joins all who wish
to protect their persons never to be without leather shoes. Manu
in one place expresses great repugnance to stepping into another's
shoes and peremptorily forbids it, and the Puranas recommend the
use of shoes when walking out of the house, particularly in thorny
places and on hot sand." [281] Thus shoes were certainly worn by the
Hindus before Muhammadan times, though loose slippers may have been
brought into fashion by the latter. And it seems possible that the
Mochis may have adopted Islam, partly to obtain the patronage of the
followers of the new religion, and also to escape from the degraded
position to which their profession of leather-working was relegated
by Hinduism and to dissociate themselves from the Chamars.

Mowar

_Mowar._--A small caste of cultivators found in the Chhattisgarh
country, in the Raipur and Bilaspur Districts and the Raigarh
State. They numbered 2500 persons in 1901. The derivation of the name
is obscure, but they themselves say that it is derived from Mow or
Mowagarh, a town in the Jhansi District of the United Provinces, and
they also call themselves Mahuwar or the inhabitants of Mow. They
say that the Raja of Mowagarh, under whom they were serving,
desired to marry the daughter of one of their Sirdars (headmen),
because she was extremely beautiful, but her father refused, and
when the Raja persisted in his desire they left the place in a body
and came to Ratanpur in the time of Raja Bimbaji, in A.D. 1770. A
Bilaspur writer states that the Mowars are an offshoot from the
Rajwar Rajputs of Sarguja State. Colonel Dalton writes [282] of the
Rajwar Rajputs of Sarguja and other adjoining States that they are
peaceably disposed cultivators, who declare themselves to be fallen
Kshatriyas; but he remarks later that they are probably aborigines,
as they do not conform to Hindu customs, and they are skilled in a
dance called Chailo, which he considers to be of Dravidian origin. In
another place he remarks that the Rajwars of Bengal admit that they
are derived from the miscegenation of Kurmis and Kols. The fact that
the Mowars of Sarangarh make a representation of a bow and arrow on
their documents, instead of signing their names, affords some support
to the theory that they are probably a branch of one of the aboriginal
tribes. The name may be derived from _mowa_, a radish, as the Mowars
of Bilaspur are engaged principally in garden cultivation.

The Mowars have no subcaste