ealings with them;
and they vent their spleen in sayings such as the following:--"The
Kori, the Chamar and the Ahir, these are the three biggest liars that
ever were known. For if you ask the Chamar whether he has mended your
shoes he says, 'I am at the last stitch,' when he has not begun them;
if you ask the Ahir whether he has brought back your cow from the
jungle he says, 'It has come, it has come,' without knowing or caring
whether it has come or not; and if you ask the Kori whether he has
made your cloth he says, 'It is on the loom,' when he has not so much
as bought the thread." Another proverb conveying the same sense is,
'The Mochi's to-morrow never comes.' But no doubt the uncertainty
and delay in payment account for much of this conduct.

Chasa

1. Origin and traditions.

_Chasa_, [469] _Tasa_ (also called Alia in the Sonpur and Patna
States).--The chief cultivating caste of Orissa. In 1901 more
than 21,000 Chasas were enumerated in Sambalpur and the adjoining
Feudatory States, but nearly all these passed in 1905 to Bengal. The
Chasas are said [470] by Sir H. Risley to be for the most part of
non-Aryan descent, the loose organisation of the caste system among
the Uriyas making it possible on the one hand for outsiders to be
admitted into the caste, and on the other for wealthy Chasas who
gave up ploughing with their own hands and assumed the respectable
title of Mahanti to raise themselves to membership among the lower
classes of Kayasths. This passage indicates that the term Mahanti is
or was a broader one than Karan or Uriya Kayasth, and was applied to
educated persons of other castes who apparently aspired to admission
among the Karans, in the same manner as leading members of the
warlike and landholding castes lay claim to rank as Rajputs. For
this reason probably the Uriya Kayasths prefer the name of Karan
to that of Mahanti, and the Uriya saying, 'He who has no caste is
called a Mahanti,' supports this view. The word Chasa has the generic
meaning of 'a cultivator,' and the Chasas may in Sambalpur be merely
an occupational group recruited from other castes. This theory is
supported by the names of their subdivisions, three of which, Kolta,
Khandait and Ud or Orh are the names of distinct castes, while the
fourth, Benatia, is found as a subdivision of several other castes.

2. Exogamous divisions.

Each family has a _got_ or sept and a _varga_ or family name. The
_vargas_ are m