The tribe are indiscriminate in their diet, which includes pork,
snakes, rats, and even carnivorous animals, as panthers. They refuse
only beef, monkeys and the leavings of others. The wilder Binjhwars of
the forests will not accept cooked food from any other caste, but those
who live in association with Hindus will take it when cooked without
water from a few of the higher ones. The tribe are not considered as
impure. Their dress is very simple, consisting as a rule only of one
dirty white piece of cloth in the case of both men and women. Their
hair is unkempt, and they neither oil nor comb it. A genuine Binjhwar
of the hills wears long frizzled hair with long beard and moustaches,
but in the open country they cut their hair and shave the chin. Every
Binjhwar woman is tattooed either before or just after her marriage,
when she has attained to the age of adolescence. A man will not touch
or accept food from a woman who is not tattooed on the feet. The
expenses must be paid either by the woman's parents or her brothers
and not by her husband. The practice is carried to an extreme, and
many women have the upper part of the chest, the arms from shoulder to
wrist, and the feet and legs up to the knee covered with devices. On
the chest and arms the patterns are in the shape of flowers and leaves,
while along the leg a succession of zigzag lines are pricked. The
Binjhwars are usually cultivators and labourers, while, as already
stated, several zamindari and other estates are owned by members of the
tribe. Binjhwars also commonly hold the office of Jhankar or priest
of the village gods in the Sambalpur District, as the Baigas do in
Mandla and Balaghat. In Sambalpur the Jhankar or village priest is a
universal and recognised village servant of fairly high status. His
business is to conduct the worship of the local deities of the soil,
crops, forests and hills, and he generally has a substantial holding,
rent free, containing some of the best land in the village. It is
said locally that the Jhankar is looked on as the founder of the
village, and the representative of the old owners who were ousted
by the Hindus. He worships on their behalf the indigenous deities,
with whom he naturally possesses a more intimate acquaintance than
the later immigrants; while the gods of these latter cannot be relied
on to exercise a sufficient control over the works of nature in the
foreign land to which they have been imported, or to ensure that the
earth and the seasons will regularly perform their necessary functions
in producing sustenance for mankind.