1 VAGEANT, MENIAL, AND ARTISAN CASTES. '267
2 common and ready to prostitute tLein for money when occasion oSers,
3 and always on the watch for opportunities of pilfering, and yon have
4 the lowest type of gipsy and vagrant tribes as we now find them in
5 the Panjab. Now imagine such a tribe abandoning its vagrant habits
6 and settling as menials in a village. Being no longer nomads they would
7 cease to hunt and eat vermin ; but they would still eat carrion, they
8 would still plait grass, and being what they were, the filthiest work to
9 be performed, namely that of seavengeiing, would fall to their share.
10 They would then be the Chiihra or scavenger caste as they exist in every
11 village. Suppose again that a section of tliem, desirous of rising in life,
12 abandoned plaiting grass and seaveugeriug and took to tanning and work-
13 ing in leather, the next less filthy work available, as their occupation,
14 and modified their primitive creed so as to render it somewhat more like
15 that of their Hindu neighbours, but being .still specially concerned with
16 dead animals, continued to eat carrion : we shoidd then have the Chamar
17 or tanner and leather-worker. And finally if, desiring to live cleanly,
18 they gave up eating carrion and working in leather and took to weav-
19 ing, which is (I know not why, unless it be that weavers' implements
20 are made from grass by the outcast classes of grass-workers) considered
21 only less degrading, they would become the Julaha of our towns and
22 villages and be admitted under semi-protest within the pale of Hindu-
23 ism. Or they might skip the leather-working stage and pass direct from
24 eeavengering to weaving. Now if all this were merely speculation upon
25 what is possible, it would mean little or nothing. But when we see that
26 changes of this sort axe actually in progress, it seems to me that the
27 suggestion may mean a good deal. We see the vagrant classes such
28 as the Biiwaria and Aheri tending to settle down in the villages and
29 perform low menial offices; we see the Dhanak converted from the hunter
30 of the jungles into a scavenger and weaver ; we see the Chiihra refuse
31 to touch night-soil and become a Musalli, or substitute leather-working
32 and tanning for scavengering and become a Rangreta ; we see the Khatik
33 who is a scavenger in the east turn into a tanner in the west; we see
34 the Koli Chamar abandon leather-working and take to weaving, and turn
35 into a Chamar- Julaha or Bunia; we see that in some districts most of
36 the Mochis are weavers rather than leather-workers ; and we find that it
37 is impossible to draw a hard and fast line anywhere between vagrancy
38 and scavengering at the bottom and weaving at the top or to say that
39 such a caste is above and such a caste is below the line, but that each
40 caste throws out off-shoots into the grade above that which is occupied
41 by the greater number of its members.
42 566. Origin of tlie water-carrying classes.— In the second series of changes
43 we have not so many examples of the intermediate steps. But it is natural
44 that the upward movement in the social .scale which every tribe is fain
45 to make if possible should not be confined to one definite direction only.
46 Some of the vagrant castes have like the Btiwaria abandoned the eat-
47 ing of carrion and become hunters of higher game, though not perhaps
48 quite relinquishing their taste for vermin ; some while retaining their nomad
49 habits have taken to specified forms of labom- like the Od or Changar ;
50 others have settled down to cultivation like the Mahtam or to crime
51 like the JMina ; while others again have taken to the carrying trade like
52 some sections of the Banjaras, or to the pedlar's business. But there is