8. Social rules and status.
The caste eat flesh and fish and drink liquor, and in the Marātha Districts they will eat chickens like most castes of this country. In Mandla they have recently prohibited the keeping of fowls, under pain of temporary expulsion. Those who took food in charity-kitchens during the famine of 1900 were readmitted to the community with the penalty of shaving the beard and moustaches in the case of a man, and cutting a few hairs from the head in that of a woman. In Berār the Lād, Jain and Katghar Koshtis are all strict vegetarians. The Koshtis employ Brāhmans for their ceremonies, but their social status is about on a level with the village menials, below the cultivating castes. This, however, is a very good position for weavers, as most of the weaving castes are stigmatised as impure. But the Koshtis live in towns and not in villages and weave the finer kinds of cloth for which considerable skill is required, while in former times their work also yielded a good remuneration. These facts probably account for their higher status; similarly the Tāntis or weavers of Bengal who produce the fine muslins of Dacca, so famous in Mughal times, have obtained such a high rank there that Brāhmans will take water from their hands;[6] while the few Tāntis who are found in the Central Provinces are regarded as impure and are not touched. The caste are of a turbulent disposition, perhaps on account of their comparatively light work, which does not tire their bodies like cultivation and other manual labour. One or two serious riots have been caused by the Koshtis in recent years.