Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 2.djvu/196

DOMB caste of weavers and menials, found in the hill tracts of Vizagapatam. This caste appears to be an offshoot of the Dōm caste of Bengal, Behār, and the North-western Provinces. Like the Dōms, the Dōmbas are regarded with disgust, because they eat beef, pork, horse-flesh, rats, and the flesh of animals which have died a natural death, and both are considered to be Chandālas or Pariahs by the Bengālis and the Uriyas. The Dōmbs weave the cloths and blankets worn by the hill people, but, like the Pariahs of the plains, they are also labourers, scavengers, etc. Some of them are extensively engaged in trade, and they have, as a rule, more knowledge of the world than the ryots who despise them. They are great drunkards." In the Census Report, 1871, it was noted that "in many villages, the Dōms carry on the occupation of weaving, but, in and around Jaipur, they are employed as horse-keepers, tom- tom beaters, scavengers, and in other menial duties. Notwithstanding their abject position in the social scale, some signs of progress may be detected amongst them. They are assuming the occupation, in many instances, of petty hucksters, eking out a livelihood by taking advantage of the small difference in rates between market and market."

"The Dōmbs," Mr. F. Fawcett writes, * " are an outcast jungle people, who inhabit the forests on the high lands fifty to eighty or a hundred miles from the east coast, about Vizagapatam. Being outcast, they are never allowed to live within a village, but have their own little hamlet adjoining a village proper, inhabited by people of various superior castes. It is fair to say that the Dōmbs are akin to the Pānos of the adjoining