An ordinary Kunbi village [38] contains between 70 and 80 houses or
some 400 souls. The village generally lies on a slight eminence near a
_nullah_ or stream, and is often nicely planted with tamarind or pipal
trees. The houses are now generally tiled for fear of fire, and their
red roofs may be seen from a distance forming a little cluster on high
lying ground, an elevated site being selected so as to keep the roads
fairly dry, as the surface tracks in black-soil country become almost
impassable sloughs of mud as soon as the rains have broken. The better
houses stand round an old mud fort, a relic of the Pindari raids,
when, on the first alarm of the approach of these marauding bands, the
whole population hurried within its walls. The village proprietor's
house is now often built inside the fort. It is an oblong building
surrounded by a compound wall of unbaked bricks, and with a gateway
through which a cart can drive. Adjoining the entrance on each side
are rooms for the reception of guests, in which constables, chuprassies
and others are lodged when they stay at night in the village. _Kothas_
or sheds for keeping cattle and grain stand against the walls, and the
dwelling-house is at the back. Substantial tenants have a house like
the proprietor's, of well-laid mud, whitewashed and with tiled roof;
but the ordinary cultivator's house is one-roomed, with an _angan_
or small yard in front and a little space for a garden behind, in
which vegetables are grown during the rains. The walls are of bamboo
matting plastered over with mud. The married couples sleep inside,
the room being partitioned off if there are two or more in the
family, and the older persons sleep in the verandahs. In the middle
of the village by the biggest temple will be an old pipal tree, the
trunk encircled by an earthen or stone platform, which answers to
the village club. The respectable inhabitants will meet here while
the lower classes go to the liquor-shop nearly every night to smoke
and chat. The blacksmith's and carpenter's shops are also places of
common resort for the cultivators. Hither they wend in the morning
and evening, often taking with them some implement which has to be
mended, and stay to talk. The blacksmith in particular is said to
be a great gossip, and will often waste much of his customer's time,
plying him for news and retailing it, before he repairs and hands back
the tool brought to him. The village is sure to contain two or three
little temples of Maroti or Mahadeo. The stones which do duty for the
images are daily oiled with butter or _ghi_, and a miscellaneous store
of offerings will accumulate round the buildings. Outside the village
will be a temple of Devi or Mata Mai (Smallpox Goddess) with a heap of
little earthen horses and a string of hens' feet and feathers hung up
on the wall. The little platforms which are the shrines of the other
village gods will be found in the fields or near groves. In the evening
the elders often meet at Maroti's temple and pay their respects to
the deity, bowing or prostrating themselves before him. A lamp before
the temple is fed by contributions of oil from the women, and is kept
burning usually up to midnight. Once a year in the month, of Shrawan
(July) the villagers subscribe and have a feast, the Kunbis eating
first and the menial and labouring castes after them. In this month
also all the village deities are worshipped by the Joshi or priest and
the villagers. In summer the cultivators usually live in their fields,
where they erect temporary sheds of bamboo matting roofed with juari
stalks. In these most of the household furniture is stored, while at a
little distance in another funnel-shaped erection of bamboo matting is
kept the owner's grain. This system of camping out is mainly adopted
for fear of fire in the village, when the cultivator's whole stock
of grain and his household goods might be destroyed in a few minutes
without possibility of saving them. The women stay in the village,
and the men and boys go there for their midday and evening meals.