people who set
much store on feats of bodily strength and agility. This has never
been the character of the Hindus, whose religion encourages asceticism
and mortification of the body, and points to mental self-absorption
and detachment from worldly cares and exercises as the highest type
of virtue.

4. Antagonism of Mochis and Chamars

As a natural result of the pretensions to nobility made by the Mochis,
there is no love lost between them and the Chamars; and the latter
allege that the Mochis have stolen their _rampi_, the knife with
which they cut leather. On this account the Chamars will neither take
water to drink from the Mochis nor mend their shoes, and will not
even permit them to try on a new pair of shoes until they have paid
the price set on them; for they say that the Mochis are half-bred
Chamars and therefore cannot be permitted to defile the shoes of
a true Chamar by trying them on; but when they have been paid for,
the maker has severed connection with them, and the use to which they
may be put no longer affects him.

5. Exogamous groups

In the Central Provinces the Mochis are said to have forty
exogamous sections or _gotras_, of which the bulk are named after
all the well-known Rajput clans, while two agree with those of the
Chamars. And they have also an equal number of _kheras_ or groups named
after villages. The limits of the two groups seem to be identical;
thus members of the sept named after the Kachhwaha Rajputs say that
their _khera_ or village name is Mungavali in Gwalior; those of the
Ghangere sept give Chanderi as their _khera_, the Sitawat sept Dhamoni
in Saugor, the Didoria Chhatarpur, the Narele Narwar, and so on. The
names of the village groups have now been generally forgotten and
they are said to have no influence on marriage, which is regulated
by the Rajput sept names; but it seems probable that the _kheras_
were the original divisions and the Rajput _gotras_ have been more
recently adopted in support of the claims already noticed.

6. Social customs

The Mochis have adopted the customs of the higher Hindu castes. A
man may not take a wife from his own _gotra_, his mother's _gotra_ or
from a family into which a girl from his own family has married. They
usually marry their daughters in childhood and employ Brahmans in
their ceremonies, and no degradation attaches to these latter for
serving as their priests. In minor domestic ceremonies for which the
Brahman