The caste are cultivators and labourers, while some are employed
as village watchmen, and others are hereditary palki-bearers to the
Raja of Bastar, enjoying a free grant of land. They practise shifting
cultivation, cleaning a space by indiscriminate felling in the forest,
and roughly ploughing the ground for a single broad-cast crop of rice;
in the following year the clearing is usually abandoned. Their dress
is simple, though they now wear ordinary cloth. Forty years ago it
is said that they wore coverings made from the bark of the kuring
tree and painted with horizontal bands of red, yellow and blue. [11]
A girdle of the thickness of a man's arm made from fine strips of bark
is still worn and is a distinguishing feature of the Gadba women. They
also carry a circlet round their forehead of the seeds of kusa grass
threaded on a string. Both men and women wear enormous earrings, the
men having three in each ear. The Gadbas are almost omnivorous, and eat
flesh, fish, fowls, pork, buffaloes, crocodiles, non-poisonous snakes,
large lizards, frogs, sparrows, crows and large red ants. They abstain
only from the flesh of monkeys, horses and asses. A Gadba must not
ride on a horse under penalty of being put out of caste. Mr. Thurston
[12] gives the following reason for this prejudice:--"The Gadbas of
Vizagapatam will not touch a horse, as they are palanquin-bearers,
and have the same objection to a rival animal as a cart-driver has
to a motor-car." They will eat the leavings of other castes and take
food from all except the impure ones, but like the Mehtars and Ghasias
elsewhere they will not take food or water from a Kayasth. Only the
lowest castes will eat with Gadbas, but they are not considered as
impure, and are allowed to enter temples and take part in religious
ceremonies.