Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 8.djvu/181

 CHUMARS. (450)

HE Churnars are the very lowest grade of Hindoo caste, and act as tanners, I cobblers, and rough shoe and sandal makers. They are evidently of the aboriginal tribes of India, as is shown by their habits and features every where in the south, which have a strong affinity to those of the unreclaimed jungle tribes of the lowest grade. Nevertheless Chumars are a very useful class in the community. They dress skins and tan them, and have no objection to eat animals who have died a natural death, and to remove all carrion. They are members, in the lowest degree, of village communities, and assist in watching crops and village boundaries, also in acting as guides and carrying burthens. They make all leather or green hide ropes for plough and well gear, carts, &c.; mend shoes and sandals, using strips of green hide to sew with, instead of thread. Their tools are a cutting and scraping knife, shaped like a sickle, the outer edge of which is used, and is kept very sharp; fine and coarse awls, and a hammer; and occasionally the men work very neatly. Chumars are not allowed to live within the precincts of villages, for they are Miechas or outcasts; nor do the Dhairs allow them a place in their suburb. They must live even a short distance removed from them. Chumars are executioners whenever that office is required, and are skilful operators, using, like the Mochis, a rope made of twisted sinews, which is well greased, and is at once fatal. They are by no means a sober people, drinking spirits and fermented palm juice to as great an extent as they can afford, and their women are as much addicted to liquor as the men. This habit in a great measure accounts for the squalid poverty in which they exist, and from which, though they can earn good wages, they seldom emerge. In certain portions of the Deccan and other parts of India, they have an evil reputation for dacoity, consorting with Korwas, Sansceas, and other professional dacoits and cattle lifters; but they are rarely petty thieves, and as village watchmen, and tracers of stolen cattle, are both useful, faithful, and brave. Many of them have enlisted in the Madras and Bombay regular armies, and make good soldiers; but they do not enter ordinary service. They are much