iod of mourning members of the bereaved family do not follow
their ordinary business, nor eat flesh, sweets or other delicate
food. They may not make offerings to their deities nor touch any
persons outside the family, nor wear head-cloths or shoes. In the
eastern Districts the principal deities of the Lohars are Dulha Deo
and Somlai or Devi, the former being represented by a knife set in the
ground inside the house, and the latter by the painting of a woman on
the wall. Both deities are kept in the cooking-room, and here the head
of the family offers to them rice soaked in milk, with sandal-paste,
flowers, vermilion and lamp-black. He burns some melted butter in an
earthen lamp and places incense upon it. If a man has been affected by
the evil eye an exorcist will place some salt on his hand and burn it,
muttering spells, and the evil influence is removed. They believe that
a spell can be cast on a man by giving him to eat the bones of an owl,
when he will become an idiot.

5. Occupation

In the rural area of the Province the Lohar is still a village menial,
making and mending the iron implements of agriculture, such as the
ploughshare, axe, sickle, goad and other articles. For doing this he
is paid in Saugor a yearly contribution of twenty pounds of grain
per plough of land [105] held by each cultivator, together with a
handful of grain at sowing-time and a sheaf at harvest from both the
autumn and spring crops. In Wardha he gets fifty pounds of grain per
plough of four bullocks or forty acres. For making new implements the
Lohar is sometimes paid separately and is always supplied with the
iron and charcoal. The hand-smelting iron industry has practically
died out in the Province and the imported metal is used for nearly
all purposes. The village Lohars are usually very poor, their income
seldom exceeding that of an unskilled labourer. In the towns, owing
to the rapid extension of milling and factory industries, blacksmiths
readily find employment and some of them earn very high wages. In
the manufacture of cutlery, nails and other articles the capital is
often found by a Bhatia or Bohra merchant, who acts as the capitalist
and employs the Lohars as his workmen. The women help their husbands
by blowing the bellows and dragging the hot iron from the furnace,
while the men wield the hammer. The Panchals of Berar are described
as a wandering caste of smiths, living in grass mat-huts and using as
fuel the roots of