4. Occupation and social status.
The Dhākars are mainly engaged in cultivation as farmservants and labourers. Like the Halbas, they consider it a sin to heat or forge iron, looking upon the metal as sacred. They eat the flesh of clean animals, but abstain from both pigs and chickens, and some also do not eat the peacock. A man as well as a woman is permanently expelled for adultery with a person of lower caste, the idea of this rule being no doubt to prevent degradation in the status of the caste from the admission of the offspring of such unions. If one Dhākar beats another with a shoe, both are temporarily put out of caste. But if a man seduces a caste-man’s wife and is beaten with a shoe by the husband, he is permanently expelled, while the husband is readmitted after a feast. On being received back into caste intercourse an offender is purified by drinking water in which the image of a local god has been dipped or the Rāja of Bastar has placed his toe. Like other low castes of mixed origin, they are very particular about each other’s status and will only accept cooked food from families who are well known to them. At caste feasts each family or group of families cooks for itself, and in some cases parents refuse to eat with the family into which their daughter has married and hence cannot do so with the girl herself.
[1] This article is based entirely on a paper by Rai Bahādur Panda Baijnāth, Superintendent, Bastar State.