2. Subdivisions and marriage customs.
They have three subdivisions, the Marātha, Telugu and Kande Bedars. The names of their exogamous sections are also Marāthi. Nevertheless they retain one or two northern customs, presumably acquired from association with the Pindāris. Their women do not tuck the body-cloth in behind the waist, but draw it over the right shoulder. They wear the choli or Hindustāni breast-cloth tied in front, and have a hooped silver ornament on the top of the head, which is known as dhora. They eat goats, fowls and the flesh of the wild pig, and drink liquor, and will take food from a Kunbi or a Phulmāli, and pay little heed to the rules of social impurity. But Hindustāni Brāhmans act as their priests.
Before a wedding they call a Brāhman and worship him as a god, the ceremony being known as Deo Brāhman. The Brāhman then cooks food in the house of his host. On the same occasion a person specially nominated by the Brāhman, and known as Deokia, fetches an earthen vessel from the potter, and this is worshipped with offerings of turmeric and rice, and a cotton thread is tied round it. Formerly it is said they worshipped the spent bullets picked up after a battle, and especially any which had been extracted from the body of a wounded person.