2. The Purads, Golaks and Borals
Another small group related to the Vidurs are the Purāds of Nāgpur; they say that their ancestor was a Brāhman who was carried away in a flooded river and lost his sacred thread. He could not put on a new thread afterwards because the sacred thread must be changed without swallowing the spittle in the interval. Hence he was put out of caste and his descendants are the Purāds, the name being derived from pūr, a flood. These people are mainly shopkeepers. In Berār two other groups are found, the Golaks and Borals. The Golaks are the illegitimate offspring of a Brāhman widow; if after her husband’s decease she did not shave her head, her illegitimate children are known as Rand[3] Golaks; if her head was shaved, they are called Mund (shaven) Golaks; and if their father be unknown, they are named Kund Golaks. The Golaks are found in Malkāpur and Bālāpur and number about 400 persons. A large proportion of them are beggars. A Boral is said to be the child of a father of any caste and a mother of one of those in which widows shave their heads. As a matter of fact widows, except among Brāhmans, rarely shave their heads in the Central Provinces, and it would therefore appear, if Mr. Kitts’ definition is correct, that the Borals are the offspring of women by fathers of lower caste than themselves; a most revolting union to Hindu ideas. As, however, the Borals are mostly grocers and shopkeepers, it is possible that they may be the same class as the Purāds. In 1881 they numbered only 163 persons and were found in Dārhwa, Mehkar and Chikhli tāluks.