The caste venerate the ordinary Hindu deities, and many of them have
sects and return themselves as Vaishnavas, Saivas or Saktas. In some
places they are said to make a daily offering to their melting-furnace
so that it may bring them in a profit. When a child has been born
they make a sacrifice of a goat to Dulha Deo, the marriage-god, on the
following Dasahra festival, and the body of this must be eaten by the
family only, no outsider being allowed to participate. In Hoshangabad
it is stated that on the night before the Dasahra festival all the
Sunars assemble beside a river and hold a feast. Each of them is
then believed to take an oath that he will not during the coming
year disclose the amount of the alloy which a fellow-craftsman may
mix with the precious metals. Any Sunar who violates this agreement
is put out of caste. On the 15th day of Jeth (May) the village Sunar
stops work for five days and worships his implements after washing
them. He draws pictures of the goddess Devi on a piece of paper and
goes round the village to affix them to the doors of his clients,
receiving in return a small present.
The caste usually burn their dead and take the ashes to the Nerbudda
or Ganges; those living to the south of the Nerbudda always stop
at this river, because they think that if they crossed it to go to
the Ganges, the Nerbudda would be offended at their not considering
it good enough. If a man meets with a violent death and his body is
lost, they construct a small image of him and burn this with all the
proper ceremonies. Mourning is observed for ten or thirteen days, and
the _shraddh_ ceremony is performed on the anniversary of a death,
while the usual oblations are offered to the ancestors during the
fortnight of Pitr Paksh in Kunwar (September).