Gorakhnath and the Kanphata Yogis c7.91

c7.91

Thurston¹ reports as Yogīs for South India, jugglers and beggars, mostly householders, who sell beads and keep pigs. They are snake charmers, who have no restriction as regards food, and cultivators, scavengers, robbers and destroyers of dogs. They keep widows in concubinage. Some of their women are professional tattooers. Like those in Berār, they wander about, carrying on donkeys the materials for their rude huts which they set up on the outskirts of the villages. They account for their condition as resulting from a curse that was imposed because of some slighting remarks made regarding Pārvatī’s breasts. These Yogīs claim superiority to Mālas and Mādigās. The caste is divided into exogamous sects. They will eat crocodile, field rats and cats. They carry a bag containing snakes. The Pāmula (the word means ‘snake’) is a Jogī.