Note 10 — M (Continued)

It is recorded, in the Gazetteer of the Bellary district, that “in 1790 Lord Cornwallis, then Governor-General of India, entered into an alliance with the Marāthas and the Nizam to reduce Tipu to order, and it was agreed that whatever territories should be acquired by them from Tipu should be equally divided between them. Certain specified poligars, among whom were the chiefs of Bellary, Rayadrug and Harpanahalli, were, however, to be left in possession of their districts. Tipu was reduced to submission in 1792, and by the treaty of that year he ceded half his territories to the allies.10 Sandūr was allotted to the Marāthas, and a part of the Bellary district to the Nizam.” The present Marātha chief of the little hill-locked Sandūr State is a minor, whose name and titles are Rāja Venkata Rao Rao Sahib Hindu Rao Ghōrpade Sēnāpati Māmalikat Madar. Of the eleven thousand inhabitants of the State, the various castes of Marāthas number over a thousand. “Three families of them are Brāhmans, who came to Sandūr as officials with Siddoji Rao when he took the State from the Jaramali poligar. Except for two short intervals, Siddoji’s descendants have held the State ever since. The others are grouped into three local divisions, namely, Khāsgi, Kumbi, and Lēkāvali. The first of these consists of only some eight families, and constitutes the aristocracy of the State. Some of them came to Sandūr from the Marātha country with Siva Rao and other rulers of the State, and they take the chief seats at Darbars and on other public occasions, and are permitted to dine and intermarry with the Rāja’s family. They wear the sacred thread of the Kshatriyas, belong to the orthodox Brāhmanical gōtras, have Brāhmans as their purōhits, observe many of the Brāhmanical ceremonies, burn their dead, forbid widow re-marriage, and keep their womankind gosha. On the other hand, they do not object to drinking alcohol or to smoking, and they eat meat, though not beef. Their family god is the same as that of the Rāja’s family, namely, Martānda Manimallari, and they worship him in the temple in his honour which is in the Rāja’s palace, and make pilgrimages to his shrine at Jejūri near Poona. [It is noted by Monier-Williams11 that ‘a deification, Khando-ba (also called Khande-Rao), was a personage who lived in the neighbourhood of the hill Jejūri, thirty miles from Poona. He is probably a deification of some powerful Rāja or aboriginal chieftain, who made himself useful to the Brāhmans. He is now regarded as an incarnation of Siva in his form Mallāri. The legend is that the god Siva descended in this form to destroy a powerful demon named Mallāsura, who lived on the hill, and was a terror to the neighbourhood. Pārvati descended at the same time to become Khando-bā’s wife. His worship is very popular among the people of low caste in the Marātha country. Sheep are sacrificed at the principal temple on the Jejūri hill, and a bad custom prevails of dedicating young girls to the god’s service. Khando-bā is sometimes represented with his wife on horseback, attended by a dog. A sect existed in Sankara’s time, who worshipped Mallāri as lord of dogs.’] At the marriages of the Khāsgis, an unusual custom, called Vīra Pūja, or the worship of warriors, is observed. Before the ceremony, the men form themselves into two parties, each under a leader, and march to the banks of the Narihalla river, engaging in mock combat as they go. At the river an offering is made to Siva in his form as the warrior Martānda, and his blessing is invoked. The goddess Gangā is also worshipped, and then both parties march back, indulging on the way in more pretended fighting. The second division of the Marāthas, the Kunbis, are generally agriculturists, though some are servants to the first division. They cannot intermarry with the Khāsgis, or dine with them except in separate rows, and their womanfolk are not gosha; but they have Brāhmanical gōtras and Brāhman purōhits. Some of them use the Rāja’s name of Ghōrpade, but this is only because they are servants in his household. The third division, the Lēkāvalis, are said to be the offspring of irregular unions among other Marāthas, and are many of them servants in the Rāja’s palace. Whence they are also called Manimakkalu. They all call themselves Ghōrpades, and members of the Rāja’s (the Kansika) gōtra. They thus cannot intermarry among themselves, but occasionally their girls are married to Kunbis. Their women are in no way gōsha.”12