Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s3.t2: § 56. Temple services. a) Priests
Indische Paläographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s3.t2
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Contents
- c48.s3.t2.1 — 5 parts
- c48.s3.t2.5 — 4 parts
§ 56. Temple services. a) Priests
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In treating of the Brāhman, it was mentioned that whilst the post of priest in a family of a pure caste was one which could be occupied with credit by a member of the sacerdotal order, ministration in a temple was held to be a duty only to be undertaken by a degraded, or at least, one of the lower, sub-divisions of Brāhmans. The distinction, it was pointed out, lies probably in the divergence of the worship of the non-Āryan deities of the existing pantheon from the old Vedic sacrifices, still held in reverence, at least in theory, by all orthodox Brāhmans. There is also the risk, or perhaps the certainty, of contamination to be incurred in disposing of the offerings made in the course of these services. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, Brāhmans are found to perform the necessary offices before the god in the great majority of the temples of their creed. Equally low in the estimation of the order is the Brāhman who subsists upon the fees and offerings of pilgrims at the great centres of religious resort, and still lower, the Mahābrāhman, who takes part in funeral rites. All these, however, are included under the general title of Brāhman. Outside this designation are some small classes who claim to be Brahmans because they perform temple service, but who are recruited from the lay castes of the vicinity.
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The Pujārī and Bhōjkī, of the Panjāb Himālaya are cases of this kind, and, though repudiated by the Sārasvat Brāhmans to whom they have attached themselves, they seem to have all the position of the order among the people to whom they minister. The Bhōjak and Sēvak of west Rājputāna, again, who have been mentioned in connection with the Banyā, are held to be Brāhmans, albeit degraded by their connection with the Jain worship. The real reason for the lowness of their position is surmised to be their foreign origin, of which mention was made above. The impure castes, and, in the Dravidian country, a good many of the lower agricultural castes, employ their own caste-fellows for priestly duties outside the temple, whilst a few castes, in the south, officiate for not only their own body but for other castes of similar or slightly superior rank. Generally, however, these semi-priestly castes are themselves of low rank. The Paṇḍāram, for instance, is generally considered to be a branch of the Āṇḍi, a fraternity of Tamil religious mendicants; but there is one subdivision considerably above the average of the latter class, which is educated to a certain extent, wears the sacred thread, presides over monastic and temple establishments, and officiates as priests to the great Veḷḷāḷan peasantry and the castes immediately below and above it.
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Some of the Dāsari, too, in the Telugu country, rise far above the rest, and do service in temples and with respectable families of any caste below the Brāhman. The Vaḷḷuvan, once the priests of the Pallava dynasties, now officiate for the Paḷḷan and Paraiyan and have lost much of their former position by so doing. Like several low castes in various parts of India, the Vaḷḷuvan have produced a widely popular poet, Tiruvaḷḷuvan, who is said to have married into a Veḷḷāḷan family. It is conjectured that the sacerdotal functions of this caste were superseded by those of the Brāhman, when the latter found his way into the Dravidian region. Now, besides their employment by the castes above mentioned, the Vaḷḷuvan have to look to astrology and herbalistic medicine for their living, and here they enjoy the custom and confidence of far higher castes. In some villages, indeed, the Vaḷḷuvan is on the staff, and receives his annual quota of threshed grain from each household. It may be remarked that they do not ever intermarry with the castes to which they act as priests, unless they belong to the pure section. The Tambaḷa, a small caste of temple-priests in Telingāna, hold almost the rank of Brāhmans, and where they have taken to cultivation are still quite in the upper line. It is said that their name, the local rendering of Tamil, is due to their having been sent up from the south by the great reformer, S'aṅkarācārya, to labour on the Coromandel coast.
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As they are mostly worshippers of S'iva, many have joined, it is said, the Liṅgāyat community in the inland districts. The true priests of the latter, however, are the Jaṅgam, a caste of considerable influence in the Karnatic. It seems to have been called into being to satisfy the desire of the converts of Basava to retain priests for their Dravidian forms of worship after they had split from the Brāhmans. In the tracts where Liṅgvantism is most powerful the Jaṅgam are subdivided into the usual monastic and secular sections. The former, in turn, are either stationary in monasteries, or put in charge of a circle of villages, each of which they visit in turn, imparting doctrine and counsel. In the outlying parts of the Karnatic, the Jaṅgam is not unfrequently a wandering mendicant of a religious type, living upon doles from every class of the population. The secular Jaṅgam, again, is often a trader or money-lender. The Census returns of this caste, though possibly fairly accurate in the aggregate, are defective in detail. In the south Dravidian districts, that is, the term Jaṅgam is used of any Liṅgāyat, whilst in the north on the contrary, many Jaṅgam are returned as Liṅgāyat or as Vīrs'aiv Brāhman. A small caste corresponding somewhat to the Vaḷḷuvan, is found in Gujarāt and the north Dekkan, called the Gāruḍā, which serves the leather-working castes as priest.
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In some parts they eat with their clients, but in Gujarāt they are generally superior to the latter in education and physical appearance. From one of their subdivisions it might be surmised that they are the descendants of a superior class driven out of Rajputāna, like so many others in the west. The Gāruḍī of the Marāṭhā country is of a lower type altogether, and belongs to the Māṅg caste.
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In the Panjāb, there is one caste requiring notice, the Bharāi, which, however, is often returned simply as S'ēkh. The Bharāi is the special guardian and ministrant of the shrine of the popular Saint Sakhī Sarvar, of the Indus. Whether he is, since his canonisation, Muslim or Brāhmanist, it is difficult to judge from the crowds that throng to his tomb; but the Bharāi are of the former creed. They haunt the centre and submontane parts of the Province, and live by conducting pilgrims down to the shrine at Nigāhā, in the Dērajāt. It is said that some of the Bharāi have taken to music and call themselves Mirāsī. The only other occupation with which they are associated is circumcision, which rite they perform in supersession of the barber on the lower Indus. Along the Paṭhān frontier, there is a body, incoherent and multifarious, which locally arrogates to itself the title of Ulama, or the learned. The entrance-qualification, however, appears to be only the knowledge by rote of a sufficient number of texts of the Kurān to serve as spells or curses for the practical purposes of life. On the other hand, the term may include the highly educated Maulvī of the city mosque, and the Kāzi, who may or may not be erudite in the law he administers. It is not, however, a caste, and as a functional body, enjoys as low a reputation for piety as for erudition, and is the subject of many biting proverbs along the frontier.
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§ 51. b) **Temple-servants** (300,500). There are certain castes in almost every part of India, but especially in the south, which are dedicated to offices within the temple other than those of actual worship. They wash the images of the god, deck it with flowers, and keep the precincts clean. Most of them have other and more secular avocations, generally connected with leaves or flowers, such as umbrella-making, the preparation of leaf-platters for Brāhmanic festivals and garlands for ceremonial use. The caste most widely spread of all thus engaged is the Mālī, or garland-maker; but as nearly the whole of the caste is in the present day occupied in gardening or agriculture, it has been reviewed already under the head of special cultivation. In Bengal there is still enough of the traditional work left to justify a separate subdivision to perform it. In other provinces, too, the growth of flowers and the making of garlands, particularly those for the temple, are the work of special bodies, but they are generally distinct from the Mālī. Such are the Phūl-Mālī, Phulārī, Hūgār, and the like. It is still necessary to be specially brought up to the trade, lest mistakes be made which would be ruinous. One god has to be decked with flowers which are abhorrent to another; certain flowers, too, are required by convention for certain occasions, and the marriage-coronet must contain the prescribed flowers and no others. The small castes above mentioned are generally found south of the Vindhya, in connection with the caste of Guraō, which is accredited to certain temples, usually those of S'iva, where the post is permanent and hereditary. The Guraō also make the leaf platters required for caste-feasts and other banquets on a large scale, a task which in upper India is performed by the Bārī, who, however, does not serve temples. In the Telugu country, the Sātānī does the work of the Guraō and a good deal more, for it appears that this caste was brought into being to aid the propaganda of Rāmānuja, its patron. It is associated, therefore, more closely with religion than a mere temple servant, and acts as priest to several other castes in a good position, as well as the lower classes. In contradistinction to the Gurao, the Sātānī is Vaiṣṇava, and those of the caste who are brought up as priests are fairly conversant with the Purānic authorities of their sect. Formerly, the Sātānī called in Brāhmans for their ceremonies, but of late their own priests have come into favour. The Balija community generally employ the Sātāni, but those who are redundant in this capacity, take to umbrella and garland making. The Tulu caste of Dēvādiga is not found outside Kanarā, and where not engaged in temple service, the caste has taken to cultivation and the lower grades of State service. The curious trans-formation of the Barber into the temple servant in Malabar has been already mentioned, and there are about 8,000 of the Mārāyān who combine that duty with the manipulation of the temple drums when required.
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§ 58. **Dancers, Singers &c.** (135,900). That these professions should be placed immediately after those connected with temple-service is by no
c48.s3.t2.5.1
means so anomalous as regards sequence as it may appear at first sight. In India, as in other oriental countries, dancing and singing are professional accomplishments or ceremonial observances, and only among some of the wilder tribes is the dance a form of private recreation. In Brāhmanic circles there are recognised dances, generally of a religious significance, danced among women, and, also, a few highly heterodox tripudiations associated with the rites of some particular sect, and ignored by the rest of the community. There are, again, the sword-dances of the Khattak and other frontier tribes, and most of the more primitive forest communities have their reel or square-dance with its traditional figures handed down as a tribal possession. With these exceptions, the dance in India is a performance by trained professionals, of a character which may be called posture-singing, or illustrating by gestures the words sung by the performer. The subject of the ode, except amongst the Muslim, is usually connected with religion or mythology. In the Dravidian region the dancing takes place within or before the temple, in honour of the god, especially of S'iva in his many forms, and the performers are dedicated to him and form part of the establishment of the temple. The women have their off-time, of course, which is spent in the practice of the ancient mystery everywhere, now as of yore, associated with professional dancing.
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In fact, the old Dutch travellers when introduced to these bevies, did not mince their words, but habitually refer to them under the title of "danshoer", an appellation even more applicable to the dancing castes of the north than to those in the south, since the former have no connection with religion beyond the dedication of the individual to the worship of a certain god, if she be of the Brāhmanic faith. It is worth noting that owing possibly to this connection with the popular pantheon or, as some think, to the more distant tradition of communistic marriage, the courtesan is not a degraded member of Indian society, but, like the Hetaira of Athens, is not only tolerated, but respected. There is, of course, every grade to be found amongst them, as in all countries where inequality of purse is the rule, from the ragged nomad in her filthy little reed-booth, whose musical and terpsichorean attainments are of the lowest, to the highly-trained singer of the great city, well versed in alike classical and popular poetry, whose diction is often quoted as the standard of Hindī or Urdū polite conversation. It may have been gathered from what has been stated above, that the two arts, dancing and singing, go together, and comparatively few and those only of the highest rank, sing without the plastic accompaniment.
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Recruited as they are from all castes, Brahmanic and Muslim, under a number of titles, honorific or the reverse, it is not worth while to dwell upon them here otherwise than cursorily, as an ancient and recognised grade in Indian society. In upper India, alongside the functional titles of Ṭavāif, Kasbī, Nāik, and so on, there are found the semi-religious designations of Rāmjani, Gandharp, Rās-dhārī and the lower ones of Kañcan, Besyā, Patūriya and so on. In the west, besides some of those above mentioned, there are the Naikin, of the semi-religious type, and the Kalāvant. The religious establishments referred to above are all in the south. In the Dekkan there are several of comparatively small renown and endowment, and only nine women have returned themselves under the specific name there given to them. Even in the Tamil country, where the accommodation for this class round the chief temples indicates the extent of the community in old times, the number returned is far below the actual, since many of the girls give the name of the caste in which they were born, instead of that to which they were dedicated when they wedded the god. It is the duty of the Dāsī to fan the god, present to him the sacred light, and to sing and dance before him when he is carried in procession. Owing to their Brāhmanic connection, they do not consort with the Kammālan, or artisans, who belong to the Left hand, nor, of course, with the impure castes.
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Their sons become musicians, often of considerable skill and learning, and occasionally marry into respectable castes. The daughters follow their mother. In the Telugu country, the caste is known as Bōgam or Sāni, and is widely scattered in small numbers. There is only one institution of the sort common in the Tamil region. The Kanarese Devali are mostly ascribed to a god or to temples, as in the south. Both here and in Teliṅgāna, the recruits are from the Paḷḷi, and Holeya, but on the coast, the breed is apparently from a fairer stock, like the Tīyan, or bastards of the Havik. All these dancing and singing castes have their strict rules about initiation, conduct, inheritance, and the observance of caste regulations, enforced through a caste Council, or Pancāyat, like the larger communities.
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§ 59. The majority of the castes coming under this head are here placed not on account of any ethnic distinction between them and those already described, but merely in consideration of the generally urban character of their occupations. Most of them, indeed, are but offshoots of larger bodies still unaffected by the influences of the city, and are finding their way back to the village as communication grows easier and the convenience they represent gets to be the object of a more effective demand. It should be understood, therefore, that these castes are not entirely confined to the towns, though it is there that they find at present the main field for their labours. They may be conveniently grouped as shopkeepers, artisans and domestic servants.
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§ 60. **Grocers &c.** (825,000). Under this head come the retailers not only of spices and condiments but of perfumery also, the functional name of the Banya who sells the former in one part of the country being the same as that of the extractor and seller of scents in another. The latter is but scantily represented in the Census returns, and is usually a Muslim. The large proportion of Brāhmanists coming under this title may be taken to be grocers returning their professional, in place of their caste, name. The Gandhai or Gandhabaṇik of Bengal is generally a druggist as well as the vendor of condiments, and when he sells sandal-wood and other fragrant articles which enter largely into domestic worship, he rises in position. The whole caste, indeed, pays homage in the spring to Gandheśvarī, the goddess of perfume, a manifestation of Durgā. The Gandhabaṇik also sells drugs, and is reputed to be well acquainted with all local medicinal products. A few take out licenses for the sale of opium and intoxicating preparations of hemp, but the actual sale of such articles is left to a Muslim assistant. The grocer of the upper Gangetic region generally belongs to the Kāsar- or Kēsar-vāṇī or Kasaundhan castes, both somewhat low branches of the great Banyā order. The latter derives its name from dealings in brass or bell-metal, and the former probably from saffron. Both now sell grain, salt and other commodities which their Bengal con-