son and daughter of the village. And among the families
of ruling Rajput chiefs, when a daughter of the house is married,
it was customary to send with her a number of handmaidens taken from
the menial and serving castes. These became the concubines of the
bridegroom and it seems clear that their progeny would be employed
in similar capacities about the household and would follow the castes
of their mothers. The Tamera caste of coppersmiths trace their origin
from the girls so sent with the bride of Dharam-Pal, the Haihaya Rajput
Raja of Ratanpur, through the progeny of these girls by the Raja.

33. Other castes who rank with the village menials.

Many other castes belong to the group of those from whom a Brahman
cannot take water, but who are not impure. Among these are several
of the lower cultivating castes, some of them growers of special
products, as the Kachhis and Mowars or market-gardeners, the
Dangris or melon-growers, and the Kohlis and Bhoyars who plant
sugarcane. These subsidiary kinds of agriculture were looked down
upon by the cultivators proper; they were probably carried out on the
beds and banks of streams and other areas not included in the regular
holdings of the village, and were taken up by labourers and other
landless persons. The callings of these are allied to, or developed
from, that of the Mali or gardener, and they rank on a level with
him, or perhaps a little below, as no element of sanctity attaches
to their products. Certain castes which were formerly labourers,
but have now sometimes obtained possession of the land, are also in
this group, such as the Rajbhars, Kirs, Manas, and various Madras
castes of cultivators. Probably these were once not allowed to hold
land, but were afterwards admitted to do so. The distinction between
their position and that of the hereditary cultivators of the village
community was perhaps the original basis of the different kinds of
tenant-right recognised by our revenue law, though these now, of
course, depend solely on length of tenure and other incidents, and
make no distinction of castes. The shepherd castes who tend sheep
and goats (the Gadarias, Dhangars and Kuramwars) also fall into
this group. Little sanctity attached to these animals as compared
with the cow, and the business of rearing them would be left to
the labouring castes and non-Aryan tribes. The names of all three
castes denote their functional origin, Gadaria being from _gadar_,
a she