DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16243#0173
CASTE IN PROVERBS AND POPULAR SAYINGS 139
and his miserable shanty is huddled up against the wall outside.
But he challenges the stranger who comes ^ Mah_r and
to the gate, and for this and other services Dhed.
he is allowed various perquisites, among
them that of begging for broken victuals from house to house.
He offers old blankets to his god, and his child's playthings are
bones. The Dhed's status is equally low. If he looks at a
water jar he pollutes its contents; if you run up against him
by accident, you must go off and bathe. If you annoy a Dhed
he sweeps up the dust in your face. When he dies, the world
is so much the cleaner. If you go to the Dheds' quarter you
find there nothing but a heap of bones.
This relegation of the low castes to a sort of Ghetto is
carried to great lengths in the south of India ^ p-riah
where the intolerance of the Brahman is
very conspicuous. In the typical Madras village the Panahs-
" dwellers in the quarter" {para) as this broken tribe is now
called*—live in an irregular cluster of conical hovels of palm
leaves known as the pdrchcry, the squalor and untidiness of
which present the sharpest contrast to the trim street of tiled
masonry houses where the Brahmans congregate. "Every
village," says the proverb, "has its Pariah hamlet "-a place ot
pollution the census of which is even now taken with difficulty
owing to the reluctance of the high-caste enumerator to enter
its unclean precincts. "A palm-tree," says another, "casts no
shade; a Pariah has no caste and rules." The popular estimate
of the morals of the Pariah comes out in the saying, " He that
breaks his word is a Pariah at heart"; while the note of iron}'
predominates in the pious question, " If a Pariah offers boiled
rice will not the god take it ? " the implication being that the
Brahman priests who take the offerings to idols are too greedy
to inquire by whom they are presented.
The organized animistic tribes, who are wholly outside the
bounds of Hinduism, seem for the most part to have escaped
the attention of the makers of proverbs, probably because they
have no specific place in the communal life of the village. 1 he
Bhll alone, hunter, blackmailer, and high- The Bhii.
way robber, has impressed his curious per-
sonality upon the people of the jungle country of Western India
and Rajputana. He is, we are told, the king of thejungle; his
* [Bishop Caldwell (Draridian Grammar, 2nd edit., 1875, P- 549) derives it from Tamil
A»«, "a drum"; but this has been questioned. E. Thurston, Caste.' ami Tribes oj
Southern India, 1909, vol. vi., p. 77 et .f/y.]
and his miserable shanty is huddled up against the wall outside.
But he challenges the stranger who comes ^ Mah_r and
to the gate, and for this and other services Dhed.
he is allowed various perquisites, among
them that of begging for broken victuals from house to house.
He offers old blankets to his god, and his child's playthings are
bones. The Dhed's status is equally low. If he looks at a
water jar he pollutes its contents; if you run up against him
by accident, you must go off and bathe. If you annoy a Dhed
he sweeps up the dust in your face. When he dies, the world
is so much the cleaner. If you go to the Dheds' quarter you
find there nothing but a heap of bones.
This relegation of the low castes to a sort of Ghetto is
carried to great lengths in the south of India ^ p-riah
where the intolerance of the Brahman is
very conspicuous. In the typical Madras village the Panahs-
" dwellers in the quarter" {para) as this broken tribe is now
called*—live in an irregular cluster of conical hovels of palm
leaves known as the pdrchcry, the squalor and untidiness of
which present the sharpest contrast to the trim street of tiled
masonry houses where the Brahmans congregate. "Every
village," says the proverb, "has its Pariah hamlet "-a place ot
pollution the census of which is even now taken with difficulty
owing to the reluctance of the high-caste enumerator to enter
its unclean precincts. "A palm-tree," says another, "casts no
shade; a Pariah has no caste and rules." The popular estimate
of the morals of the Pariah comes out in the saying, " He that
breaks his word is a Pariah at heart"; while the note of iron}'
predominates in the pious question, " If a Pariah offers boiled
rice will not the god take it ? " the implication being that the
Brahman priests who take the offerings to idols are too greedy
to inquire by whom they are presented.
The organized animistic tribes, who are wholly outside the
bounds of Hinduism, seem for the most part to have escaped
the attention of the makers of proverbs, probably because they
have no specific place in the communal life of the village. 1 he
Bhll alone, hunter, blackmailer, and high- The Bhii.
way robber, has impressed his curious per-
sonality upon the people of the jungle country of Western India
and Rajputana. He is, we are told, the king of thejungle; his
* [Bishop Caldwell (Draridian Grammar, 2nd edit., 1875, P- 549) derives it from Tamil
A»«, "a drum"; but this has been questioned. E. Thurston, Caste.' ami Tribes oj
Southern India, 1909, vol. vi., p. 77 et .f/y.]