4. Birth and death ceremonies.
The Kīrs usually burn their dead, but children under twelve are buried. The ashes and bones are either sent to the Ganges or consigned to the nearest river or lake. Children have only one name, which is given on the seventh day after birth by a Brāhman. During the birth ceremony the husband’s younger brother catches hold of the skirt of the child’s mother, who on this pays him a few pice and pulls away her cloth. If this custom has any meaning it is apparently in symbolical memory of polyandry, the women bribing her husband’s younger brother so that he may not claim the child as his own.
5. Food, dress and occupation.
The Kīrs do not take food from any caste except the Dadhāria Brāhmans, who are Mārwāris, and act as their family priests. Brāhmans and other high castes will drink water brought in a brass vessel by a Kīr. The Kīrs eat no meat except goats’ flesh and fish, but are much addicted to liquor, which is always conspicuous at their feasts and festivals. They have a caste panchāyat, which deals with the ordinary offences. Temporary excommunication is removed by the offender giving three feasts, on which an amount varying with his social position and means must be expended. The first of these is eaten on a river-bank, the second in a garden, and the third, which confers complete readmission to caste intercourse, in the offender’s house. The Kīrs live along river-banks, where they grow melons in the sand and castor and vegetables in alluvial soil. They are considered very skilful at raising these crops, and fully appreciate the use of manure. For their own consumption they usually grow bājra and arhar, being, like all Mārwāris, very fond of bājra. The members of the caste are easily distinguished by their dress, the men wearing a white mirzai or short coat, a dhoti reaching to the knees, and a head-cloth placed in a crooked position on the head, so as to leave the hair of the scalp uncovered. They wear necklaces of black wooden beads, besides the images of Bhairon and Devi. The women wear Jaipur chunris or over-cloths and ghānghras or skirts. They have red lac bangles on their wrists and arms above the elbow, and ornaments called ramjhul on their legs. The women have a gait like that of men. The speech of the Kīrs sounds like Mārwāri, and they are peculiar in their preference for riding on buffaloes.
[1] This article is compiled principally from a paper by Pandit Sakhāram, Revenue Inspector, Hoshangābād District.
[2] Tod’s Rājasthān, vol. ii. p. 327.
[3] Elliott’s Hoshangābād Settlement Report, p. 60.