Kundakar

Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Bengali Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Khmer Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Marathi Nepali Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

This article is an extract from

THE TRIBES and CASTES of BENGAL. By H.H. RISLEY, INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE, OFFICIER D'ACADÉMIE FRANÇAISE. Ethnographic Glossary. CALCUTTA: Printed at the Bengal Secretariat Press. 1891. .

NOTE 1: Indpaedia neither agrees nor disagrees with the contents of this article. Readers who wish to add fresh information can create a Part II of this article. The general rule is that if we have nothing nice to say about communities other than our own it is best to say nothing at all.

NOTE 2: While reading please keep in mind that all articles in this series have been scanned from a very old book. Therefore, footnotes have got inserted into the main text of the article, interrupting the flow. Readers who spot scanning errors are requested to report the correct spelling to the Facebook page, Indpaedia.com. All information used will be duly acknowledged.

Kundakar

This is the Bengali term for a turner, and is used in Dacca instead of the Arabic "Kharrat" to designate workers in horn, or horners, who are always Muhammadans, though not forming a separate qaum or class. They despise and will not intermarry with the Kasai, or Kuti subdivision.

These workmen soften the horns of cattle and buffaloes by fire, and then flatten them beneath heavy weights; but ivory and deers' horns are sawn into the requisite shape without any preparation. The Kundakar manufactures combs, which in Hindustan is the trade of the Mochi, pegs for pattens, small boxes (Dibiyas) for storing medicines, and nicknacks of various kinds.