_Barhai, Sutar, Kharadi, Mistri._--The occupational caste of
carpenters. The Barhais numbered nearly 110,000 persons in the Central
Provinces and Berar in 1911, or about 1 in 150 persons. The caste
is most numerous in Districts with large towns, and few carpenters
are to be found in villages except in the richer and more advanced
Districts. Hitherto such woodwork as the villagers wanted for
agriculture has been made by the Lohar or blacksmith, while the
country cots, the only wooden article of furniture in their houses,
could be fashioned by their own hands or by the Gond woodcutter. In the
Mandla District the Barhai caste counts only 300 persons, and about
the same in Balaghat, in Drug only 47 persons, and in the fourteen
Chhattisgarh Feudatory States, with a population of more than two
millions, only some 800 persons. The name Barhai is said to be from
the Sanskrit Vardhika and the root _vardh_, to cut. Sutar is a common
name of the caste in the Maratha Districts, and is from Sutra-kara,
one who works by string, or a maker of string. The allusion may be to
the Barhai's use of string in planing or measuring timber, or it may
possibly indicate a transfer of occupation, the Sutars having first
been mainly string-makers and afterwards abandoned this calling for
that of the carpenter. The first wooden implements and articles of
furniture may have been held together by string before nails came into
use. Kharadi is literally a turner, one who turns woodwork on a lathe,
from _kharat_, a lathe. Mistri, a corruption of the English Mister,
is an honorific title for master carpenters.