[1] This article is partly based on a paper by Mr. Bijai Bahadur, Naib-Tahsīldār, Bālāghāt.
[2] Bombay Ethnographic Survey, draft article on Chitrakathi.
[3] May-June. The Akhatīj is the beginning of the agricultural year.
[4] Berār Census Report (1881), paragraph 206. The passage is slightly altered and abridged in reproduction.
Cutchi
1. General notice.
Cutchi or Meman, Kachhi, Muamin.—A class of Muhammadan merchants who come every year from Gujarāt and Cutch to trade in the towns of the Central Provinces, where they reside for eight months, returning to their houses during the four months of the rainy season. In 1911 they numbered about 2000 persons, of whom five-sixths were men, this fact indicating the temporary nature of their settlements. Nevertheless a large proportion of the trade of the Province is in their hands. The caste is fully and excellently described by Khān Bahādur Fazalullah Lutfullah Farīdi, Assistant Collector of Customs, Bombay, in the Bombay Gazetteer.[1] He remarks of them: “As shopkeepers and miscellaneous dealers Cutchis are considered to be the most successful of Muhammadans. They owe their success in commerce to their freedom from display and their close and personal attention to and keen interest in business. The richest Meman merchant does not disdain to do what a Pārsi in his position would leave to his clerks. Their hope and courage are also excellent endowments. They engage without fear in any promising new branch of trade and are daring in their ventures, a trait partly inherited from their Lohāna ancestors, and partly due to their faith in the luck which the favour of their saints secures them.” Another great advantage arises from their method of trading in small corporations or companies of a number of persons either relations or friends. Some of these will have shops in the great centres of trade, Bombay and Calcutta, and others in different places in the interior. Each member then acts as correspondent and agent for all the others, and puts what business he can in their way. Many are also employed as assistants and servants in the shops; but at the end of the season, when all return to their native Gujarāt, the profits from the different shops are pooled and divided among the members in varying proportion. By this method they obtain all the advantages which are recognised as attaching to co-operative trading.