Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s5.1.4

c48.s5.1.4

This last attribute is acquired, it is said, in the course of a wandering life, exposed to all weathers in jungles and other unhealthy localities. Strange diseases make their appearance only to be accounted for by the agency of witchcraft, and the old women of the Ṭāṇḍā, accordingly, go in considerable risk of their lives. In compensation, perhaps, the Banjārā is the only caste in which the women are said habitually to take the big walking-staff to their husbands. There is a small caste, the Thōrī, which performs in the lower Himālaya the duties of carriage undertaken in the plains by the Banjārā or Lavāṇā. They are connected with the latter, and apparently ply their trade in the same tracts in north Rājputāna, of which tract they say they are natives. But there is another caste of the same name which is allied to the Ahēṛī, if not identical with them, and these are altogether lower in rank and pursuits, being mostly fowlers, or at best, mat-makers, along the Indus. In Central India and the north Dekkan, even as far as Mysore, there are still a few bands of the once noted Peṇḍhārī freebooters, now engaged like Banjārā in the carrying trade. Originally, the Peṇḍhārī were no more than a collection of all sorts of foreign Muslim disbanded from the Delhi army, and linked together for the common purpose of raiding villages and travellers. They are now a small caste by themselves, and give little or no trouble to the police.