7. Social customs.
The Bhainas are a comparatively civilised tribe and have largely adopted Hindu usages. They employ Brāhmans to fix auspicious days for their ceremonies, though not to officiate at them. They live principally in the open country and are engaged in agriculture, though very few of them hold land and the bulk are farm-labourers. They now disclaim any connection with the primitive Baigas, who still prefer the forests. But their caste mark, a symbol which may be affixed to documents in place of a signature or used for a brand on cattle, is a bow, and this shows that they retain the recollection of hunting as their traditional occupation. Like the Baigas, the tribe have forgotten their native dialect and now speak bad Hindi. They will eat pork and rats, and almost anything else they can get, eschewing only beef. But in their intercourse with other castes they are absurdly strict, and will take boiled rice only from a Kawar, or from a Brāhman if it is cooked in a brass and not in an earthen vessel, and this only from a male and not from a female Brāhman; while they will accept baked chapātis and other food from a Gond and a Rāwat. But in Sambalpur they will take this from a Savar and not from a Gond. They rank below the Gonds, Kawars and Savars or Saonrs. Women are tattooed with a representation of their sept totem; and on the knees and ankles they have some figures of lines which are known as ghāts. These they say will enable them to climb the mountains leading to heaven in the other world, while those who have not such marks will be pierced with spears on their way up the ascent. It has already been suggested that these marks may have given rise to the name of the Ghatyāra division of the tribe.
[1] This article is based principally on a paper by Panna Lāl, Revenue Inspector, Bilāspur, and also on papers by Mr. Syed Sher Ali, Nāib-Tahsīldār, Mr. Hira Lāl and Mr. Adurām Chaudhri of the Gazetteer office.
[2] For the meaning of the term Baiga and its application to the tribe, see also article on Bhuiya.
[3] It is or was, of course, a common practice for a husband to cut off his wife’s nose if he suspected her of being unfaithful to him. But whether the application of the epithet to the goddess should be taken to imply anything against her moral character is not known.