Note 2 — G

Criminal habits. 11. The vagrant branch of the tribes supplies some of the most audacious criminals in the Province. A recent report says:—“They are the pest of the neighbourhoods which they frequent, are continually pilfering, robbing standing crops, attacking carts and passengers along the roads, committing robberies and even dakaities.” It is preposterous to connect them, as has been done in this report, with the Thârus, a particularly harmless, inoffensive race inhabiting the Himalayan Tarâi. The boys are trained at first on field robbery, and are then taken out on excursions for the purpose of burglary. When they go to rob fields the gang consists of not less than twenty men. When out for the purpose of burglary eight or nine go together. Unlike the Sânsiyas the Hâbûras very seldom use violence except to save themselves from arrest, and they never carry any weapons but bludgeons. Mr. A. O. Hume2 writes of them:—“They never worship Thâkurji except in sickness or great misfortune, such as the visit of the Police or of a Magistrate to their camp. At no time is their ritual a complicated one; it consists of an extraordinary manipulation with grains of wheat, the petitioners making at the same time a vow of sacrificing a goat or a fowl, which is subsequently performed by half roasting the offering in a flame of ghi in which salt and frankincense are thrown, and then feasting upon it. If a crime has been committed and traced to any horde, the chief immediately determines who are to be given up. Usually a compromise is made with the Police; two out of six or three out of eight are made over to justice, the rest escaping. All the chief does is to repeat a form of words, and then taking two of the grains of wheat offered to the god, he places them on the head of the scapegoat. The oath of the brotherhood is upon him, and whether he be guilty or not, he confesses to the Magistrate or Judge and goes to the gallows or to a lifelong exile confident that his chief and brethren will, as they are bound, feed and protect his wife and children that he leaves behind even before their own. Marriage seems scarcely to be with them a religious ceremony; it consists in placing four small coins in a figure of diamond shape outside which a circle is drawn, and round this the bride and bridegroom walk seven times.”