), Baidya (physician), Raut (noble), and so on. Marriages
are generally celebrated in early youth, but no penalty is incurred
for a breach of this rule. If the signs of adolescence appear in
a girl for the first time on a Tuesday, Saturday or Sunday, it is
considered a bad omen, and she is sometimes married to a tree to avert
the consequences. Widow-marriage and divorce are freely permitted. The
caste burn their dead and perform the _shraddh_ ceremony. The women
are tattooed, and men sometimes tattoo their arms with figures of
the sun and moon in the belief that this will protect them from
snake-bite. The Paiks eat flesh and fish, but abstain from fowls and
other unclean animals and from liquor. Brahmans will not take water
from them, but other castes generally do so. Some of them are still
employed as armed retainers and are remunerated by free grants of land.

Panka

List of Paragraphs

1. _Origin of the caste._
2. _Caste subdivisions._
3. _Endogamous divisions._
4. _Marriage._
5. _Religion._
6. _Other customs._
7. _Occupation._

1. Origin of the caste

_Panka._ [366]--A Dravidian caste of weavers and labourers found
in Mandla, Raipur and Bilaspur, and numbering 215,000 persons in
1911. The name is a variant on that of the Pan tribe of Orissa
and Chota Nagpur, who are also known as Panika, Chik, Ganda and by
various other designations. In the Central Provinces it has, however,
a peculiar application; for while the Pan tribe proper is called Ganda
in Chhattisgarh and the Uriya country, the Pankas form a separate
division of the Gandas, consisting of those who have become members
of the Kabirpanthi sect. In this way the name has been found very
convenient, for since Kabir, the founder of the sect, was discovered by
a weaver woman lying on the lotus leaves of a tank, like Moses in the
bulrushes, and as a newly initiated convert is purified with water,
so the Pankas hold that their name Is _pani ka_ or 'from water.' As
far as possible then they disown their connection with the Gandas,
one of the most despised castes, and say that they are a separate
caste consisting of the disciples of Kabir. This has given rise to
the following doggerel rhyme about them:

Pani se Panka bhae, bundan rache sharir,
Age age Panka bhae, pachhe Das Kabir.

Which may be rendered, 'The Panka indeed is born of water, and his body
is made of drops of water, but there were Panka