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AMBATTAN The Ambattan will cut the nails, and shave not only the head and face, but other parts of the body, whereas the Telugu barber will shave only down to the waist. The depilatory operations on women are performed by female hair-dressers. Barbers' sons are taught to shave by taking the bottom of an old well-burnt clay cooking-pot, and, with a blunt knife, scraping off the collected carbon. They then commence to operate on pubescent youths. The barber who shaves Europeans must not be a caste barber, but is either a Muhammadan or a non-caste man. Quite recently, a youthful Ambattan had to undergo ceremonial purification for having unconsciously shaved a Paraiyan. Paraiyans, Mālas, and other classes of the lower orders, have their own barbers and washermen. Razors are, however, sometime lent to them by the Ambattans for a small consideration, and cleansed in water when they are returned. Parasitic skin diseases are said to originate from the application of a razor,which has been used on a number of miscellaneous individuals. And well-to-do Hindus now keep their own razor, which the barber uses when he comes to shave them. In the southern districts, it is not usual for the Ambattans to go to the houses of their customers, but they have sheds at the backs of their own houses, where they attend to them from daybreak till about mid-day. Occasionally, when sent for, they will wait on Brāhmans and high-class non- Brāhmans at their houses. Numbers of them, besides, wait for customers near the riverside. Like the English hair-cutter, the Ambattan is a chatter-box, retails the petty gossip of the station, and is always posted in the latest local news and scandal. The barbers attached to British regiments are migratory, and, it is said, have friends and connections in all military cantonments, with whom they exchange news, and hold social