Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 4.djvu/90

BAORIES. gentlemen, who train them for fighting. The same kind of nooses, or snares, are used for bustard, cranes, and other large birds. The Baorie watches where they feed and is prepared for them. For all live game he finds a ready market among Mahomedans; dead birds, or hares, &c., he eats himself, and, like the Khunjurs, has no objection to iguanas, or foxes, while he is suspected, or more than suspected, of taking flesh from a dead cow or bullock when he can find one.

As a class the Baories are very poor, and though they occasionally get a good deal of money, they spend it in drink, or in feasts to their caste fellows, which are sad orgies of gluttony and drunkenness. The Baories are migratory, like all similar classes in India, and belong to no settled community. They come chiefly from Manvar; but are found all over the North-West Provinces and Rajpootaua, in small companies, living in wretched blanket tents at all seasons, or in rude huts of leaves and grass, which they abandon when they leave the neighbourhood, a measure usually determined by the abundance or absence of game. They are generally possessed of a few asses, which carry their household goods, and a goat or two, or a cow or buffalo, for milk. They employ themselves sometimes as fishermen; but it is as snarers of game and sportsmen that they are most successful. They are also watchers and trackers of tigers, and do good service in this respect to English sportsmen, for whom they obtain the best information.

Very little is known of the customs of this caste in social matters. They do not employ Brahmins at marriages, and these ceremonies are managed at assemblies of caste fellows, which are concluded by a feast. They have no connection with. other tribes of the same character, and, on the whole, have a better reputation than many; inasmuch as they are not accused of habitual acts of theft, cheating, and pocket picking, or the graver crimes of Thuggee, Dacoity, or poisoning. As yet they are utterly unreclaimed, and wander where they will, as they have done from the earliest ages; nor, does it appear that any attempt has been made to reclaim or settle them in any more reputable calling. Sooner or later the Government of India will perhaps put special means in action to attain this end; at present, the number and condition of these semi-savage tribes are a reproach upon its civilization.

The Baories have not unfrequently several wives; for women are valuable, as well for domestic assistance, as in the pursuit of game, and the manufacture of the implements for the purpose; but they profess to limit themselves to one, except where there is no offspring. Owing to the exposure of their children, and improper food, a large proportion of the children die early. As to clothing, they have little till they grow up, beside that which nature has provided for them, and in bad and cold weather they suffer very severely. The costume of the women is the ordinary one of North-Western India—a petticoat, a bodice, and a scarf, small,