The Basors worship the ordinary Hindu deities and also ghosts and
spirits. Like the other low castes they entertain a special veneration
for Devi. They profess to exorcise evil spirits and the evil eye,
and to cure other disorders and diseases through the agency of their
incantations and the goblins who do their bidding. They burn their
dead when they can afford it and otherwise bury them, placing the
corpse in the grave with its head to the north. The body of a woman
is wrapped in a red shroud and that of a man in a white one. They
observe mourning for a period of three to ten days, but in Jubbulpore
it always ends with the fortnight in which the death takes place;
so that a person dying on the 15th or 30th of the month is mourned
only for one day. They eat almost every kind of food, including
beef, pork, fowls, liquor and the leavings of others, but abjure
crocodiles, monkeys, snakes and rats. Many of them have now given
up eating cow's flesh in deference to Hindu feeling. They will take
food from almost any caste except sweepers, and one or two others,
as Joshi and Jasondhi, towards whom for some unexplained reason they
entertain a special aversion. They will admit outsiders belonging
to any caste from whom they can take food into the community. They
are generally considered as impure, and live outside the village,
and their touch conveys pollution, more especially in the Maratha
Districts. The ordinary village menials, as the barber and washerman,
will not work for them, and services of this nature are performed by
men of their own community. As, however, their occupation is not in
itself unclean, they rank above sweepers, Chamars and Dhobis. Temporary
exclusion from caste is imposed for the usual offences, and the almost
invariable penalty for readmission is a feast to the caste-fellows. A
person, male or female, who has been convicted of adultery must have
the head shaved, and is then seated in the centre of the caste-fellows
and pelted by them with the leavings of their food. Basor women are
not permitted to wear nose-rings on pain of exclusion from caste.