Kaikāri: Vagrant basket-makers.
Kanjar, Beria, Sānsia: Gipsies and thieves.
Katia: Cotton-spinners.
Kori: Weavers and labourers.
Mādgi: Telugu tanners and hide-curriers.
Mahār: Weavers and labourers.
Māla: Telugu weavers and labourers.
Māng: Broom- and mat-makers and village musicians. They also castrate cattle.
Mehtar: Sweepers and scavengers.
Certain occupations, those of skinning cattle and curing hides, weaving the coarse country cloth worn by the villagers, making baskets from the rind of the bamboo, playing on drums and tom-toms, and scavenging generally are relegated to the lowest and impure castes. The hides of domestic animals are exceedingly impure; a Hindu is defiled even by touching their dead bodies and far more so by removing the skins. Drums and tom-toms made from the hides of animals are also impure. But in the case of weaving and basket-making the calling itself entails no defilement, and it would appear simply that they were despised by the cultivators, and as a considerable number of workers were required to satisfy the demand for baskets and cloth, were adopted by the servile and labouring castes. Basket- and mat-making are callings naturally suited to the primitive tribes who would obtain the bamboos from the forests, but weaving would not be associated with them unless cloth was first woven of tree-cotton. The weavers of the finer cotton and silk cloths, who live in towns, rank much higher than the village weavers, as in the case of the Koshtis and Tāntis, the latter of whom made the famous fine cotton cloth, known as abrawān, or ‘running water,’ which was supplied to the imperial Zenāna at Delhi. On one occasion a daughter of Aurāngzeb was reproached on entering the room for her immodest attire and excused herself by the plea that she had on seven folds of cloth over her body.[80] In Bengal Brāhmans will take water from Tāntis, and it seems clear that their higher status is a consequence of the lucrative and important nature of their occupation.