the Chhattisgarh Division and adjacent
Feudatory States. Here the Chamars have to some extent emancipated
themselves from their servile status and have become cultivators, and
occasionally even malguzars or landed proprietors; and between them
and the Hindus a bitter and long-standing feud is in progress. Outside
Chhattisgarh the Chamars are found in most of the Hindi-speaking
Districts whose population has been recruited from northern and
central India, and here they are perhaps the most debased class of
the community, consigned to the lowest of menial tasks, and their
spirit broken by generations of servitude. In the Maratha country the
place of the Chamars is taken by the Mehras or Mahars. In the whole
of India the Chamars are about eleven millions strong, and are the
largest caste with the exception of the Brahmans. The name is derived
from the Sanskrit Charmakara, a worker in leather; and, according
to classical tradition, the Chamar is the offspring of a Chandal or
sweeper woman by a man of the fisher caste. [441] The superior physical
type of the Chamar has been noticed in several localities. Thus in
the Kanara District of Bombay [442] the Chamar women are said to be
famed for their beauty of face and figure, and there it is stated
that the Padminis or perfect type of women, middle-sized with fine
features, black lustrous hair and eyes, full breasts and slim waists,
[443] are all Chamarins. Sir D. Ibbetson writes [444] that their women
are celebrated for beauty, and loss of caste is often attributed to
too great a partiality for a Chamarin. In Chhattisgarh the Chamars
are generally of fine stature and fair complexion; some of them are
lighter in colour than the Chhattisgarhi Brahmans, and it is on record
that a European officer mistook a Chamar for a Eurasian and addressed
him in English. This, however, is by no means universally the case,
and Sir H. Risley considers [445] that "The average Chamar is hardly
distinguishable in point of features, stature or complexion from the
members of those non-Aryan races from whose ranks we should primarily
expect the profession of leather-dressers to be recruited." Again, Sir
Henry Elliot, writing of the Chamars of the North-Western Provinces,
says: "Chamars are reputed to be a dark race, and a fair Chamar is
said to be as rare an object as a black Brahman:

Karia Brahman, gor Chamar,
Inke sath na utariye par,

that is, 'Do not cross a ri