Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s2.t1.5

c48.s2.t1.5

It is only the simpler leather work, as was mentioned above, that is done by the village Camār, and though he can cobble shoes, he does not generally make any but the roughest kinds. The Mōcī takes up the higher branches of the craft, but in Bengal, as in the west Panjāb, this caste does a good deal of the village labour, and in the former tract his shoes are said to be inferior to those of the Camār of Bihār. In Rājputāna the Bāmbhi seems to be the shoemaking branch of the latter, and in 1891 some 207,000 of them were returned, but as in 1901 they were reduced to 1100, it is probable that the rest are included in the main Camār caste. In several parts of India, the Mōcī of the towns are divided into functional sub-castes, such as that of saddlers, embroiderers of saddle-cloths, makers of leather buckets for ghī (clarified butter), of spangles, shields and scabbards, rising in rank as their calling entails greater skill or more costly materials, always tending towards endogamy within the craft.