In the northern Districts and the cotton tract the Barhai works as a
village menial. He makes and mends the plough and harrow (_bakhar_)
and other wooden implements of agriculture, and makes new ones when
supplied with the wood. In Wardha he receives an annual contribution
of 100 lbs. of grain from each cultivator. In Betul he gets 67 lbs. of
grain and other perquisites for each plough of four bullocks. For
making carts and building or repairing houses he must be separately
paid. At weddings the Barhai often supplies the sacred marriage-post
and is given from four annas to a rupee. At the Diwali festival he
prepares a wooden peg about six inches long, and drives it into the
cultivator's house inside the threshold, and receives half a pound
to a pound of grain.
In cities the carpenters are rapidly acquiring an increased degree
of skill as the demand for a better class of houses and furniture
becomes continually greater and more extensive. The carpenters
have been taught to make English furniture by such institutions as
the Friends' Mission of Hoshangabad and other missionaries; and a
Government technical school has now been opened at Nagpur, in which
boys from all over the Province are trained in the profession. Very
little wood-carving with any pretensions to excellence has hitherto
been done in the Central Provinces, but the Jain temples at Saugor and
Khurai contain some fair woodwork. A good carpenter in towns can earn
from 12 annas to Rs. 1-8 a day, and both his earnings and prospects
have greatly improved within recent years. Sherring remarks of the
Barhais: "As artisans they exhibit little or no inventive powers: but
in imitating the workmanship of others they are perhaps unsurpassed
in the whole world. They are equally clever in working from designs
and models." [242]