Sen, being a
king, must have been a Kshatriya, and thus according to the legend the
Agarwalas would have Rajput ancestry on both sides. Their appearance,
Mr. Crooke states, indicates good race and breeding, and would lend
colour to the theory of a Rajput origin. Raja Agar Sen is said to have
ruled over both Agra and Agroha, and it seems possible that the name
of the Agarwalas may also be connected with Agra, which is a much
more important place than Agroha. The country round Agra and Delhi
is their home, and the shrine of the tutelary goddess of some of the
Agarwalas in the Central Provinces is near Delhi. The memory of the
Naga princess who was their ancestor is still, Sir H. Risley states,
held in honour by the Agarwalas, and they say, 'Our mother's house is
of the race of the snake.' [135] No Agarwala, whether Hindu or Jain,
will kill or molest a snake, and the Vaishnava Agarwalas of Delhi
paint pictures of snakes on either side of the outside doors of their
houses, and make offerings of fruit and flowers before them.

In the Central Provinces, like other Bania subcastes, they are
divided into the Bisa and Dasa or twenty and ten subdivisions,
which marry among themselves. The Bisa rank higher than the Dasa,
the latter being considered to have some flaw in their pedigree,
such as descent from a remarried widow. The Dasas are sometimes
said to be the descendants of the maidservants who accompanied the
seventeen Naga or snake princesses on their marriages to the sons of
Raja Agar Sen. A third division has now come into existence in the
Central Provinces, known as the Pacha or fives; these are apparently
of still more doubtful origin than the Dasas. The divisions tend to
be endogamous, but if a man of the Bisa or Dasa cannot obtain a wife
from his own group he will sometimes marry in a lower group.

The Agarwalas are divided into seventeen an