The caste bury their dead with the head pointing to the west. This
practice is peculiar, and is also followed, Colonel Dalton states, by
the hill Bhuiyas of Bengal, who in so doing honour the quarter of the
setting sun. When a burial takes place, all the mourners who accompany
the corpse throw a little earth into the grave. On the same day some
food and liquor are taken to the grave and offered to the dead man's
spirit, and a feast is given to the caste-fellows. This concludes
the ceremonies of mourning, and the next day the relatives go about
their business. The caste are usually petty cultivators and labourers,
while they also collect grass and fuel for sale, and propagate the lac
insect. In Seoni they have a special relation with the Ahirs, from whom
they will take cooked food, while they say that the Ahirs will also eat
from their hands. In Narsinghpur a similar connection has been observed
between the Rajjhars and the Lodhi caste. This probably arises from
the fact that the former have worked for several generations as the
farm-servants of Lodhi or Ahir employers, and have been accustomed to
live in their houses and partake of their meals, so that caste rules
have been abandoned for the sake of convenience. A similar intimacy
has been observed between the Panwars and Gonds, and other castes
who stand in this relation to each other. The Rajjhars will also
eat _katcha_ food (cooked with water) from Kunbis and Kahars. But
in Hoshangabad some of them will not take food from any caste, even
from Brahmans. Their women wear glass bangles only on the right hand,
and a brass ornament known as _mathi_ on the left wrist. They wear
no ornaments in the nose or ears, and have no breast-cloth. They
are tattooed with dots on the face and patterns of animals on the
right arm, but not on the left arm or legs. A _liaison_ between
a youth and maiden of the caste is considered a trifling matter,
being punished only with a fine of two to four annas or pence. A
married woman detected in an intrigue is mulcted in a sum of four
or five rupees, and if her partner be a man of another caste a lock
of her hair is cut off. The caste are generally ignorant and dirty,
and are not much better than the Gonds and other forest tribes.