Note 27 — Chamār

The Chamār ranks at the very bottom of the social scale, and contact with his person is considered to be a defilement to high-caste Hindus. He cannot draw water from the common well and usually lives in a hamlet somewhat removed from the main village. But in several localities the rule is not so strict, and in Saugor a Chamār may go into all parts of the house except the cooking and eating rooms. This is almost necessary when he is so commonly employed as a farmservant. Here the village barber will shave Chamārs and the washerman will wash their clothes. And the Chamār himself will not touch the corpse of a horse, a dog or any animal whose feet are uncloven; and he will not kill a cow though he eats its flesh. It is stated indeed that a Chamār who once killed a calf accidentally had to go to the Ganges to purify himself. The crime of cattle-poisoning is thus rare in Saugor and the other northern Districts, but in the east of the Provinces it is a common practice of the Chamārs. As is usual with the low castes, many Chamārs are in some repute as Gunias or sorcerers, and in this capacity they are frequently invited to enter the houses of Hindus to heal persons possessed of evil spirits. When children fall ill one of them is called in and he waves a branch of the nim27 tree over the child and taking ashes in his hand blows them at it; he is also consulted for hysterical women. When a Chamār has had something stolen and wishes to detect the thief, he takes the wooden-handled needle used for stitching leather and sticks the spike into the sole of a shoe. Then two persons standing in the relation of maternal uncle and nephew hold the needle and shoe up by placing their forefingers under the wooden handle. The names of all suspected persons are pronounced, and he at whose name the shoe turns on the needle is taken to be the thief.