The caste sometimes employ a Brahman for the marriage ceremony;
but generally his services are limited to fixing an auspicious
date, and the functions of a priest are undertaken by members
of the family. They invite a Brahman to give a name to a boy,
and call him by this name. They think that if they changed the
name they would not be able to get a wife for the child. They will
eat any kind of flesh, including pork and fowls, but they are not
considered to be impure. They are generally illiterate, and dirty
in appearance. Unmarried girls wear glass bangles on both hands, but
married women wear metal bracelets on the right hand and glass on the
left. Girls are twice tattooed: first in childhood, and a second time
after marriage. The proper avocations of the Katias were the spinning
of cotton thread and the weaving of the finer kinds of cloth; but
most of them have had to abandon their ancestral calling from want of
custom, and they are now either village watchmen or cultivators and
labourers. A few of them own villages. The Katias think themselves
rather knowing; but this opinion is not shared by their neighbours,
who say ironically of them, "A Katia is eight times as wise as an
ordinary man, and a Kayasth thirteen times. Any one who pretends to
be wiser than these must be an idiot."