Note 11 — Dhīmar1

The social status of the Dhīmar is somewhat peculiar. Owing to his employment as palanquin-bearer, cook and household servant he has been promoted to the group of castes who are ceremonially clean, so that Brāhmans in northern India will take water and food cooked in butter from his hands. But by origin he no doubt belongs to the primitive or non-Aryan tribes, a fact which he shows by his appearance and also by his customs. In diet he is the reverse of fastidious, eating crocodiles, tortoises and crabs, and also pork in the Marātha Districts, though in the north where he is employed by Brāhmans as a personal servant he abstains from this food. With all this, however, the Dhīmars practise in some social matters a pharasaical strictness. In Jubbulpore Mr. Pancham Lāl records that among the four subcastes of Rekwār, Bant, Barmaian and Pabeha a woman of one subcaste will not partake of any food cooked by one of another division. A man will take any kind of food cooked by a man of another subcaste, but from a woman only such as is not mixed with water. A woman will drink the water held in the metal vessel of a woman of another division, but not in an earthen vessel; and in a metal vessel only provided that it is brought straight from the well and not taken from the ghinochi or water-stand of such woman’s house. A man will take water to drink from the metal or earthen vessel of any other Dhīmar, male or female. In Berār again Mr. Kitts states11 that a Bhoi considers it pollution to eat or drink at the house of a Lohār (blacksmith), a Sutār (carpenter), a Bhāt (bard), a washerman or a barber; he will not even carry their palanquins at a marriage.