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
To sum up the Yanadi. It is notorious that, in times of scarcity, he
avoids the famine relief works, for the simple reason that he does not
feel free on them. Nevertheless, a few are in the police service. Some
are kavalgars (watchmen), farm labourers, scavengers, stone-masons
or bricklayers, others are pounders of rice, or domestic servants,
and are as a rule faithful. They earn a livelihood also in various
subsidiary ways, by hunting, fishing, cobra-charming, collecting honey
or fuel, rearing and selling pigs, practicing medicine as quacks,
and by thieving. "An iron implement," Mr. F. S. Mullaly writes, [158]
called the sikkaloo kol, is kept by them ostensibly for the purpose of
digging roots, but it is really their jemmy, and used in the commission
of burglary. It is an ordinary iron tool, pointed at both ends, one
end being fitted in a wooden handle. With this they can dig through a
wall noiselessly and quickly, and many houses are thus broken into in
one night, until a good loot is obtained. House-breakings are usually
committed during the first quarter of the moon. Yanadis confess their
own crimes readily, but will never implicate accomplices.... Women
are useful in the disposal of stolen property. At dusk they go round
on their begging tours selling mats, which they make, and take the
opportunity of dropping a word to the women of cheap things for sale,
and the temptation is seldom resisted. Stolen property is also carried
in their marketing baskets to the village grocer, the Komati. Among
the wild (Adavi) Yanadis, women are told off to acquire information
while begging, but they chiefly rely on the liquor-shopkeepers for
news, which may be turned to useful account." [159]
Yanati.--The Yanatis, Yenetis, or Enetis, are a class of cultivators in
the Ganjam and Vizagapatam districts, between whom and the Yanadis some
confusion has arisen. For example, it is noted, in the Madras Census
Report, 1891, that it is curious to find the Yanadi sub-division of
the Velamas so strongly represented, for there is at the present day
a wide gulf between Velamas and Yanadis. Again, in the Census Report,
1901, it is noticed under the heading Yanati that "entries of this
name were clubbed with Yanadi, but it has since been reported that,
in Bissumcuttack taluk of the Vizagapatam Agency, there is a separate
caste called Yanati or Yeneti Dora, which is distinct from either
Yanadi or Konda Dora."
It is said that the Yanatis of Ganjam also go by the name of Entamara
and Gainta or Gayinta.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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