Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s2.t2.3

c48.s2.t2.3

§ 53. **The Ḍōm and Ghāsiyā.** It was remarked above that in the Gangetic region there were functions which even the scavenger caste would not undertake, there being the Ḍōm at hand to perform them. Here, then, is found a caste which, if not at the bottom of the social scale, is, at least, not far from it. It is not, however, a scavenging caste by tradition, nor is it homogeneous. There are Ḍōms and Ḍōms. In the Kumāon and Garhvāl Himālaya, the Ḍōm lives by agriculture and village handicrafts. Further west, the Panjāb Ḍūmnā is often, it is true, the village sweeper, but his ordinary trade is that of cane-work. This last is, in fact, the occupation most widely spread, on the whole, throughout the caste. The Ḍōm is at his lowest in the Bengal Delta, whither the caste is said to have been imported from upper India, to do what no local caste would do. In Bihār and its neighbourhood to the west, the Ḍōm seem to fall into two sections. One settled down to village life, mat-weaving, basket-making, and labour, with a little scavenging thrown in, the other more or less nomad, and containing gangs said to be expert and artistic burglars and thieves. Some stray tribes seem to have penetrated across the Central Belt into the north Telugu country and the Karnatic. In the former they