Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s2.20
Indische Paläographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s2.20
- Language
- German
c48.s2.20.1
a) **Combined crafts** (1,263,900). From at least the date of the Mahābhārata, five trades, called the Pāñckalsi, stand out from the rest, and are usually grouped together. The goldsmith comes first, except in Bengal. Then comes the brass and coppersmith and next the carpenter or other worker in wood. The blacksmith follows in a lower place, partly, no doubt, because his is a dirty calling, partly because he has to use bellows made of oxhide, and partly, again, because the metal in which he works is black, the unlucky colour. In the Gangetic valley, too, there may be some association between the village and the nomad blacksmith, who is probably of Kōl origin and shares the reputation of the gipsy tinker and farrier of Europe. The fifth place in this hierarchy belongs to the stone-worker, which, exept in the south, is a more modern and probably a purely functional body. The above castes are not always strictly separated in occupation: sometimes the carpenter becomes a blacksmith, and the masonry, like bricklaying is done by an outsider; the latter being held to verge upon the task of the potter, which is impure. In the Dravidian country the five are found merged in a single group, called the Kammāḷan in Tamil, Kamsāla in Telugu, and Pañcāḷa in the Karnatic. The occupations then fall into subdivisions. This cohesion seems to have been promoted, if not initiated, by sectarian influence.
c48.s2.20.2
It appears that in this part of India the artisans used formerly to be excluded from the main village site, and forced, like the leather-workers and scavengers, to live in hamlets of their own, detached from the rest of the community. As their work grew in importance, their origin, which was probably amongst the servile classes, tended to be forgotten or ignored, and they were admitted within the walls, and allowed certain privileges in the way of social display which had before been reserved for the higher classes. Then followed the great Southern schism of the Right and the Left-handed castes, in which the artisans arrayed themselves en masse against the Brāhmans and few others. It is now generally held that this movement arose out of the levelling doctrines of the Buddhists or Jains of the south, which had been largely adopted by the lower classes; but whether the artisans, thus encouraged, led a revolt against Brāhmanical authority, or whether, on the decline of Buddhism, the Brāhmans took this means of setting the schismatics back into their place, is not certain. In the present day, the differences between the two factions, which are acrimonious and often turbulent, arise, not out of doctrinal questions, but on points of what may be termed processional privileges, such as the right to have the marriage-escort preceded by drums and trumpets, to have a mounted convoy in attendance, to carry certain emblems of a quasi-religious signification;
c48.s2.20.3
above all, to exceed a conventional maximum number of pillars to the marriage-booth. Castes whose technical skill and circumstances have raised them far above the class from which they sprang have often shown the tendency, as stated in an earlier section, to embrace a new scheme of reform which combines religious doctrine with the weakening of the barriers which prevent their equivalent rise in social position, and in this case the democratic teachings of Jainism and Buddhism had the further backing of the propaganda of Basava in the north Karnatic, with the result that most of the Pañcāla became Liṅgāyat and, therefore, anti-Brāhmanist. None of the Five grouped-sections employs Brāhmans or acknowledges the authority of that order, and all ceremonies are performed by priests of their own body. For some time past the Pāñckalsī have claimed descent from Viśvakarman, the Hephaestos of the Brāhmanic pantheon, and call themselves Viśva Brāhmans, assuming all the attributes of the sacerdotal order. In this respect the Southerners do not stand alone, since a similar claim is put forward by various artisan castes in other parts of India, especially by the goldsmiths. It is needless to say that whatever title or practice may obtain currency within the community, its sanction by the outside world has to be secured through the Brāhman, who naturally will have none of it. Authorities differ as to the homogeneity of the Pāñckalsī.
c48.s2.20.4
By some it is said that the occupations are interchangeable, and that families or individuals pass from one to another without any alteration of social status or loss of right of intermarriage. Others say that in the Tamil country the divisions do not generally intermarry, but that this is not the case in the Telugu country, where all five certainly eat together, and are said to intermarry. The Kanarese branches follow the rules of the Liṅgāyat community. In the Malabar tract the five stand on a different footing, and take a far lower position. They are amongst the impure castes and do not employ their own people as Brāhmans. The Ās'āri, or carpenter, who is the house-builder of the coast, stands above the rest, and at the ceremonies connected with the erection of a building he is allowed to wear the sacred thread. The Taṭṭān (goldsmiths), Kollan (blacksmiths), and Mūs'āri (coppersmiths), intermarry. The stonemason is not an important coast artisan, but above the Sahyādri and in the south, the number of stone temples and images is so large and their use so ancient, that the functions of the stone-worker have always been in great request; so much so, that in some of the inscriptions this craftsman is invested with the title of Ācārya, or teacher, which though the Pāñckalsī nowadays use it of each other, is not ordinarily conferred on any but religious or literary instructors.
c48.s2.20.5
In consequence of the use of the general title Kammāḷan instead of the sub-division, it is impossible to give the numbers of the Pāñckalsī exercising the respective trades included under it, except for the comparatively limited population of the Malabar coast, and this, irrespective of the peculiar constitution of the community, is a reason for dealing with the latter apart from the corresponding castes of the rest of India. There is, however, in Bengal, a somewhat similar grouping in the case of the Kāmār or metal-working castes. This body apparently started with a variety of functional groups of different origins, and is now welded into a sort of caste, subdivided according to the metal used, and bearing the general title usually given elsewhere to the worker in iron. The legend in which the Kāmār trace their descent from Viśvakarman, indeed, is very much the same as that by which the iron-smelting Āsūra of the Kōl race justify their origin from the same ancestor, thus confirming the general view as to the non-Āryan foundation of the caste. The social graduation of the subdivisions is curious, in that the worker in iron stands first, and intermarries only with the worker in brass, and the bell-metal craftsman stands above the goldsmith.
c48.s2.20.6
The latter, indeed, under the name of Sēkarā, or Svarnakār, though he holds himself higher than the wealthy Subarṇabaṇik, mentioned along with the Traders, must have something against him from days of old, as the Brāhmans which serve his subdivision are not in communion with the rest of their order, whilst those who perform similar functions for the rest of the Kāmār are under no such interdiction. The Niyāriyā, or Dhuldhōyā, is a parasitic caste upon the Sōnār, and lives by extracting the gold out of the refuse of the latter's shop. He is usually allowd to be Sōnār in blood as in occupation, but in the north is often a Muslim, even when the goldsmith is Brāhmanist.