Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 7 of 7Thurston, Edgar
General
Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 7 of 7
Thurston, Edgar
Caste -- India, South; Ethnology -- India, South; India, South -- Social life and customs; Tribes -- India, South
Alas! the scorpion stings.
O! O! the scorpion stings.
Which finger? Ah! the middle one.
As soon as I was stung,
The poison into my head ascends.
Ayo! Ayo! What shall I do?
Bring down the poison with yilledu.
This chant is kept up for a long time, when suddenly another of the
actors falls on the ground, and writhes like a snake. The Yanadis
are a very supple race, and, when dancing, especially when writhing
on the ground, one sees a display of muscular action that makes one
believe that the human body is capable of all the twists and turns of
a serpent. When the actor is representing the man bitten by a snake,
one hears quaint cries while the snake is sought in the hair, ears,
and nose, basket and loin-cloth. The choir now sings the following:--
Come down to catch the snake,
O! snake-charmer, behold the standing snake.
Be sure the pipe sounds well.
Come, come, with the big snakes in the basket,
And the little ones in the lock of your hair.
When I went down the bank of the Yerracheru,
And saw the harvest cut,
The cobra crawled beneath the harvester.
Ayo! Ayo! Ayo!
To see this action song, and to hear these strange people, is one
of the queerest experiences of native aboriginal life. The dancers,
and the spectators who form the choir, all become very excited, and
even the European, seeing the tamasha (spectacle), is infected with
the excitement. The actors are bathed in perspiration, but the dance
is kept up nevertheless, and only when their large stock of palmyra
leaf torches is exhausted will they stop and take their rest."
In their nomadic life the Yanadis have learnt by experience the
properties and uses of herbs and roots, with which they treat fever,
rheumatism, and other diseases. They have their own remedies for
cobra bite and scorpion sting. It is said that the Yanadis alone
are free from elephantiasis, which affects the remaining population
of Sriharikota.
It is noted by the Rev. G. N. Thomssen that "while it has been
impossible to gather these people into schools, because of their
shyness and jungle wildness, Christian missionaries, especially
the American Baptist missionaries, have succeeded in winning the
confidence of these degraded children of nature, and many of them
have joined the Christian Church. Some read and write well, and a few
have even learned English. We have a small, but growing settlement
of Christianised Yanadis at Bapatla."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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