16. Trade and agriculture
The Telis are a very enterprising caste, and the great bulk of them have abandoned their traditional occupation and taken to others which are more profitable and respectable. In their trade, like that of the Kalār, cash payment by barter must have been substituted for customary annual contributions at an early period, and hence they learnt to keep accounts when their customers were ignorant of this accomplishment. The knowledge has stood them in good stead. Many of them have become moneylenders in a small way, and by this means have acquired villages. In the Raipur and Bilāspur Districts they own more than 200 villages and 700 in the Central Provinces as a whole. They are also shopkeepers and petty traders, travelling about with pack-bullocks like the Banjāras. Mr. A. K. Smith notes that formerly the Teli hired Banjāras to carry his goods through the jungle, as he would have been killed by them if he had ventured to do so himself. But now he travels with his own bullocks. Even in Mughal times Mr. Smith states Telis occasionally rose to important positions; Kāwaji Teli was sutler to the Imperial army, and obtained from the Emperor Jahāngīr a grant of Ashti in Wardha and an order that no one should plant betel-vine gardens in Ashti without his permission. This rule is still observed and any one wishing to have a betel-vine garden makes a present to the patel. Krishna Kānta Nandi or Kānta Bābu, the Banyan of Warren Hastings, was a Teli by caste and did much to raise their position among the Hindus.[12]