te offence and cannot pay the fine imposed on them for
it also go into this subcaste. The Benaikias [166] themselves are
distributed into four groups of varying degrees of respectability,
and families who live correctly and marry as well as they can tend
to rise from one to the other until after several generations they
may again be recognised as Parwars proper.

3. Exogamy.

The Parwars have twelve _gotras_ or main sections, and each _gotra_
has, or is supposed to have, twelve _muls_ or subsections. A Parwar
must not marry in his own _gotra_ nor in the _mul_ of his mother, or
any of his grandmothers or greatgrandmothers. This practically bars
marriage within seven degrees of relationship. But a man's sister and
daughter may be married in the same family, and even to two brothers,
and a man can marry two sisters.

4. Marriage customs.

As a rule no bride-price is paid, but occasionally an old man
desiring a wife will give something substantial to her father in
secret. There are two forms of marriage, called Thinga and Dajanha;
in the former, women do not accompany the wedding procession, and they
have a separate marriage-shed at the bridegroom's house for their own
celebrations; while in the latter, they accompany it and erect such
a shed at the house in the bridegroom's village or town where they
have their lodging. Before the wedding, the bridegroom, mounted on
a horse, and the bride, carried in a litter, proceed together round
the marriage-shed. The bridegroom then stands by the sacred post in
the centre and the bride walks seven times round him. In the evening
there was a custom of dressing the principal male relatives of the
bridegroom in women's clothes and making them dance, but this is now
being discarded. On the fifth day is held a rite called Palkachar. A
new cot is provided by the bride's father, and on it is spread a red
cloth. The couple are seated on this with their hands entwined, and
their relations come and make them presents. If the bridegroom catches
hold of the dress of his mother- or father-in-law, they are expected
to make him a handsome present. In other respects the wedding follows
the ordinary Hindu ritual. Widow-marriage and divorce are forbidden
among the Parwars proper, and those who practise them go into the
lower Benaikia group.

5. Religion: Hindu observances.

The Parwars are practically all Jains of the Digambari sect. They
build costly and beautiful temples for