Volume 4 — Mallāh

or, ‘Where Mallāhs sit, there is always a fire.’ This refers to their custom of kindling fires on the river-bank to protect themselves from cold. In Narsinghpur the Mallāhs have found a profitable opening in the cultivation of hemp, a crop which other Hindu castes until recently tabooed on account probably of the dirty nature of the process of cleaning out the fibre and the pollution necessarily caused to the water-supply. They sow and cut hemp on Sundays and Wednesdays, which are regarded as auspicious days. They also grow melons, and will not enter a melon-field with their shoes on or allow a woman during her periodical impurity to approach it. The Mallāhs are poor and illiterate, but rank with Dhīmars and Kewats, and Brāhmans will take water from their hands.