eeling it
or knowing it--an excellent arrangement. Sometimes, unfortunately,
Mr. Lobo has a few clothes of his own, and then, as I have hinted,
the Dhobi may exchange them by mistake, for he is uneducated and
has much to remember; but if you occasionally suffer in this way you
gain in another, for Mr. Lobo's family are skilful with the needle,
and I have sent a torn garment to the wash which returned carefully
repaired." [559]

Dhuri

1. Origin and Subdivisions.

_Dhuri._ [560]--A caste belonging exclusively to Chhattisgarh, which
numbered 3000 persons in 1911. Dhuri is an honorific abbreviation
from Dhuriya as Bani from Bania. The special occupation of the caste
is rice-parching, and they are an offshoot from Kahars, though in
Chhattisgarh the Dhuris now consider the Kahars as a subcaste of
their own. In Bengal the Dhuriyas are a subcaste of the Kandus or
Bharbhunjas. Sir H. Risley states that "the Dhurias rank lowest of
all the subcastes of Kandus, owing either to their having taken up
the comparatively menial profession of palanquin-bearing, or to their
being a branch of the Kahar caste who went in for grain-parching and
thus came to be associated with the Kandus." [561] The caste have
immigrated to Chhattisgarh from the United Provinces. In Kawardha
they believe that the Raja of that State brought them back with him
on his return from a pilgrimage. In Bilaspur and Raipur they say
they came from Badhar, a pargana in the Mirzapur District, adjoining
Rewah. Badhar is mentioned in one of the Rajim inscriptions, and is a
place remembered by other castes of Chhattisgarh as their ancestral
home. The Dhuris of Chhattisgarh relate their origin as follows:
Mahadeo went once to the jungle and the damp earth stuck to his
feet. He scraped it off and made it into a man, and asked him what
caste he would like to belong to. The man said he would leave it to
Mahadeo, who decided that he should be called Dhuri from _dhur,_
dust. The man then asked Mahadeo to assign him an occupation, and
Mahadeo said that as he was made from dust, which is pounded earth,
his work should be to prepare _cheora_ or pounded rice, and added as a
special distinction that all castes including Brahmans should eat the
pounded rice prepared by him. All castes do eat _cheora_ because it is
not boiled with water. The Dhuris have two subcastes, a higher and a
lower, but they are known by different names in different tracts. In
Kawardha they are cal