1 VAGRANT, MENIAL, AND ARTISAN CASTES. 333
2 Satwag or "bearers of bnrdcns." Like most hill menialfs they often cultivate
3 land, and are employed as ploughmen and field labourers by the Rajputs and
4 allied races of the hills who are too proud to cultivate with their own hands.
5 They are true village menials, and attend upon village guests, fill pipes, bear
6 torches, and carry the bridegroom's palancpiin at weddings and the like, and
7 receive fi^ced fees for doing so. In the towns tliey appear to be common
8 servants. They are of the lowest or almost the lowest standing as a caste,
9 apparently hardly if at all above the Dumna or sweeper of the hills ; liut the
10 Batwal has perhaps a slightly higher standing than the Barwala. Indeed the
11 name of Barwala is said to be a corruption of Bdhnrwdla or " outsider,"
12 because, like all outcasts, they live in the outskirts of the village. They are
13 returned in considerable numlicrs for almost all our sub-montane districts
14 and for Kangra, but in the Hill States they would appear to have been
15 included imder some other of the menial castes. The term Barwala seems
16 to be cun'ent also in Jalandhar, Amritsar, Ijahoie and Siulkot, as consi-
17 derable numljers are retiirned for these districts. In the higher ranges and
18 where they are known as Batwal, they are almost all Hindus ; but when
19 they descend to the lower hills or plains and take the name of Barwala
20 they are almost entirely Musalman, except in Siallcot where a considerable
21 number of them are still Hindus. In fact thtir difference of religion
22 seems to correspond very largely with the difference in the name ; and
23 indeed a portion of the Hindu Barwalas of Sialkot consists of 1,455 persons of
24 that district who returned themselves as Ratal, and whom I classed as Barwala
25 and not as Batwal because they were sub-montane and not montane in their
26 haliitat. The Ratals would seem to be almost if not quite identical with the
27 Barwalas or Batwals, and are very largely employed as agricultural labourers
28 on the footing of a true village menial. Brahmans are said to officiate at
29 the weddings of the Batwal ; but if so I suspect it must be an outcast class
30 of Brahmans. The Barwalas claim Rajput origin, a claim prolmbly suggested
31 if any suggestion be needed, by their clans being called after Riijput tribes,
32 such as Manhas and Janjua.
33 653. The Meg, (Caste No. 57).— The Meg or as he is called in Rawal-
34 pindi Meng, is the Chamar of the tract immediately below the Jammu hills.
35 But he appears to he of a slightly better standing than the Chamtir ; and this
36 superiority is doubtless owing to the fact that the Meg is a weaver as well
37 as a worker in leather, for we have already seen that weaving stands in the
38 social scale a degree higher than shoe-making.' Like the Chamars of the
39 plains the Megs work as coolies, and like all hill menials they work much in
40 the fields. General Cunningham is inclined to identify them with the
41 Meehioi of Anian, and has an interesting note on them at page 11 /J Volume
42 II of his Archfcological Reports, in which he describes them as an inferior caste
43 of cultivators who inhabited the banks of the upper Satluj at the time of
44 Alexander's invasion, and probably gave their name to the town of Makhowal.
45 They seem at present to be almost confined to the upper valleys of the Ravi and
46 Chanab, and their stronghold is the sub-montane portion of Sialkot lying
47 between these two rivers. They are practically all Hindus.
48 654. The Dumna (Caste No. 41).— The Dumna, called also Domra, and
49 even Dum in Chamba, is the Chuhra of the hills proper, and is also found in
50 1 In Bikaner and Sirsa a man who is pleased with a Chamar calls him Megwal, just as he
51 calls him Dherh if he is angry with him. The Chamars of the Bagar say they are descended
52 from Meg Rikhj who was created by JSarain.