Indian Antiquary Vol 03

Author(s): Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 89

MARCH, 1874.)
NOTES ON CASTES IN THE DEKHAN.
chieftains whose affairs thoy mismanage. Their offices are sometimes hereditary. In general, however, the Simpis stick to their goose, or at least to the cloth trade, which they consider rather more honourable than actual operativo tailoriag.
11. In Punâ there are a set of Goså vis called Dangli, who are well-to-do traders, and some of them in particular have speculated with much success in building-sites. Married ones are called Gharbâ rî.
All the castes above enumerated, when they get on well in the world, adopt the Brahman turban and slippers, even the immigrant Gujaratis and Marvadis. Those which follow usually adhere to the Marâțhá turban and forked slipper, though there are exceptions. Some of them are considered inferior in rank to cultivators, and are named here only for convenience with relation to their trades, which I consider more important than the precedence, always disputed, and usually impossible to enforce.
12. There are two or three classes of Sutars,* or carpenters. The Badhês or Sutârs of Maharashtra are the most respectable and numerous. They are industrious and saving, and generally pretty well off, skilful in the use of their own simple tools, and easily trained to handle those of the West. The regular tools of a Sutår are the vákas or chisel-edged adze, the morticing chisel, and drill revolving by means of a barrel and bow. The second is usually imported from
England, but the adze and drill are of native make. They use the saw comparatively little, and the back of the adze serves as a hammer. There is hardly anything, from the making of a cart to the rich carving of a house front, which the Sutar will not do with this insignificant apparatus.
13. There is a caste of immigrant Marvadi Satars, Vaishnavas by sect, less numerous, skilful, and respectable than the Badhés.
14. The Sikalg hars are turners and sharpeners of weapons; their lathes and whetstones are turned with a strap passing round the axle, and pulled to and fro by the alternate motion of the arms. They also lay on lacquer-work with the lathe.
15. There is a wandering caste of Sikal• "They are either Marshals or Gujaratis; or Parades from Hindustan : there are few villages of size without a Suter, who has a recognized place in the Balloti establishment, and makes ploughs, &c. for the Kunabis
ghars, with which those of towns hold no communion.
16. There are four castes of L o hârs, or smiths. Those of Maharashtra are, as in the | case of the carpenters, superior in every respect.
They use native tools not unlike those of Europe, except that the bellows, which are made of a goat-skin like a water-bag, have no stiff. sides, and are compressed horizontally. The European bellows, however, are being very generally adopted. They take readily to European teaching, after which they can do anything that can be done with fire and iron. Some spears which I took home in 1873 were pronounced, by the firm of Wilkinson and Son, equal in all respects to the best English cutlery, and in one matter the shape of the point) superior; while it is impossible to produce them in England but at three times the price. They were made at Ahmadnagar, Aurangabad, Nagpur, and Salem.
17. The Hindustani Lohárst are not often found at work in these districts. They are often sipå his in N. I. regiments.
18. The Panch als are a wandering caste of smiths, living in grass-mat huts, and using as their chief fuel the roots of thorn bushes, which they batter out of the ground in a curious way with repeated strokes of the back of a very heavy short-handled axe peculiar to them. selves. They are less common in the Dekhan than in Khandesh
19. The Gisî dîs were a similar tribe, and of very bad reputation for their thieving propensities. They are now mostly settled in vil. lages, and I know nothing worse of them than that their forges seem to breed a great thirst for country spirits. Both these castes are inferior in respectability and skill to pakka Lohârs.
20. The Käsårs are of two divisions Tambad Kisar and Bangad Kasar. The first are coppersmiths, and many are employed in the railway workshops as fitters. They are very clever at working in copper and brass, especially in the sheet, and in kánsé (bell-metal). The Bângad Kas â rs make glass bangles. Brass castings are made by men called Olivas, who are of various castes, generally Marathas. There are some Hindustanî Brahmans employed or rayats." --Trans. Mel. and Phys. Socy. ut supra,
+ "Those from Hindustan are termed Bundele."--Trans. Med. & Phys. Socy. ut supra, p. 396.
p. 211.