others go to the potter's house and worship his wheel there. In the Central Provinces after the wedding they get a bed. newly made with newar tape and seat the bride and bridegroom on it, and put a large plate at their feet, in which presents are placed. The Sanadhyas differ from the Kanaujias in that they smoke tobacco but do not eat meat, while the Kanaujias eat meat but do not smoke. They greet each other with the word Dandawat, adding Mahārāj to an equal or superior.

Brahman, Sarwaria.-This is the highest class of the Kanaujia Brahmans, who take their name from the river Sarju or Gogra in Oudh, where they have their home. They observe strict rules of ceremonial purity, and do not smoke tobacco nor plough with their own hands. An orthodox Sarwaria Brahman will not give his daughter in marriage in a village from which his family has received a girl, and sometimes will not even drink the water of that village. The Sarwarias make widows dress in white and sometimes shave their heads. In some tracts they intermarry with the Kanaujia Brāhmans, and in others take daughters in marriage but do not give their own daughters to them. In Dr. Buchanan's time, a century ago, the Sarwaria Brahmans would not eat rice sold in the bazar which had been cleaned in boiling water, as they considered that it had thereby become food cooked with water; and they carried their own grain to the grain-parcher to be prepared for them. When they ate either parched grain or sweetmeats from a confectioner in public they must purify the place on which they sat down with cowdung and water.1 This may be compared with a practice observed by very strict Brahmans even now, of adding water to the medicine which they obtain from a Government dispensary, to purify it before drinking it.

Brahman, Utkal.-These are the Brahmans of Orissa and one of the Panch-Gaur divisions. They are divided into two groups, the Dakshinatya or southern and the Jajpuria or northern clan. The Utkal Brahmans, who first settled in Sambalpur, are known as Jharia or jungly, and form a

1 Eastern India, ii. 472, quoted in Mr. Crooke's art. Sarwaria.

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separate subcaste, marrying among themselves, as the later immigrants refuse to intermarry with them. Another group

of Orissa Brahmans have taken to cultivation, and are known as Halia, from hal, a plough. They grow the betel-vine, and in Orissa the areca and cocoanuts, besides doing ordinary cultivation. They have entirely lost their sacerdotal character, but glory in their occupation, and affect to despise the Bed or Veda Brāhmans, who live upon alms.1 A third class of Orissa Brahmans are the Pandas, who serve as priests and cooks in the public temples and also in private houses, and travel about India touting for pilgrims to visit the temple at Jagannath. Dr. Bhattacharya describes the procedure of the temple-touts as follows: 2

"Their tours are so organised that during their campaigning season, which commences in November and is finished by the car-festival at the beginning of the rains, very few villages of the adjoining Provinces escape their visits and taxation. Their appearance causes a disturbance in every household. Those who have already visited 'The Lord of the World' at Puri are called upon to pay an instalment towards the debt contracted by them while at the sacred shrine, which, though paid many times over, is never completely satisfied. That, however, is a small matter compared with the misery and distraction caused by the 'Jagannath mania,' which is excited by the preachings and pictures of the Panda. A fresh batch of old ladies become determined to visit the shrine, and neither the wailings and protestations of the children nor the prospect of a long and toilsome journey can dissuade them. The arrangements of the family are for the time being altogether upset, and the grief of those left behind is heightened by the fact that they look upon the pilgrims as going to meet almost certain death.

This vivid statement of the objections to the habit of pilgrimage from a Brahman writer is very interesting. Since the opening of the railway to Puri the danger and expense as well as the period of absence have been greatly reduced; but the pilgrimages are still responsible for a large

1 Stirling's description of Orissa in As. Res. vol, xv. p. 199, quoted in

Hindu Castes and Sects.

2 Hindu Castes and Sects, p. 63.

mortality, as cholera frequently breaks out among the vast assembly at the temple, and the pilgrims, hastily returning to all parts of India, carry the discase with them, and cause epidemics in many localities. All castes now eat the rice cooked at the temple of Jagannath together without defilement, and friendships are cemented by eating a little of this rice together as a sacred bond.

1

Chadar, Kotwar.-A small caste of weavers and village watchmen resident in the Districts of Saugor, Damoh, Jubbulpore and Narsinghpur. They numbered 28,000 persons in 1911. The caste is not found outside the northern Districts of the Central Provinces. The name is derived from the Sanskrit chirkar, a weaver, and belongs to Bundelkhand, but beyond this the Chadārs have no knowledge or traditions of their origin. They are probably an occupational group formed from members of the Dravidian tribes and others who took to the profession of village watchmen. A number of other occupational castes of low status are found in the northern Districts, and their existence is probably to be accounted for by the fact that the forest tribes were subjected and their tribal organisation destroyed by the invading Bundelas and other Hindus some centuries ago. They were deprived of the land and relegated to the performance of menial and servile duties in the village, and they have formed a new set of divisions into castes arising from the occupations they adopted. The Chadārs have two subcastes based on differences of religious practice, the Parmesuria or worshippers of Vishnu, and Athia or devotees of Devi. It is doubtful, however, whether these are strictly endogamous. They have a large number of exogamous septs or bainks, which are named after all sorts of animals, plants and natural objects. Instances of these names are Dhana (a leaf of the rice plant), Kasia (bell-metal), Gohia (a kind of lizard), Bachhulia (a calf), Gujaria (a milkmaid), Moria (a peacock), Laraiya (a jackal), Khatkīra (a bug), Sugaria (a pig), Barraiya (a wasp), Neora (a mongoose), Bhartu Chiraiya (a sparrow), and so on. Thirty-nine names

1 This article is compiled from papers by Mr. Wali Muhammad,

Tahsildar of Khurai, and Kanhya Lāl, clerk in the Gazetteer office.