stitutions as
the Friends' Mission of Hoshangabad and other missionaries; and a
Government technical school has now been opened at Nagpur, in which
boys from all over the Province are trained in the profession. Very
little wood-carving with any pretensions to excellence has hitherto
been done in the Central Provinces, but the Jain temples at Saugor and
Khurai contain some fair woodwork. A good carpenter in towns can earn
from 12 annas to Rs. 1-8 a day, and both his earnings and prospects
have greatly improved within recent years. Sherring remarks of the
Barhais: "As artisans they exhibit little or no inventive powers: but
in imitating the workmanship of others they are perhaps unsurpassed
in the whole world. They are equally clever in working from designs
and models." [242]

Bari

_Bari._--A caste of household servants and makers of leaf-plates,
belonging to northern India. The Baris numbered 1200 persons in
the Central Provinces in 1911, residing mainly in Jubbulpore and
Mandla. Sir H. Risley remarks of the caste: [243] "Mr. Nesfield
regards the Bari as merely an offshoot from a semi-savage tribe
known as Banmanush and Musahar. He is said still to associate with
them at times, and if the demand for leaf-plates and cups, owing to
some temporary cause, such as a local fair or an unusual multitude
of marriages, happens to become larger than he can at once supply,
he gets them secretly made by his ruder kinsfolk and retails them at
a higher rate, passing them off as his own production. The strictest
Brahmans, those at least who aspire to imitate the self-denying life
of the ancient Indian hermit, never eat off any other plates than those
made of leaves." "If the above view is correct," Sir H. Risley remarks,
"the Baris are a branch of a non-Aryan tribe who have been given a
fairly respectable position in the social system in consequence of the
demand for leaf-plates, which are largely used by the highest as well
as the lowest castes. Instances of this sort, in which a non-Aryan
or mixed group is promoted on grounds of necessity or convenience to
a higher status than their antecedents would entitle them to claim,
are not unknown in other castes, and must have occurred frequently
in outlying parts of the country, where the Aryan settlements were
scanty and imperfectly supplied with the social apparatus demanded by
the theory of ceremonial purity." There is no reason why the origin
of the Bari from the Banmanush (wild