o
purify it, and will eat food only in the _chauka_ or sanctified place
in the house. At harvest when they must take meals in the fields,
one of them prepares a patch of ground, cleaning and watering it,
and there cooks food for them all.

The Singrore Kurmis derive their name from Singror, a place near
Allahabad. Singror is said to have once been a very important town,
and the Lodhis and other castes have subdivisions of this name. The
Desha Kurmis are a group of the Mungeli tahsil of Bilaspur. Desh
means one's native country, but in this case the name probably
refers to Bundelkhand. Mr. Gordon states [54] that they do not rear
poultry and avoid residing in villages in which their neighbours keep
poultry. The Santore Kurmis are a group found in several Districts,
who grow _san_-hemp, [55] and are hence looked down upon by the
remainder of the caste. In Raipur the Manwa Kurmis will also do
this; Mana is a word sometimes applied to a loom, and the Manwa
Kurmis may be so called because they grow hemp and weave sacking
from the fibres. The Pataria are an inferior group in Bilaspur, who
are similarly despised because they grow hemp and will take their
food in the fields in _patris_ or leaf-plates. The Gohbaiyan are
considered to be an illegitimate group; the name is said to signify
'holding the arm.' The Bahargaiyan, or 'those who live outside the
town,' are another subcaste to which children born out of wedlock
are relegated. The Palkiha subcaste of Jubbulpore are said to be
so named because their ancestors were in the service of a certain
Raja and spread his bedding for him; hence they are somewhat looked
down on by the others. The name may really be derived from _palal_,
a kind of vegetable, and they may originally have been despised for
growing this vegetable, and thus placing themselves on a level with
the gardening castes. The Masuria take their name from the _masur_
or lentil, a common cold-weather crop in the northern Districts,
which is, however, grown by all Kurmis and other cultivators; and the
Agaria or iron-workers, the Kharia or catechu-makers, and the Lonhare
or salt-makers, have already been mentioned. There are also numerous
local or territorial subcastes, as the Chaurasia or those living
in a Chaurasi [56] estate of eighty-four villages, the Pardeshi or
foreigners, the Bundelkhandi or those who came from Bundelkhand, the
Kanaujias from Oudh, the Gaur from northern India, and the Marathe and
Telenge or Ma