The couplets and metres of the Charans — the treasury of the region’s memory. It was the Charan, more than the Brahmin, who carried the great tradition to the village, reciting the exploits of chiefs and the deeds of the Dadas from the epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata.

A dance greatly enjoyed by Rajput women, once performed by them alone. The Vadarans — old Khavas women — trained the Rajput girls in Rasda, and it served as an occasion for the personal inspection of a girl for marriage, watched by visiting Charan men and women.

Through the nine nights of Navratri the Rajputs, especially in the villages, join the garbi — the circular dance whose songs narrate the exploits of the Mother-Goddess against the demons, danced in common with the other castes of the region.

The rhythmic beating of the breast and the moving round in a group with mourning-songs — the Rajput women of Kutch were noted for this skilled display, and Charan women took part in it. A grief kept, like everything else, within the forms of custom.

The cradle-songs sung over a child and the wedding-songs sung by the women of the house at each rite of a marriage — the everyday music of Rajput women, who could learn singing but were not expected to sing where men would hear.

The rulers were patrons of music and verse: Adityaramji at Jamnagar, Dahyalal Shivram and the sitar-player Rahim Khan at Bhavnagar, and above all Kalapi — the pen-name of Sursinhji, the Thakore of Lathi, whom the small state gave to Gujarati poetry, and Kumar Mangalsinhji of Lathi, an artist and art-critic himself.

The teasing songs — invented on the spot, aimed squarely at the bridegroom's party, and answered in kind. With them went the practical jokes of the wedding house: riddles for the groom, cotton baked into a chapati for his friends.

In the Barda country the men's dance kept its edge — performed with open swords and shields, the memory of the fighting age carried in step and steel.