Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/585

 — GON

507

They are, as the following extracts from a police report a tribe of Kurmis which, from a love of theft, separated from the

earlier times. testify,

four hundred years ago. They now inhabit forty-eight viland number 1,000 heads of families. They annually scatter over the country in gangs of forty or fifty; they rob temples, but they will

main stock some lages in Gonda,

not steal cattle. They divide the spoil in fixed proportions, having first assigned exact percentages to their peculiar deities. They pretend to be Brahmans, hoping to cover their crime with the cloak of sanctity. Their women enter into the closets of devout females, perform their orisons with veiled faces, and rob their congregation of earrings and nose-rings while they pretend absorption in the deity. Others, again, when respectable women are bathing, approach them in couples, wait till the women have laid their valuables on the ground, then one performs an ofiice of nature, and when the women modestly avert their faces, the other runs away with the property. Their principal resorts are the banks of the Ganges at the great fairs of Bithur, Prag, and Benares they also attend those of Debi Patan, Ajodhya and Bahraich. The clothes of the worshippers left on the sands while the owners are bathing are the principal spoil; one man stands in front of the garments and spreads out his own shawl under the pretence of folding it behind the curtain so formed an accomplice disappears with the plunder. Another, when a man goes into the river, leaving his bundle of clothes on the bank, leaves another made up of rags beside it, and follows the stranger into the water he takes care to come out first and get away with the wrong

-







bundle, leaving his own in its place. The Barwars travel by train; and when not watched, manage to take up valuables belonging to other passengers and throw them out of the train confederates follow along the line and pick up what is lying beside the rails. The Barwars, when dividing their spoil, first make a deduction of 3f per cent., or Rs. 3-12 in the 100, for

their gods.

—

Mahabir Re. 1-4, Bdlapir Re. 1-4. and Debi This they divide as follows Re. 1-4. Withal, they have no objection to robbing in the temple of Debi, The only sacred places which they or even despoiling the shrine itself must not plunder are the temple of Jaganndth at Pooree in Orissa, and the tomb of the Moslem martyr Sayyad Salar at Bahraich.

Their origin

is

given as follows in the police report



Kurmis originally has been and were known and Azimabad, Patna Batya, including tracts the inhabited by the appellation of Patrya. More than four centuries ago one of the tribe woman who belonged to the family was ploughing a field close to a river. and having taken off her of a rich banker came to the river bank to bathe, and went into the ground the on it put value, great necklace of pearls of kite or crow took the pearl necklace in its elaws or beak and Qew water the Kurmi was ploughing. He away.' This jewel fell into the field which went home and gave it to his and prize, the with pleased was up, took it He' then thought to himself that when a bird could take away such wife. was a human being, betake to a valuable article, why should not he, who ascertained, after a careful enquiry, that

" It

A

A

freebooting.

"After considering this matter deeply he started on a journey, and in a short time obtained so great wealth that all his forefathers could not