ome of them are employed as constables and
chuprassies, but few are labourers, as they may not touch the plough
with their own hands. They eat the flesh of clean animals, but do not
drink liquor, and avoid onions and tomatoes. They have good features
and fair complexions, the traces of their Rajput blood being quite
evident. Brahmans will take water from them, but they now rank below
Rajputs, on a level with the good cultivating castes.

Dangi

1. Origin and traditions.

_Dangi._--A cultivating caste found almost exclusively in the
Saugor District, which contained 23,000 persons out of a total of
24,000 of the caste in the Central Provinces in 1911. There are also
considerable numbers of them in Rajputana and Central India, from
which localities they probably immigrated into the Saugor District
during the eleventh century. The Dangis were formerly dominant in
Saugor, a part of which was called Dangiwara after them. The kings of
Garhpahra or old Saugor were Dangis, and their family still remains at
the village of Bilehra, which with a few other villages they hold as
a revenue-free grant. The name of the caste is variously derived. The
traditional story is that the Rajput king of Garhpahra detained the
palanquins of twenty-two married women of different castes and kept
them as his wives. The issue of the illicit intercourse were named
Dangis, and there are thus twenty-two subdivisions of the caste,
besides three other subdivisions who are held to be descended from
pure Rajputs. The name is said to be derived from _dang_, fraud,
on account of the above deception. A more plausible derivation is
from the Persian _dang_, a hill, the Dangis being thus hillmen; and
they may not improbably have been a set of robbers and freebooters in
the Vindhyan Hills, like the Gujars and Mewatis in northern India,
naturally recruiting their band from all classes of the population,
as is shown by ingenious implication in this story itself. '_Khet men
bami, gaon men Dangi_,' or 'A Dangi in the village is like the hole
of a snake in one's field' is a proverb which shows the estimation
in which they were formerly held. The three higher septs may have
been their leaders and may well have been Rajputs. Since they have
settled down as respectable cultivators and enjoy a good repute among
their neighbours, the Dangis have disowned the above story, and now
say that they are descended from Raja Dang, a Kachhwaha Rajput king
of Narwa