ered 1200 persons and resided principally in the Patna and
Sonpur States now transferred to Bengal. The Khadals are probably an
offshoot of the great Bauri caste of Bengal, with which the members
of the caste in Patna admitted their identity, though elsewhere they
deny it. Their traditional occupations of palanquin-bearing and
field labour are identical with those of the Bauris, as stated by
Sir H. Risley. [457] The name Khadal is a functional one, denoting
persons who work with a hoe. The Khadals have totemistic exogamous
groups, the Kilasi sept worshipping a tree, the Julsi and Kandualsi
sept a snake-hole, and Balunasi a stone and others the sun. Each
sept salutes the revered object or totem on seeing it, and those
who worship trees will not burn them or stand in their shade. When a
marriage takes place they worship the totem and offer to it flowers,
sandalwood, vermilion, uncooked rice, and the new clothes and ornaments
intended for the bride, which she may not wear until this ceremony
has been performed. Another curious custom adopted by the Khadals
in imitation of the Hindus is that of marrying adult boys and girls,
for whom a partner has not been found, to a tree. But this does not
occur when they arrive at puberty as among Hindu castes, but when a
boy still unmarried becomes thirty years old and a girl twenty. In
such a case he or she is married to a mango, cotton or _jamun_ tree,
and after this no second ceremony need be performed on subsequent
union with a wife or husband. A widower must pay Rs. 10, or double the
usual price, for a second wife, owing to the risk of her death being
caused by the machinations of the first wife's spirit. When a corpse
has been buried or burnt the mourners each take a twig of mango and
beat about in the grass to start a grasshopper. Having captured one
they wrap it in a piece of new cloth, and coming home place it beside
the family god. This they call bringing back the life of the soul,
and consider that the ceremony procures salvation for the dead. The
Khadals are usually considered as impure, but those of Sonpur have
attained a somewhat higher status.

_Khadia_.--(A kind of snake.) A section of Ahir and Raghuvansi. A
sept of Nahal.

_Khadra_, [458] _Khadura_ or _Kharura_.--A small Uriya caste whose
occupation is to make brass ornaments. They are immigrants from
Cuttack and say that they are called there Sankhari, so that the
Khadras may not improbably be an offshoot of the Sank