Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 3 of 7Thurston, Edgar
History
Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 3 of 7
Thurston, Edgar
Caste -- India, South; Ethnology -- India, South; India, South -- Social life and customs; Tribes -- India, South
Circular orders had been sent for the destruction on
the same day of all the Jangam Mutts (places of residence and worship)
in his dominions, and the number reported to have been destroyed was
upwards of seven hundred.... This notable achievement was followed
by the operations of the troops, chiefly cavalry. The orders were
distinct and simple--to charge without parley into the midst of
the mob; to cut down every man wearing an orange-coloured robe (the
peculiar garb of the Jangam priests)."
How far the husbandmen carried out their threat of seeking a distant
settlement it is impossible, at this distance of time, to determine. If
the theory of religious persecution as the cause of their emigration
has not an air of certainty about it, it is at least plausible.
If the beginning of the eighteenth century is the earliest, the end of
that century is the latest date that can be set down for the Lingayat
emigration. That century was perhaps the most troublous one in the
modern history of India. Armies were passing and repassing the ghats,
and I have heard from some old gentlemen that the Chingleput Lingayats,
who are mostly shepherds, accompanied the troops in the humble capacity
of purveyors of milk and butter.
Whatever the causes of their emigration, we find them in the Chingleput
district ordinarily reckoning the Mysore, Salem and Bellary Lingayats
as of their own stock. They freely mix with each other, and I hear
contract marital alliances with one another. They speak the Kannada
(Kanarese) language--the language of Mysore and Bellary. They
call themselves by the name of Kannadiyans or Kannadiyars,
after the language they speak, and the part of the village they
inhabit--Kannadipauliem, or village of the Kannadiyars. In parts of
Madras they are known as Kavadi and Kavadiga (=bearers of head-loads).
Both men and women are possessed of great stamina. Almost every other
day they walk to and fro, in all seasons, more than twenty miles by
road to sell their butter and curds in Madras. While so journeying,
they carry on their heads a curd pot in a rattan basket containing
three or four Madras measures of curds, besides another pot containing
a measure or so of butter. Some of the men are good acrobats and
gymnasts, and I have seen a very old man successively break in two
four cocoanuts, each placed on three or four crystals of common salt,
leaving the crystals almost intact. And I have heard that there are
men who can so break fifty cocoanuts--perhaps an exaggeration for a
considerable number. In general the women may be termed beautiful,
and, in Mysore, the Lingayat women are, by common consent, regarded
as models of feminine beauty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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