mourning for 10 days; on the
10th day they offer ten _pindas_ or funeral cakes, and on the 11th
day make one large _pinda_ or cake and divide it into eleven parts;
on the 12th day they make sixteen _pindas_ and unite the spirit of the
dead man with the ancestors; and on the 13th day they give a feast
and feed Brahmans and are clean. The lower subcastes only observe
impurity for three days after a birth and a death. Their funeral
rites are the same as those of the Kurmis.

9. Social customs

The caste employ Brahmans for weddings, but not necessarily for
birth and death ceremonies. They eat flesh and fish, and the bulk
of the caste eat fowls and drink liquor, but the landowning section
abjures these practices. They will take food cooked with water from
Brahmans, and that cooked without water also from Rajputs, Kayasths and
Sunars. In Narsinghpur they also accept cooked food from such a low
caste as Rajjahrs, [99] probably because the Rajjhars are commonly
employed by them as farmservants, and hence have been accustomed
to carry their master's food. A similar relation has been found to
exist between the Panwar Rajputs and their Gond farmservants. The
higher class Lodhis make an inordinate show of hospitality at their
weddings. The plates of the guests are piled up profusely with food,
and these latter think it a point of honour never to refuse it or say
enough. When melted butter is poured out into their cups the stream
must never be broken as it passes from one guest to the other, or it
is said that they will all get up and leave the feast. Apparently a
lot of butter must be wasted on the ground. The higher clans seclude
their women, and these when they go out must wear long clothes
covering the head and reaching to the feet. The women are not allowed
to wear ornaments of a cheaper metal than silver, except of course
their glass bangles. The Mahalodhis will eat food cooked with water
in the cook-room and carried to the fields, which the higher clans
will not do. Their women wear the _sari_ drawn through the legs and
knotted behind according to the Maratha fashion, but whenever they
meet their husband's elder brother or any other elder of the family
they must undo the knot and let the cloth hang down round their legs
as a mark of respect. They wear no breast-cloth. Girls are tattooed
before adolescence with dots on the chin and forehead, and marks on
one hand. Before she is tattooed the girl is given sweets to ea