196 Records of the Indian Museum. DVO? XV lade 
a point and turned up, the model shows this fairly well. They 
carry one man, or even two at a pinch; the man stands up and 
the Bindi is propelled by a pole of common bamboo, etc., about 
10 to 12 feet long. They are crank and difficult for a European 
to manage. ‘The fishing is with a spear or a circular casting net. 
“They are used by the ‘‘ Sirkulas,”’ a Mahomedan tribe, num- 
bering about 50 families perhaps. They say they came from Sind 
from the Manchar Lake, about three generations ago (about 1820 pro- 
bably) ; my informantsays it wasin the time of his grandfather, and 
he himselfis an oldman of 60 about. They came because there were 
wars in Sindh. This is corroborated, as they speak Sindhi, and 
know all the different kinds of duck by the Manchar Lake names, 
(I have been to the Manchar and know these names myself, having 
kept a note of them). They do not intermarry with the dwellers 
in the kadir villages, who are Hindus of the low caste of Chumar : 
the chumars do not fish, nor do they use Bindis for other purposes. 
So presumably the ‘‘ Sirkulas” brought the shape of the Bindi 
with them from Sindh, however I do not remember seeing any 
Bindis on the Manchar ; perhaps nowadays the wooden dugout of 
the present-day Manchar fishermen has ousted the Bindi there. 
‘*’The Bindi is made preferably from the flat dark-green rush 
called here Patera the Typha latifolia: this rush floats even when 
newly cut, and it will last in a Bindi for about six months, before 
it rots. ‘This rush is fairly strong and stiff when bound up into a 
Bindi, and the best Bindis are made of it. The round green reed, 
called Tukla locally, the Cyperus alterifolius, is also used at times 
for making Bindis, it also floats when freshly cut, but the dis- 
advantage of it (compared to Patera) is that it is not strong nor stiff, 
like Patera, and the Bindi made of it does not last so long, and 
will not bear so much handling. The Latin names have been got 
from the Superintendent, Government Botanic Gardens, Saha- 
ranpur, to whom specimens of the grasses were sent. 
‘The Patera grows in water, to about 12 feet high, while the 
Tukla only runs to about 5 feet at most, it also grows in water. 
“One of the characteristic points of the shape of the Bindi is 
the way the prow, or front end, is brought to a point and 
sticks up about a foot or so above the level of the top surface of 
the body of the Bindi. The grass in the Bindi is tied round at 
intervals with wisps of the same grass made into a rough sort 
of rope.” 
In many parts of the Madras Presidency rough bundles of 
reeds are used as rafts by fishermen, especially in the large tanks and 
reservoirs that are a feature of southern India; but these bundles 
are not shaped and I have heard of no instance of shaped rafts 
being employed in Perninsular India. The fact that the people 
who use them in the United Provinces are of Sindi origin is inter- 
esting as suggesting an actual historic connection between their 
manufacture in those provinces and in Seistan, for Sind is in many 
respects a country intermediate between India and Persia. As to 
the possible but more remote connection with Babylonia and 
