“A short distance to the west of the Regent’s (Kotāh) camp is the Pindāri-ka-chhaoni, where the sons of Karīm Khān, the chief leader of those hordes, resided; for in those days of strife the old Regent would have allied himself with Satan, if he had led a horde of plunderers. I was greatly amused to see in this camp the commencement of an Id-Gāh or place of prayer; for the villains, while they robbed and murdered even defenceless women, prayed five times a day!”[10]
8. The existing Pindāris
While the freebooting Pindāris had no regular caste organisation, their descendants have now become more or less of a caste in accordance with the usual tendency of a distinctive occupation, producing a difference in status, to form a fresh caste. The existing Pindāris in the Central Provinces are both Muhammadans and Hindus, the Muhammadans, as already stated, having been originally the children of Hindus who were kidnapped and converted. It is one of the very few merits of the Pindāris that they did not sell their captives to slavery. Their numerous prisoners of all ages and both sexes were employed as servants, made over to the chiefs or held to ransom from their relatives, but the Pindāris did not carry on like the Banjāras a traffic in slaves.[11] The Muhammadan Pindāris were said some time ago to have no religion, but with the diffusion of knowledge they have now adopted the rites of Islam and observe its rules and restrictions. In Bhandāra the Hindu Pindāris are Garoris or Gowāris, They say that the ancestors of the Pindāris and Gowāris were two brothers, the business of the Pindāri brother being to tend buffaloes and that of the Gowāri brother to herd cows. These Pindāris will beg from the owners of buffaloes for the above reason. They revere the dog and will not kill it, and also worship snakes and tigers, believing that these animals never do them injury. They carry their dead to the grave in a sitting posture, seated in a jholi or wallet, and bury them in the same position. They wear their beards and do not shave. Some of these Pindāris are personal servants, others cultivators and labourers, and others snake-charmers and jugglers.
9. Attractions of a Pindāri’s life
The freebooting life of the Pindāris, unmitigated scoundrels though they were, no doubt had great charms, and must often have been recalled with regret by those who settled down to the quiet humdrum existence of a cultivator. This feeling has been admirably depicted in Sir Alfred Lyall’s well-known poem, of which it will be permissible to quote a short extract:
When I rode a Dekhani charger with the saddle-cloth gold-laced,
And a Persian sword and a twelve-foot spear and a pistol at my waist.
It’s many a year gone by now; and yet I often dream
Of a long dark march to the Jumna, of splashing across the stream,
Of the waning moon on the water and the spears in the dim starlight