Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s2.37.5

c48.s2.37.5

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.