4. Social customs.
The caste do not admit outsiders. In the matter of food they eat flesh and fish, but abstain from liquor and from eating fowls, except in the Marātha country. They will take pakka food or that cooked without water from Gūjars, Rāghuvansis and Lodhis. In the Nāgpur country, where the difference between katcha and pakka food is not usually observed, they will not take it from any but Marātha Brāhmans. Abīrs and Dhīmars are said to eat with them, and the northern Brāhmans will take water from them. They have a caste panchāyat or committee with a hereditary president called Sethia, whose business it is to eat first when admitting a person who has been put out of caste. Killing a cat or a squirrel, selling a cow to a butcher, growing hemp or selling shoes are offences which entail temporary excommunication from caste. A woman who commits adultery with a man of another caste is permanently excluded. The Kirārs are tall in stature and well and stoutly built. They have regular features and are generally of a fair colour. They are regarded as quarrelsome and untruthful, and as tyrannical landlords. As agriculturists they are supposed to be of encroaching tendencies, and the proverbial prayer attributed to them is, “O God, give me two bullocks, and I shall plough up the common way.” Another proverb quoted in Mr. Standen’s Betūl Settlement Report, in illustration of their avarice, is “If you put a rupee between two Kirārs, they become like mast buffaloes in Kunwār.” The men always wear turbans, while the women may be distinguished in the Marātha country by their adherence to the dress of the northern Districts. Girls are tattooed on the back of their hands before they begin to live with their husbands. A woman may not name her husband’s elder brother or even touch his clothes or the vessels in which he has eaten food. They are not distinguished for cleanliness.