5. Social Customs
Like the Gonds, the Pardhāns will eat almost any kind of food, including beef, pork and the flesh of rats and mice, but they will not eat the leavings of others. They will take food from the hands of Gonds, but the Gonds do not return the compliment. Among the Hindus generally the Pardhāns are much despised, and their touch conveys impurity while that of a Gond does not. Every Pardhān has tattooed on his left arm near the inside of the elbow a dotted figure which represents his totem or the animal, plant or other natural object after which his sept is named. Many of them have a better type of countenance than the Gonds, which is perhaps due to an infusion of Hindu blood. They are also generally more intelligent and cunning. They have criminal propensities, and the Pathārias of Chhattīsgarh are especially noted for cattle-lifting and thieving. Writing forty years ago Captain Thomson[2] described the Pardhāns of Seoni as bearing the very worst of characters, many of them being regular cattle-lifters and gang robbers. In some parts of Seoni they had become the terror of the village proprietors, whose houses and granaries they fired if they were in any way reported on or molested. Since that time the Pardhāns have become quite peaceable, but they still have a bad reputation for petty thieving.