Note 47 — B (continued 2)

In the Madras Census Report, 1901, it is stated that the two main divisions of Bōyas are called also Pedda (big) and Chinna (small) respectively, and, according to another account, the caste has four endogamous sections, Pedda, Chinna, Sadaru, and Myāsa. Sadaru is the name of a sub-division of Lingāyats, found mainly in the Bellary and Anantapur districts, where they are largely engaged in cultivation. Some Bēdars who live amidst those Lingāyats call themselves Sadaru. According to the Manual of the North Arcot district, the Bōyas are a “Telugu hunting caste, chiefly found above the ghāts. Many of the Poligars of that part of the country used to belong to the caste, and proved themselves so lawless that they were dispossessed. Now they are usually cultivators. They have several divisions, the chief of which are the Mulki Bōyas and the Pāla Bōyas, who cannot intermarry.” According to the Mysore Census Reports, 1891 and 1901, “the Bēdas have two distinct divisions, the Kannada and Telugu, and own some twenty sub-divisions, of which the following are the chief:—Hālu, Māchi or Myāsa, Nāyaka, Pallegar, Bārika, Kannaiyyanajāti, and Kirātaka. The Māchi or Myāsa Bēdas comprise a distinct sub-division, also called the Chunchus. They live mostly in hills, and outside inhabited places in temporary huts. Portions of their community had, it is alleged, been coerced into living in villages, with whose descendants the others have kept up social intercourse. They do not, however, eat fowl or pork, but partake of beef; and the Myāsa Bēdas are the only Hindu class among whom the rite of circumcision is performed,47 on boys of ten or twelve years of age. These customs, so characteristic of the Mussalmans, seem to have been imbibed when the members of this sub-caste were included in the hordes of Haidar Ali. Simultaneously with the circumcision, other rites, such as the pānchagavyam, the burning of the tongue with a nīm (Melia Azadirachta) stick, etc. (customs pre-eminently Brahmanical), are likewise practised prior to the youth being received into communion. Among their other peculiar customs, the exclusion from their ordinary dwellings of women in child-bed and in periodical sickness, may be noted. The Myāsa Bēdas are said to scrupulously avoid liquor of every kind, and eat the flesh of only two kinds of birds, viz., gauja (grey partridge), and lavga (rock-bush quail).” Of circumcision among the Myāsa Bēdars it is noted, in the Gazetteer of the Bellary district, that they practise this rite round about Rayadrūg and Gudekōta. “These Myāsas seem quite proud of the custom, and scout with scorn the idea of marrying into any family in which it is not the rule. The rite is performed when a boy is seven or eight. A very small piece of the skin is cut off by a man of the caste, and the boy is then kept for eleven days in a separate hut, and touched by no one. His food is given him on a piece of stone. On the twelfth day he is bathed, given a new cloth, and brought back to the house, and his old cloth, and the stone on which his food was served, are thrown away. His relations in a body then take him to a tangēdu (Cassia auriculata) bush, to which are offered cocoanuts, flowers, and so forth, and which is worshipped by them and him. Girls on first attaining puberty are similarly kept for eleven days in a separate hut, and afterwards made to do worship to a tangēdu bush. This tree also receives reverence at funerals.”