4. Social Customs
The caste bury their dead with the head pointing to the west. This practice is peculiar, and is also followed, Colonel Dalton states, by the hill Bhuiyas of Bengal, who in so doing honour the quarter of the setting sun. When a burial takes place, all the mourners who accompany the corpse throw a little earth into the grave. On the same day some food and liquor are taken to the grave and offered to the dead man’s spirit, and a feast is given to the caste-fellows. This concludes the ceremonies of mourning, and the next day the relatives go about their business. The caste are usually petty cultivators and labourers, while they also collect grass and fuel for sale, and propagate the lac insect. In Seoni they have a special relation with the Ahīrs, from whom they will take cooked food, while they say that the Ahīrs will also eat from their hands. In Narsinghpur a similar connection has been observed between the Rājjhars and the Lodhi caste. This probably arises from the fact that the former have worked for several generations as the farm-servants of Lodhi or Ahīr employers, and have been accustomed to live in their houses and partake of their meals, so that caste rules have been abandoned for the sake of convenience. A similar intimacy has been observed between the Panwārs and Gonds, and other castes who stand in this relation to each other. The Rājjhars will also eat katcha food (cooked with water) from Kunbis and Kahārs. But in Hoshangābād some of them will not take food from any caste, even from Brāhmans. Their women wear glass bangles only on the right hand, and a brass ornament known as māthi on the left wrist. They wear no ornaments in the nose or ears, and have no breast-cloth. They are tattooed with dots on the face and patterns of animals on the right arm, but not on the left arm or legs. A liaison between a youth and maiden of the caste is considered a trifling matter, being punished only with a fine of two to four annas or pence. A married woman detected in an intrigue is mulcted in a sum of four or five rupees, and if her partner be a man of another caste a lock of her hair is cut off. The caste are generally ignorant and dirty, and are not much better than the Gonds and other forest tribes.
[1] Kitts’ Berār Census Report (1881), p. 157.
[2] About 400 lbs.