1 274 PANJAB CASTES.
2 complete record of their raanners and custom:-- would probably throw much
3 light upon the ethnoloo'y of the Punjab, as it would enable us to discriminate
4 aboriginal from Aryan rustomS; and thus asist us in determining the stock to
5 which each of those many castes whose origin is so doubtful should be referred.
6 The tribes under discussion are for the most part outcasts, chiefly
7 because they feed on tlie fox, jackal, lizard, tortoise, and snub like unclean
8 animaU. They are, like the scayengers, hereditary workers in grass, straw,
9 reeds, and the like. Many of them appear to use a speech peculiar to
10 themselves, regarding which Dr. Leitner has collected some information,
11 while a sort of glossary has been published by the darogha of the Lahore
12 (Jentral Jail. In some cases this speech ajjpears to be a time language or
13 dialect peculiar to the trilie ; iu others to be a mere argot consisting of the
14 language current in the locality, thinly disguised, but suihciently so to render
15 it unintelligible to the ordinary listimer. A copious glossary of the Riimasi
16 or hiu/va Jranca of the thieying classes is said to haye been published in
17 18-j5 as Volume I of the " Selections from the Records of the Agra Goyern-
18 " ment." ISIuch information regarding the criminal tribes may ]>e gleaned
19 from the published reports of the Thuggee and Dacoity Department, and
20 especially from Colonel Sleeman's report published in 1849. The wander-
21 ing tribes included in the grotip now under discussion haye been diyidcd into
22 three classes. The first, including the Ods, the Beldars and the Changars are
23 those who have a fixed occupation, though no fixed dwelling-place. The last,
24 which comprises the Minas and the Harnis, are not hunters, and are rather
25 criminal than M-andcring, the families at least usually having fixed abodes,
26 though the men travel about in search of opportunities for theft. The middle
27 group, consisting of the Biiwaria, the Ahcri, the Thori, the Sansi, the
28 Pakhiwara, the Jhabjl, the Kehal, and the Gagra, are hunters and fishermen
29 living a more or less vagrant life in the jungles and on the river banks ; and
30 often, though by no means always, addicted to crime. The distribution of
31 each tribe is noted under its separate head ; ))ut the action of the Criminal
32 Tribes Act, which is enforced against a given tribe in some districts but not
33 in others, has probably modified their distribution by inducing them to
34 move from the former to the latter class of the districts. At the end of this
35 section I notice various castes of criminal habits who either have not been dis-
36 tinguished in our tables, or have been treated of elsewhere.
37 573. The Od and Beldar (Caste Nos. 85 and 129).— These two sets of
38 figures shf)uld probal)ly lie taken together, a^ they appear to refer to the same
39 caste. Indeed in several of the divisional offices the two terms liavc been
40 treated as synonymous. Bcldiir is properly the name of an occupation
41 merely ; it is derived from hel a mattock, and it denotes all whose calling it
42 is to work with that instrument. But though the common coolie of the
43 Province will often turn his hand to digging, the Od is the professional
44 navvy of the Panjab ; and the word Beldar is seldom applied, at least as a
45 tribal name, to the members of any other caste, though it seems in more
46 common use in the west than in the east, the Od of the west being generally
47 known as Beldar '.
48 ' Mr. Christie, however, assures me that there are large communities of professional Beldars
49 who are not Ods. They are generally Musalman in the Punjiib proper and Hindu in the eastern
50 districts ; they are not outcasts, have fixed habitations, and work as carriers with their animals
51 when earth-work is not forthcoming. It may be that the Musalmans returned in our tables belong
52 to this class ; as Od and Beldar have been confused.