or, ‘The Mahānti if he can get a loan will at once buy an elephant.’ Their shrewdness in business transactions and tendency to overreach the less intelligent cultivating castes have made them unpopular like the Kāyasths, and another proverb says—
Patarkata, Tankarkata, Pāniota, Gaudini mai
E chāri jāti ku vishwās nai,
or, ‘Trust not the palm-leaf writer (Karan), the weaver, the liquor-distiller nor the milk-seller.’
[1] This article is based principally on a paper by Nand Kishore, Bohidār, Sambalpur.
[2] Hobson-Jobson, art. Cranny.
[3] Eragrostis cynosuroides.