Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s2.37
Indische Paläographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s2.37
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c48.s2.37.1
§ 49. **Dravidian Labouring castes.** In the south of India the landless labouring classes are particularly strong in number and assertiveness, and their relative positions are hard to define and must be treated as doubtful pending the results of the investigations of the Ethnographic Survey. It is advisable, therefore, to deal with them apart from the rest. There is apparently some reason for believing them all to be of one origin, but superimposed at different times one upon the other by various waves of conquest or migration. Their position has thus varied more than that of the corresponding helot tribes of the region absorbed by foreigners from beyond the north-west of India. The title Paraiyan, for instance, is not found in the standard Tamil dictionary of the 11th century, but the caste now so called is referred to in contemporary records under the name of Pulayan, still used of the corresponding community on the Malabār coast. Some weight may also be attached to the similarity of these two names with those of the Paḷḷi and Paḷḷan, labouring castes of the south Tamil country. The Holār or Holeya of the Karnatic, too, appears to belong to the same group, as in Kanarese the Tamil P becomes H. The Paḷḷi, to whom the name of Vaṇṇiyan was given by the Brāhmans, were once a dominant tribe under the Pallava dynasty, but were reduced to predial servitude when the Veḷḷāḷan entered their country.
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They are now mainly agricultural labourers, though some have acquired land of their own and others engage in trade. They occasionally call in Brāhmans for their rites, but their customs and rules are for the most part purely Dravidian. On the score of their former position, they have of late put forward the claim to be considered Kṣatriya, and don the sacred thread, conduct which brings them into collision with both priest and peasant. It is said that in the Right and Left-hand distribution of castes in the Tamil country, the men of the Paḷḷi go to one side and the women to the other, conjugal relations being suspended whilst the factions are in active opposition and resumed when peace is temporarily restored. The Paḷḷan, in spite of the similarity of the name, own to no connection with the Paḷḷi in the present day, and occupy a tract to the south of the latter. They are lower in rank and rarely engage in pursuits other than field labour. The names of their subdivisions, however, indicate that they may have belonged to the great Kuṟumban tribe and thus have an ancestral connection with the Pallava and therefore with the Paḷḷi. They follow the regular demonolatrous worship of the older Dravidians, and if they use priests from outside, they call in the Velluva, a low caste ministrant. The Pulayan, mentioned above, is a labouring caste of north Malabar, called Cēruman in the southern portion of that tract.
c48.s2.37.3
They have a tradition of better, even dominant, days, before the Nāyar enslaved them on their estates. One of the relics of their servile condition is the practice of still bringing their children to be named by their employer. They use their own priests in the propitiation of the evilly-disposed goddesses they worship. In a good many respects they follow the customs of the Nāyar, such as inheritance through the female line in the north and through the male in the south. The title of Cēruman denotes, according to their tradition, an origin in the Cēra country. There remains the great community of village menials of a type more pronouncedly impure than the castes mentioned above. These rank above the tanners and leather workers generally, and above the scavenger, whether a separate caste or, as in the greater part of the south, a sub-division of the main body. The best known section of this group is the Paraiyan or Pariah, of the Tamil country. In treating of it it is advisable at the outset to get rid of the notion set on foot by the Abbé Raynal, that the Pariah is an "outcaste", or that there exists such a thing as an outcaste anywhere in India. Every community has its place, disputed though it may be, in the social hierarchy of Brāhmanism, and there is no caste but will unhesitatingly designate some other as ranking below it.
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Ethnographic inquiry, therefore, past and present, has never yet succeeded in touching the bottom, or in finding a waif for whom no recognised place exists within the fold, albeit without the village. Possibly, in the course of time, public opinion may crystallise round one of the nomad castes, who know nothing of their past, and recruit and eat as circumstances dictate. Meanwhile, the scavenger fills this situation in the village life with which this review is at present concerned. Now, the Paraiyan is a caste the position of which is at all events clearly defined, and it has a past which it cherishes. Low as he is, excluded from everyday communion with those above him, "le morne Chandal" will no more admit the polluting presence of a Brāhman into his hamlet than the latter will allow the Paraiyan's shadow to fall upon his water-pot. Some of the most celebrated and exclusive temples are thrown open to the Paraiyan on certain days of the year, and for the time he lords it over the Brāhman. At certain festivals again, especially those connected with S'iva or a local goddess, it is one of this caste who takes his seat alongside of the image in the procession, or ties the symbolic marriage-thread round its neck.
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Until recently, when the custom began to wane, even the Brāhman, in a few tracts, had to obtain the formal consent of the Paṟaiyan to a marriage in his household, and similar acts have been mentioned in connection with the rites of castes dealt with in a preceding paragraph. In another direction, certain low but responsible offices on the village staff must be filled by Paṟaiyan, and when there is a dispute about a boundary, it is a Paṟaiyan, or, in other parts of India, a member of the corresponding caste, who has to walk the line with a pot of water, his own son, or a clod of his native earth, on his head. All this tends, of course, to show that the caste was once a most important element in the population, older on the soil, in closer communion with the *genius loci*, and influential beyond the conception of those who only know it in its condition today. As before pointed out, its present name is comparatively modern, and in the earliest records available, before even the Pulayan are mentioned, the caste which, like the Paṟaiyan of to day, was excluded from the villages, was called Eyiṉan, and credited with the possession of hillforts and considerable power, on the lines of the Dasyu of the Sūkta period.
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The sub-castes of the Paṟaiyan, which are very numerous, indicate the practice of most of the more reputable handicrafts, but the general tradition among the modern Paṟaiyan is that the caste was formerly a weaving one by calling, and in an inscription of the 11th century, probably the earliest in which the name Paṟaiyan is used, it is subdivided into the weaving and the ploughing sections. Some have derived the name from paṟai, a drum, and a section does, indeed, act as the drummers of the Right-hand. On the other hand, their great rivals, the leather-workers, blow the trumpet for the Left, without being named after their performance on that blatant instrument. In the Karnatic, the Holeya occupy almost the same position, except that they are not, of course, affiliated to any factional distribution of other castes, nor do they weave to any great extent. A good many of them have, however, joined the Liṅgāyats, in which community weavers abound, some of them holding but a low position, attributable probably to their origin amongst such classes as the Holeya, and entailing, at all events, the establishment of a special section for their reception. In the Telugu country, the place of the Paṟaiyan is taken by the Māla class, the name of which resembles that of the Mahār of the Dekkan, which performs the same offices. In the case of the latter, however, the weaving branch has split off into an entirely separate body, whereas in the east it seems to remain as a subdivision.
c48.s2.37.7
All these Dravidian labouring castes employ barbers, washermen and generally priests, of their own community. Ethnologically, the group presents features of very great interest and importance in respect to its origin and history, and much remains to be done in sifting the different strata of a people of whom so little is known in comparison with what has been ascertained concerning the servile classes in upper India. Not that there is any lack of theory, conjecture and analogy.