The Chamar ranks at the very bottom of the social scale, and contact
with his person is considered to be a defilement to high-caste
Hindus. He cannot draw water from the common well and usually
lives in a hamlet somewhat removed from the main village. But in
several localities the rule is not so strict, and in Saugor a Chamar
may go into all parts of the house except the cooking and eating
rooms. This is almost necessary when he is so commonly employed
as a farmservant. Here the village barber will shave Chamars and
the washerman will wash their clothes. And the Chamar himself will
not touch the corpse of a horse, a dog or any animal whose feet are
uncloven; and he will not kill a cow though he eats its flesh. It is
stated indeed that a Chamar who once killed a calf accidentally had
to go to the Ganges to purify himself. The crime of cattle-poisoning
is thus rare in Saugor and the other northern Districts, but in the
east of the Provinces it is a common practice of the Chamars. As is
usual with the low castes, many Chamars are in some repute as Gunias or
sorcerers, and in this capacity they are frequently invited to enter
the houses of Hindus to heal persons possessed of evil spirits. When
children fall ill one of them is called in and he waves a branch of
the _nim_ [466] tree over the child and taking ashes in his hand
blows them at it; he is also consulted for hysterical women. When
a Chamar has had something stolen and wishes to detect the thief,
he takes the wooden-handled needle used for stitching leather and
sticks the spike into the sole of a shoe. Then two persons standing
in the relation of maternal uncle and nephew hold the needle and shoe
up by placing their forefingers under the wooden handle. The names
of all suspected persons are pronounced, and he at whose name the
shoe turns on the needle is taken to be the thief.
The caste do not employ Brahmans for their ceremonies, but consult
them for the selection of auspicious days, as this business can be
performed by the Brahman at home and he need not enter the Chamar's
house. But poor and despised as the Chamars are they have a pride of
their own. When the Dohar and Maratha Chamars sell shoes to a Mahar
they will only allow him to try on one of them and not both, and this,
too, he must do in a sitting posture, as an indication of humility. The
Harale or Maratha Chamars of Berar [467] do not eat beef nor work with
untanned leather, and they will not work for the lowest castes, as
Mahars, Mangs, Basors and Kolis. If one of these buys a pair of shoes
from the Chamar the seller asks no indiscreet questions; but he will
not mend the pair as he would for a man of higher caste. The Satnamis
of Chhattisgarh have openly revolted against the degraded position to
which they are relegated by Hinduism and are at permanent feud with
the Hindus; some of them have even adopted the sacred thread. But this
interesting movement is separately discussed in the article on Satnami.