The Khangārs worship the usual Hindu deities and especially venerate Dūlha Deo, a favourite household godling in the northern Districts. Pachgara Deo is a deity who seems to have been created to commemorate the occasion when the Dāngi distributed the marriage cakes five times to the fugitive ancestress of the caste. His cult is now on the decline, but some still consider him the most important deity of all, and it is said that no Khangār will tell an untruth after having sworn by this god. Children dying unmarried and persons dying of leprosy or smallpox are buried, while others are buried or burnt according as the family can afford the more expensive rite of cremation or not. As among other castes a corpse must not be burnt between sunset and sunrise, as it is believed that this would cause the soul to be born blind in the next birth. Nor must the corpse be wrapped in stitched clothes, as in that case the child in which it is reincarnated would be born with its arms and legs entangled. The corpse is laid on its back and some ghī, til, barley cakes and sandalwood, if available, are placed on the body. The soul of the deceased is believed to haunt the house for three days, and each night a lamp and a little water in an earthen pot are placed ready for it. When cremation takes place the ashes are collected on the third day and the burning ground is cleaned with cowdung and sprinkled with milk, mustard and salt, in order that a cow may lick over the place and the soul of the deceased may thus find more easy admission into Baikunth or heaven. Well-to-do persons take the bones of the dead to the Ganges, a few from the different parts of the body being selected and tied round the bearer’s neck. Mourning is usually only observed for three days.
5. Social status.
The Khangārs do not admit outsiders into the caste, except children born of a Khangār father and a mother belonging to one of the highest castes. A woman going wrong with a man of another caste is finally expelled, but liaisons within the caste may be atoned for by the usual penalty of a feast. The caste eat flesh and drink liquor but abjure fowls, pork and beef. They will take food cooked without water from Banias, Sunārs and Tameras, but katchi roti only from the Brāhmans who act as their priests. Such Brāhmans are received on terms of equality by others of the caste. Khangārs bathe daily, and their women take off their outer cloth to eat food, because this is not washed every day. Food cooked with water must be consumed in the chauka or place where it is prepared, and not carried outside the house. Men of the caste often have the suffix Singh after their names in imitation of the Rājpūts. Although their social observances are thus in some respects strict, the status of the caste is low, and Brāhmans do not take water from them.
6. Occupation.
The Khangārs say that their ancestors were soldiers, but at present they are generally tenants, field-labourers and village watchmen. They were formerly noted thieves, and several proverbs remain in testimony to this. “The Khangār is strong only when he possesses a khunta (a pointed iron rod to break through the wall of a house).” ‘The Sunār and the Khangār only flourish together’; because the Sunār acts as a receiver of the property stolen by the Khangār. They are said to have had different ways of breaking into a house, those who got through the roof being called chhappartor, while others who dug through the side walls were known as khonpāphor. They have now, however, generally relinquished their criminal practices and settled down to live as respectable citizens.
[1] Compiled principally from a paper by Kanhyā Lāl, clerk in the Gazetteer Office.
[2] Carthamus tinctorius.