1 VAGRANT, MENIAL, AND ARTISAN CASTES. 30&
2 and Machhi follow their avocations on land and the Mallah and Mohana
3 on water, all belonging to the same caste.
4 622. The Dhinwar of the Jamma. — Along the left bank of Jamna below
5 Dehli are settled a certain small number of people who call themselves Dhin-
6 wars. They work as fishermen and boatmen and some of them as Bhar-
7 bhiinjas, and have retm-ned themselves in the present Census, partly as
8 Jhinwars, but mostly as Malhihs. They appear to have moved up the river
9 from the neighbourhood of Agra, and to keep themselves distinct from the
10 indigenous Jhinwars. They are much addicted to thieving, and it has been
11 proposed to treat them as a criminal tribe. Violent crime is however rare
12 among them. They cultivate and even own a certain ai-ea of land. They
13 generally travel about in the disguise of musicians, singing, begging, pilfering,
14 and committing burglary and theft on a large scale when opportunity offers.
15 They apparently extend all along the banks of the river in Aligarh,
16 Bulandshahr, and other districts of the North-West Provinces. Men of this
17 class seem to travel all over the Panjiib, as they have been convicted even in
18 the frontier districts. All Hindus drink at their hands,— a sufficient proof
19 that they are true Jhinwai'S Ijy caste.
20 WORKERS IN WOOD, IRON, STONE, AND CLAY.
21 623. — The workers in wood, iron, stone, and clay. — This group, of which
22 *P. 310- the figures are given in Abstract No. 10 :i on the opposite page,* completes,
23 11- with the scavenger, leather-worker, and water-cai-rier classes, the castes from
24 which village menials proper are drawn. It is divided into four sections, the
25 workers in iron, in wood, in stone, and in clay. The workers in iron and wood
26 are in many parts of India identical, the two occupations being followed by
27 the same individuals. In most parts of the Panjab they are sufficiently well
28 distinguished so far as occupation goes, but there seems reason to believe that
29 they really belong to one and the same caste, and that they very frequently
30 intermarry. True workers in stone may be said hardly to exist in a Province
31 where stone is so scarce ; but I include among them the Raj who is both a
32 mason and a bricklayer and is said generally to be a Tarkhan by caste, and
33 they are connected with the cai-penters by the Thavi of the hills, who is both
34 carpenter and stone-mason. The potters and brickmakers are a sufficiently
35 distinct class, who are numerous in the Panjab owing to the almost universal
36 use of the Persian wheel with its numerous little earthen pots to raise water
37 for purposes of irrigation.
38 [P. 327J 624. The Lobar (Caste No. 22) . — The Lobar of the Panjab is, as his
39 name implies, a blacksmith pure and simple. He is one of the true village
40 menials, receiving customary dues in the shape of a share of the produce, in
41 retm'n for which he makes and mends all the iron implements of agriculture,
42 the materials being found by the husbandman. He is most numerous in pro-
43 portion to total population in the hills and the districts that lie immediately
44 below them, where like all other artisan castes he is largely employed in field
45 tP. 106- labom-. He is, even if the figares of Abstract No. 7% (page 2 2 If) be included,
46 ^^'^- present in singularly small numbers in the Multan and Derajat divisions and in
47 Bahawalpur ; but why so I am unable to explain. Probably men of other castes
48 engage in blacksmith's work in those parts, or perhaps the carpenter and the
49 blacksmith are the same. His social position is low, even for a menial ; and he
50 is classed as an impui-e caste in so far that Jats and others of similar standing
51 will have no social communion with him, though not as an outcast like the