lanket, and having to bear
exposure to all weathers, they are naturally strong and hardy. In
appearance they are dark and of medium size. They eat three times
a day and bathe in the evening on returning from work, though their
ablutions are sometimes omitted in the cold weather.

Dhanuk

1. Original and classical records.

_Dhanuk._--A low caste of agriculturists found principally in the
Narsinghpur District, which contained three-fourths of the total
of nearly 7000 persons returned in 1911. The headquarters of the
caste are in the United Provinces, which contains more than a lakh
of Dhanuks. The name is derived from the Sanskrit _dhanuska_, an
archer, and the caste is an ancient one, its origin as given in
the Padma Purana, quoted by Sir Henry Elliot, being from a Chamar
father and a Chandal or sweeper mother. Another pedigree makes the
mother a Chamar and the father an outcaste Ahir. Such statements,
Sir H. Risley remarks in commenting on this genealogy, [525] serve
to indicate in a general way the social rank held by the Dhanuks at
the time when it was first thought necessary to enrol them among the
mixed castes. Dr. Buchanan [526] says that the Dhanuks were in former
times the militia of the country. He states that all the Dhanuks were
at one time probably slaves and many were recruited to fill up the
military ranks--a method of security which had long been prevalent
in Asia, the armies of the Parthians having been composed entirely
of slaves. A great many Dhanuks, at the time when Buchanan wrote,
were still slaves, but some annually procured their liberty by the
inability of their masters to maintain them and their unwillingness to
sell their fellow-creatures. It may be concluded, therefore, that the
Dhanuks were a body of servile soldiery, recruited as was often the
case from the subject Dravidian tribes; following the all-powerful
tendency of Hindu society they became a caste, and owing to the
comparatively respectable nature of their occupation obtained a rise
in social position from the outcaste status of the subject Dravidians
to the somewhat higher group of castes who were not unclean but from
whom a Brahman would not accept water. They did not advance so far
as the Khandaits, another caste formed from military service, who
were also, Sir H. Risley shows, originally recruited from a subject
tribe, probably because the position of the Dhanuks was always more
subordinate and no appreciable number