Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 6.djvu/245

 SHROFF, OR NATIVE BANKER. (330)

HE Shroffs, or Soukars, money dealers and bankers, belong to the Lohana division of Hindoos; and Captain Burton describes them as follows:—

"Some of the Setts, or Soukars, wear the costume of the Amils, others are dressed like the common Hindoo shopkeepers and agriculturists. The clothes of the latter are a turban, a long cotton coat, a waistcloth, a scarf girdle, and a handkerchief thrown over the shoulders. (The native names of these are here omitted.) They shave the beard, but do not trim the mustaches. They wear the junwa, or sacred thread, over the shoulder, and mark their foreheads with the tillaker caste mark. They shave the head back and front, leaving a lock on the top of the poll, and bunches of hair on each side over the ears; but when in mourniuir these are shaved off, as well as the mustaches. For education the trader goes to a wajho, or Hindoo teacher, who teaches him the Shidee—not the Arabic—alphabet, reading and writing, together with a little arithmetic and bookkeeping. After a year or two he is supposed to have finished his studies, and begins to learn business by practice. It is needless to say that these individuals prove themselves uncommonly acute, and show the same aptitude for business as their brethren in India. Some of them, the Shikarpoor merchants for instance, wander all over Central Asia, and it is commonly said in Afghanistan, that everwhwre you meet with a Jat, or Kirar, or Sindee Bunnea. Their staple articles of trade are cloths and hoondees, or bills of exchange, especially the latter, and large fortunes are said to be acquired. Under the British Government their system of remittances has been all but done away with. The Shikarpoor Hindoos are as notorious for the depravity of their females, as for wealth and commerce; in fact, their caste fellows in other parts of Sind have often taken the subject into serious consideration."

The names of the Amils, merchants and shopkeepers, and the different affixes (Hindoo) mal, chund, rae, ram, das, lall, &c., are generally added to the