Thakar community is considered to be a scheduled tribe with a population of 2000 and the same is sub-divided into thirty six (36) sub-castes or group-castes (Sub-caste is also known as Jamat). Many individuals from this tribe were craftsmen of one type of the other. The main occupation was to move from village to village and entertain people. Many of them used to work as spies of rules and especia
lly during the reign of Maratha Kings, they were very active. Under the pretext of narrating episodes from Ramayana and the Mahabharata through pictures, puppets and other visual aids they used to establish closer contact with the people, in order to extract political secrets and to furnish such information to the village heads. They were granted lands by the rulers for the livelihood so that they could carry on this work without difficulty. Later when the royal patronage were discontinued, people of the tribe opted for several petty occupations such as fishing, laboring in fields, cultivating their own small piece of land or wandering to demonstrate their crafts. A few individuals belonging to the earlier generations were puritan and they opted for the Varkari cult. That is, they were devotees of Vithoba of Pandharpur, so used to travel upto Pandharpur and back on foot once every year. The language they used for narration is Marathi, which they are said to have learnt from the Brahmins. They also have learnt Puranas like Harivijay, Ramvijay, Bhagwat Puran, Pandav Pratap etc. they make use of the musical instruments like tuntune, tal, ekatari etc., as accompainments to their narration. This narration is mostly lyrical.
