The Koris worship the ordinary Hindu deities and especially Devi. They become inspired by this goddess at the Jawara festival and pierce their cheeks with iron needles and tridents. Every family has a household god or Kul-Deo to whom a small platform is erected; offerings other than animal sacrifices are made to him on festivals and on the celebration of a marriage.
5. Occupation and social status.
Those of the caste who are Kabīrpanthis abstain from animal food, but the others eat the flesh of most animals except tame pig, and also drink liquor. Their social status is very low, but they are not usually considered as impure. Their women are tattooed on the right arm before marriage, and on the left after arrival at their husband’s house. Like several other low castes, they do not wear nose-rings. The principal occupation of the caste is the weaving of coarse country cloth, but as the trade of the hand-weaver is nowadays precarious and unprofitable many of them have forsaken it and taken to cultivation or daily labour. Mr. Nesfield says of them: “The material used by the Kori is the thread supplied by the Dhunia (Bahna); and thus the weaver caste has risen imperceptibly out of that of the cotton-carder, in the same way as the cobbler caste has risen out of the tanner. The art of weaving and plaiting threads is very much the same process as that of plaiting osiers, reeds and grass, and converting them into baskets and mats. This circumstance explains the puzzle why the weaver caste in India stands at such a low social level. He, however, ranks several degrees above the Chamār or tanner; as, among Hindus, herbs and their products (cotton being of course included) are invariably considered pure, while the hides of dead animals are regarded as a pollution.” This argument is part of Mr. Nesfield’s theory that the rank of each caste depends on the period of civilisation at which its occupation came into being, which is scarcely tenable. The reason why the weavers rank so low may, perhaps, be that the Aryans when they settled in villages in northern India despised all handicrafts as derogatory to their dignity. These were left to the subject tribes, and as a large number of weavers would be required, the industry would necessarily be embraced by the bulk of those who formed the lowest stratum of the population, and has ever since remained in their hands. If cloth was first woven from the tree-cotton plant growing wild, the business of picking and weaving it would naturally have fallen to the non-Aryan jungle tribes, who afterwards became the impure menial and labouring castes of the villages.
The weaver is the proverbial butt of Hindu ridicule, like the tailor in England. ‘One Gadaria will account for ten weavers’; ‘Four weavers will spoil any business.’ The following story also illustrates their stupidity: Twenty weavers got into a field of kāns grass. They thought it was a tank and began swimming. When they got out they said, “Let us all count and see how many we are, in case anybody has been left in the tank.” They counted and each left out himself, so that they all made out nineteen. Just then a Sowār came by, and they cried, to him, ‘Oh, Sir, we were twenty, and one of us has been drowned in this tank.’ The Sowār seeing that there was only a field of grass, counted them and found there were twenty; so he said, ‘What will you give me if I find the twentieth?’ They promised him a piece of cloth, on which the Sowār, taking his whip, lashed each of the weavers across the shoulders, counting as he did so. When he had counted twenty he took the cloth and rode away. Another story is that a weaver bought a buffalo for twenty rupees. His brother then came to him and wanted a share in the buffalo. They did not know how he should be given a share until at last the weaver said, “You go and pay the man who sold me the buffalo twenty rupees; and then you will have given as much as I have and will be half-owner of the buffalo.” Which was done. The ridicule attaching to the weaver’s occupation is due to its being considered proper for a woman rather than a man, and similar jests were current at the tailor’s expense in England. In India the weaver probably takes the tailor’s place because woven and not sewn clothes have hitherto been generally worn, as explained in the article on Darzi.
[1] Tribes and Castes of the North-West Provinces, iii. 316.