Note 1 — KHARIA

Khatīk.—A functional caste of Hindu mutton-butchers and vegetable sellers. They numbered nearly 13,000 persons in the Central Provinces and Berār in 1911, and are, as might be expected, principally returned from the Districts with a considerable urban population, Amraoti, Jubbulpore, Nāgpur and Saugor. The name is derived from the Sanskrit Khattika,1 a butcher or hunter. In northern India Mr. Crooke states that the caste are engaged in keeping and selling pigs and retailing vegetables and fruits, and does not specially mention that they slaughter animals, though in Agra one of their subcastes is named Būchar, a corruption of the English word butcher. In the Punjab Sir D. Ibbetson2 says of them that, “They form a connecting link between the scavengers and the leather-workers, though they occupy a social position distinctly inferior to that of the latter. They are great keepers of pigs and poultry, which a Chamār would not keep.3 At the same time many of them tan and dye leather and indeed are not seldom confused with the Chamrāng. The Khatīk is said sometimes to keep sheep and goats and twist their hair into waist-bands for sale.” Sir H. Risley again describes the Khatīks of Bihār as a cultivating and vegetable-selling caste.4 The differences in the principal occupations ascribed to the caste are thus somewhat remarkable. In the Central Provinces the Khatīks are primarily slaughterers of sheep and goats and mutton-butchers, though they also keep pigs, and some of them, who object to this trade, make their livelihood by selling vegetables. Both in the United Provinces and Punjab the Khatīks are considered to be connected with the Pāsis and probably an offshoot of that caste. In the Central Provinces they are said to be an inferior branch of the Gadaria or shepherd caste. The Gadarias state that their old sheep were formerly allowed to die. Then they appointed some poor men of the community to kill them and sell the flesh, dividing the profits with the owner, and thus the Khatīk caste arose. The Khatīks accept cooked food from the Gadarias, but the latter do not reciprocate.