1 VAGRANT, MENIAL, AND ARTISAN CASTES. 275
2 The Od or Odh is a wandering tribe whose proper home appears to be
3 Western Hindustan and Rijpiitana ; at least the Ods of the Panjab usually
4 hail from those parts. They are vagrants, wandering about with their
5 families in search of employment on earthwork. They will not as a rule
6 take petty jobs, but prefer small contracts on roads, canals, railways, and the
7 like, or will build a house of adobe, and dig a tank, or even a well. They
8 settle down in temporary reed huts on the edge of the work ; the men dig,
9 the women carry the earth to the donkeys which they always have with them,
10 and the children drive the donkeys to the spoilbank. In the Salt-range
11 Tract they also quarry and carry stone ; and in parts of the North-West
12 Provinces they are said to be wandering pedlars. They eat anything and
13 evervthing, and though not unfrequently Musalmans, especially in the west,
14 are always outcast. They have a speech of their own called Odki of which I
15 know nothing, but which is very probably nothing more than the ordinary
16 dialect of their place of origin. They wear woollen clothes, or at least
17 one wollen garment. They claim descent fi'om one Bhagfrat who vowed
18 never to drink twice out of the same well, and so dug a fi-esh one every
19 day till one day he dug down and down and never came up again. It is
20 in mourning for him that they wear wool, and in imitation of him they bury
21 their dead even when Hindu, though they many by the Hindu ceremony.
22 Till the re-appearauee of Bhagirat they will, they say, remain outcasts. They
23 are said to claim Eajpiit or Kshatriya origin and to come from Marwar.
24 They worship Rnma and Siva {cf. Pushkarna Brahmans. Wilson's Indian
25 Caste, Vol. II, pp. 114, 139, 169). They are, for a vagrant tribe,
26 singularly fi-ee from all imputation of crime. They are distributed pretty
27 generally throughout the Province, but are most numerous in Lahore and
28 along the lower Indus and Chanab, and least numerous in the hills and sub-
29 montane districts. '
30 574. The Changar (Caste No. 64) .—The Changars are outcasts of pro-
31 bablv aboriginal descent, who are most numerous in the Amritsar division,
32 Lahore, Firozepm-, and Faridkot, but especially in Sialkot ; and they say that
33 their ancestors came fi'om the Jammu hills. Ti ey are originally a vagrant
34 tribe who wander about in search of work ; but in the neighbourhood of
35 large cities they are to he foimd in settled colonies. They will do almost
36 any sort of work, but are largely employed in agriculture, particularly as
37 reapers ; while their women are very generally employed in sifting and
38 cleaning grain for the graindealers. They are all Musalmans and maiTy by
39 nikali, and they say that they were converted by Shams Tabriz of Multan.
40 Their women still wear petticoats and not drawers ; but these are blue, not
41 red. They are exceedingly industrious, and not at all given to crime. They
42 have a dialect of their own regarding which, and indeed regarding the tribe
43 generally. Dr. Leitner has published some very interesting information. He
44 says that they call themselves not Changar but Chubna, and suggests that
45 Changar is derived from ckhdnna to sift. It has been suggested that Changar
46 is another form of Zingari ; but Dr. Leitner does not support the sug-
47 gestion.
48 [ P. 310] 575. The Bawaria (Caste No. 71). — The Bawarlas are a hunting tribe who
49 take their name from the hdwar or noose ^\ath which they snare wild animals.'
50 ' The Mahtams hunt with similar nooses ; but theirs are made of munj rope, while the
51 Bawaria aooses are made of leather.
52 t2