The subcastes reported differ entirely from those recorded in Orissa. In the Central Provinces they are mainly occupational. Thus the Bajna or Bajgari are those who act as musicians at feasts and marriages; the Mang or Mangia make screens and mats, while their women serve as midwives; the Dholias make baskets; the Doms skin cattle and the Nagarchis play on nakkaras or drums. Panka is also returned as a subcaste of Ganda, but in the Central Provinces the Pankas are now practically a separate caste, and consist of those Gandas who have adopted Kabirpanthism and have thereby obtained some slight rise in status. In Bengal Sir H. Risley mentions a group called Patradias, or slaves and menials of the Khonds, and discusses the Patradias as follows:--"The group seems also to include the descendants of Pans, who sold themselves as slaves or were sold as Merias or victims to the Khonds. We know that an extensive traffic in children destined for human sacrifice used to go on in the Khond country, and that the Pans were the agents who sometimes purchased, but more frequently kidnapped, the children, whom they sold to the Khonds, and were so debased that they occasionally sold their own offspring, though they knew of course the fate that awaited them. [14] Moreover, apart from the demand for sacrificial purposes, the practice of selling men as agricultural labourers was until a few years ago by no means uncommon in the wilder parts of the Chota Nagpur Division, where labour is scarce and cash payments are almost unknown. Numbers of formal bonds have come before me, whereby men sold themselves for a lump sum to enable them to marry." The above quotation is inserted merely as an interesting historical reminiscence of the Pans or Gandas.
The Gandas have exogamous groups or septs of the usual low-caste type, named after plants, animals or other inanimate objects. Marriage is prohibited within the sept, and between the children of two sisters, though the children of brothers and sisters may marry. If a girl arrives at maturity without a husband having been found for her, she is wedded to a spear stuck up in the courtyard of the house, and then given away to anybody who wishes to take her. A girl going wrong with a man of the caste is married to him by the ceremony employed in the case of widows, while her parents have to feed the caste. But a girl seduced by an outsider is permanently expelled. The betrothal is marked by a present of various articles to the father of the bride. Marriages must not be celebrated during the three rainy months of Shrawan, Bhadon or Kunwar, nor during the dark fortnight of the month, nor on a Saturday or Tuesday. The marriage-post is of the wood of the mahua tree, and beneath it are placed seven cowries and seven pieces of turmeric. An elderly male member of the caste known as the Sethia conducts the ceremony, and the couple go five times round the sacred pole in the morning and thrice in the evening. When the bride and bridegroom return home after the wedding, an image of a deer is made with grass and placed behind the ear of the bride. The bridegroom then throws a toy arrow at it made of grass or thin bamboo, and is allowed seven shots. If he fails to knock it out of her ear after these the bride's brother takes it and runs away and the bridegroom must follow and catch him. This is clearly a symbolic process representing the chase, of the sort practised by the Khonds and other primitive tribes, and may be taken as a reminiscence among the Gandas of their former life in the forests. The remarriage of widows is permitted, and the younger brother of the deceased husband takes his widow if he wishes to do so. Otherwise she may marry whom she pleases. A husband may divorce his wife for adultery before the caste committee, and if she marries her lover he must repay to the husband the expenses incurred by the latter on his wedding.