and walls of matting. The huts are built
in one line and do not touch each other, at least a cubit's distance
being left between each. Each hut has one door facing the east. As a
rule they avoid the water of village wells and tanks, though it is not
absolutely forbidden. Each man digs a shallow well in the sand behind
his hut and drinks the water from it, and no man may drink the water
of his neighbour's well; if he should do so or if any water from his
well gets into his neighbour's, the latter is abandoned and a fresh one
made. If the ground is too swampy for wells they collect the water in
their wooden washing-tray and fill their vessels from it. In the cold
weather they make little leaf-huts on the sand or simply camp out in
the open, but they must never sleep under a tree. When living in the
open each family makes two fires and sleeps together between them. Some
of them have their stomachs burned and blackened from sleeping too near
the fire. The Sonjharas will not take cooked food from the hands of
any other caste, but their social status is very low, about equivalent
to that of the parent Gond tribe. They have no fear of wild animals,
not even the children. Perhaps they think that as fellow-denizens of
the jungle these animals are kin to them and will not injure them.

8. Occupation

The traditional occupation of the caste is to wash gold from the
sandy beds of streams, while they formerly also washed for diamonds at
Hirakud on the Mahanadi near Sambalpur and at Wairagarh in Chanda. The
industry is decaying, and in 1901 only a quarter of the total number
of Sonjharas were still employed In it. Some have become cultivators
and fishermen, while others earn their livelihood by sweeping up
the refuse dirt of the workshops of goldsmiths and brass-workers;
they wash out the particles of metal from this and sell it back to
the Sunars. The Mahanadi and Jonk rivers in Sambalpur, the Banjar In
Mandla, the Son and other rivers in Balaghat, and the Wainganga and
the eastern streams of Chanda contain minute particles of gold. The
washers earn a miserable and uncertain livelihood, and indeed appear
not to desire anything beyond a bare subsistence. In Bhandara [635] it
is said that they avoid any spot where they have previously been lucky,
while in Chanda they have a superstition that a person making a good
find of gold will be childless, and hence many dread the search. [636]
When they set out to look for gold they was