In 1911 the Tameras numbered about 5000 persons in the Central
Provinces and Berar. They tell the same story of their origin which has
already been related in the article on the Kasar caste, and trace their
descent from the Haihaya Rajput dynasty of Ratanpur. They say that
when the king Dharampal, the first ancestor of the caste, was married,
a bevy of 119 girls were sent with his bride in accordance with the
practice still occasionally obtaining among royal Hindu families,
and these, as usual, became the concubines of the husband or, as the
Tameras say, his wives: and from the bride and her companions the 120
exogamous sections of the caste are sprung. As a fact, however, many
of the sections are named after villages or natural objects. A man is
not permitted to marry any one belonging to his own section or that
of his mother, the union of first cousins being thus prohibited. The
caste also do not favour _Anta santa_ or the practice of exchanging
girls between families, the reason alleged being that after the bride's
father has acknowledged the superiority of the bridegroom's father by
washing his feet, it is absurd to require the latter to do the same,
that is, to wash the feet of his inferior. So they may not take a
girl from a family to which they have given one of their own. The real
reason for the rule lies possibly in an extension of the principle of
exogamy, whether based on a real fear of carrying too far the practice
of intermarriage between families or an unfounded superstition that
intermarriage between families already connected may have the same
evil results on the offspring as the union of blood-relations. When
the wedding procession is about to start, after the bridegroom has
been bathed and before he puts on the _kankan_ or iron wristlet which
is to protect him from evil spirits, he is seated on a stool while
all the male members of the household come up with their _choti_ or
scalp-lock untied and rub it against that of the bridegroom. Again,
after the wedding ceremonies are over and the bridegroom has, according
to rule, untied one of the fastenings of the marriage-shed, he also
turns over a tile of the roof of the house. The meaning of the latter
ceremony is not clear; the significance attaching to the _choti_
has been discussed in the article on Nai.