ee to all, and, indeed, a restraint on personal liberty seems
never to have entered into the conception of any Hindu religious
legislator. There are, as a rule, a small number of resident _chelas_
or disciples who are scholars and attendants on the superiors,
and also out-members who travel over the country and return to the
monastery as a headquarters. The monastery has commonly some small
endowment in land, and the resident _chelas_ go out and beg for alms
for their common support. If the Mahant is married the headship may
descend in his family; but when he is unmarried his successor is one
of his disciples, who is commonly chosen by election at a meeting of
the Mahants of neighbouring monasteries. Formerly the Hindu governor
of the district would preside at such an election, but it is now,
of course, left entirely to the Bairagis themselves.

15. Married Bairagis.

Large numbers of Bairagis now marry and have children, and have
formed an ordinary caste. The married Bairagis are held to be
inferior to the celibate mendicants, and will take food from them,
but the mendicants will not permit the married Bairagis to eat with
them in the _chauka_ or place purified for the taking of food. The
customs of the married Bairagis resemble those of ordinary Hindu
castes such as the Kurmis. They permit divorce and the remarriage
of widows, and burn the dead. Those who have taken to cultivation
do not, as a rule, plough with their own hands. Many Bairagis have
acquired property and become landholders, and others have extensive
moneylending transactions. Two such men who had acquired possession
of extensive tracts of zamindari land in Chhattisgarh, in satisfaction
of loans made to the Gond zamindars, and had been given the zamindari
status by the Marathas, were subsequently made Feudatory Chiefs of
the Nandgaon and Chhuikhadan States. These chiefs now marry and the
States descend in their families by primogeniture in the ordinary
manner. As a rule, the Bairagi landowners and moneylenders are not
found to be particularly good specimens of their class.

Balahi

1. General notice.

_Balahi._ [108]--A low functional caste of weavers and village
watchmen found in the Nimar and Hoshangabad Districts and in Central
India. They numbered 52,000 persons in the Central Provinces in
1911, being practically confined to the two Districts already
mentioned. The name is a corruption of the Hindi _bulahi_, one who
calls, or a