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.