5. Social rules.
The caste sometimes employ a Brāhman for the marriage ceremony; but generally his services are limited to fixing an auspicious date, and the functions of a priest are undertaken by members of the family. They invite a Brāhman to give a name to a boy, and call him by this name. They think that if they changed the name they would not be able to get a wife for the child. They will eat any kind of flesh, including pork and fowls, but they are not considered to be impure. They are generally illiterate, and dirty in appearance. Unmarried girls wear glass bangles on both hands, but married women wear metal bracelets on the right hand and glass on the left. Girls are twice tattooed: first in childhood, and a second time after marriage. The proper avocations of the Katias were the spinning of cotton thread and the weaving of the finer kinds of cloth; but most of them have had to abandon their ancestral calling from want of custom, and they are now either village watchmen or cultivators and labourers. A few of them own villages. The Katias think themselves rather knowing; but this opinion is not shared by their neighbours, who say ironically of them, “A Katia is eight times as wise as an ordinary man, and a Kāyasth thirteen times. Any one who pretends to be wiser than these must be an idiot.”
[1] Tribes and Castes of the N.-W. P., art. Katwa.
[2] Temple and Fallon’s Hindustāni Proverbs.
[3] Perhaps a leather strap or belt.
[4] A revolution or circuit.
[5] A thousand.
[6] The third Baisākh (June).
[7] Butea frondosa.
[8] A description of the ceremony is given in the article on Kurmi.