Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 2.djvu/186

 KESAEAH—NUTNI. (105) LACK hair and eyes, complexion rather dark, black dress, with figured boddice over the bosom, coral necklace, and head-dress of silver beads with a knot on the top made of cowries, a white scarf over the head and shoulders. Age seventeen years; height five feet six inches.

Kesarah belongs to the Hindoo caste called Nut, corresponding to the gipsies in Europe.

Nuts are Hindoos of a very low caste, they will eat everything except garlic.

Kesarah gains her livelihood by going about and dancing in the streets.

Nuts are professional acrobats as well as workers in iron and brass, and many of their performances are remarkable for dancing and agility unsurpassed in Europe. Among the Nuts, dacoity (gang robbery with violence) has been practised to a great extent, and as an hereditary occupation. As the tribe never possesses local habitations and is migratory, living wholly in tents throughout the year, members of it were not only enabled to select wealthy persons for attack, but to carry out their plans from great distances. Thus robberies by Nut Dacoits were difficult to trace; but under the system of detective police, and the operations of the department for suppression of dacoity, the mystery which was attached to them has ceased to exist; most of the celebrated Nut leaders have been apprehended; and, as with other tribes formerly practising crime as a profession, the Nuts are carefully watched and their normal depredations prevented.

Nut women, or Nutnees, are supposed to possess the secrets of love philtres and potions. They are consulted by women as to lucky and unlucky days, the ailments of children and their supposed affection by witchcraft or the evil eye. They also make patchwork quilts very cleverly, which they sell. Some of them embroider saddle cloths, and make up boddices for females. Some of the girls have sweet voices and are trained as singers, but they do not dance like the ordinary professional dancers, or Bayaderes, of India; and when they sing they are invariably seated.

Although professedly Hindoos, the Nuts have peculiar ceremonies of their own, which mark them as one of the aboriginal races of India, and they have never been allowed by real Hindoos to belong to any of the recognised divisions of Hindooism.