138/849 They are now usually employed as village watchmen and are not regarded as impure. Similarly those members of the Mahar servile caste who are village watchmen tend to marry among themselves and form a superior group to the others. The village watchman now receives a remuneration fixed by Government and is practically a rural policeman, but in former times he was a village menial and was maintained by the cultivators in the same manner as the others. The gardening castes. |