DRESS

There is little that could be written about the dress of the people. Men as a rule use white clothes, sometimes with a red turban that is folded. Cultivators use rough loin-cloth of strong and sturdy make. On the head they have a small piece of cloth which they call rumal. Under the head-cloth men often wear little cotton caps. The bandi or short coat with strings has now disappeared and banians of twisted yarn have taken their place. That is the usual covering of the body. Dhimars and Gonds often go hare above the waist as also poor cultivators and labourers of all castes. But this mode of wearing sparse clothing has greatly disappeared.

Women wear one long cloth secured round the waist and folded over the shoulders which is called sari when it has a silk border and a lugde when it has cotton borders. This cloth is 24 feet long and three to four and a half feet wide, but poor women have it only 15 feet long. Many use black or red colour or black mixed with white or red. Ponwar, Dhimar and Kohli woman often wear white clothes, locally called korvuan. Immigrants form the north as the Umre Kalars, Bhaore Manas, Kirars and others wear the angia or breast-cloth tied behind while those of the south have the choli which is tied in front. Mahalodhi woman wear no choli and have nothing over their breasts underneath the sari. These are the Lodhis who have come from Chhatisgadh. Both men and women buy clothes ready-made in the weekly bazars to which they are taken for sale. In the cold weather the kantopere or cap with flaps coming down over the ears and often stuffed with cotton is worn. Vahanas or sandals are a good deal worn both by men and by women who work in the field. Other women do not usually wear shoes, though in town they have begun to adopt the practice. When a man is on a journey, he will often take off his shoes after he has gone a mile or so and carry them. Dhimars and Halbas may not wear ordinary shoes and several of the lower castes do not wear anything. It was once the practice for men to have their heads shaved clean but for the tuft of hair in the scalp which they clean with earth and then oil and comb it. But now most people keep hair over the whole head. The village barber does not shave Mehras and they get themselves shaved by their caste barber on market-days where a crowd of them may be seen undergoing the operation successively. But this also is disappearing by and large. A child’s hair is cut for the first time in the first or third year. Many people go to a sacred river to cut a child’s hair for the first time and the temple of Narasimha on an island in Wainganga opposite the railway bridge is a favourite place for hair-cutting. Most people bathe in hot water for the greater part of the year except in the hot season. Cultivators bathe on return from work and women after cooking.

This is so as far as some backward caste people and the villagers are concerned but in towns new styles of dress as all over India have become current. Only five towns in the district have municipalities and their population varies from 13,000 to 60,000, roughly speaking. But they have copied the ways of the people from Nagpur in the matter of dress and footwear. The trousers and the manilas are quite common among young men and the six yard sari and blouses among girls and young women. Shoes and slippers and sandals made by factories and not country mochis have also come into vogue.