Since the opening of railways people can travel long distances to marriage and other ceremonies, and the tendency to form new subcastes is somewhat checked; a native gentleman said to me, when speaking of his people, that when a few families of Khedawal Brahmans from Gujarat first settled in Damoh they had the greatest difficulty in arranging their marriages; they could not marry with their caste-fellows in Gujarat because their sons and daughters could not establish themselves, that is, could not prove their identity as Khedawal Brahmans; but since the railway has been opened intermarriage takes place freely with other Khedawals in Gujarat and Benares.

Proposals are on foot to authorise the intermarriage of the three great subcastes of Maratha Brahmans: Deshasth, Konkonasth and Karhara.

As a rule, there is no difference of status between the different local subcastes, and a man's subcaste is often not known except to his own caste-fellows.

But occasionally a certain derogatory sense may be conveyed; in several castes of the Central Provinces there is a subcaste called Jharia or jungly, a term applied to the oldest residents, who are considered to have lapsed in a comparatively new and barbarous country from the orthodox practices of Hinduism.

The subcaste called Deshi, or 'belonging to the country,' sometimes has the same signification.