Note 39 — S (continued 2)

The immediate bone of contention at the time of the Tinnevelly riots was, the Census Superintendent, 1901, writes, “the claim of the Shānāns to enter the Hindu temples, in spite of the rules in the Agama Shāstras that toddy-drawers are not to be allowed into them; but the pretensions of the community date back from 1858, when a riot occurred in Travancore, because female Christian converts belonging to it gave up the caste practice of going about without an upper cloth.” On this point Mr. G. T. Mackenzie informs us39 that “in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the female converts to Christianity in the extreme south ventured, contrary to the old rules for the lower castes, to clothe themselves above the waist. This innovation was made the occasion for threats, violence, and series of disturbances. Similar disturbances arose from the same cause nearly thirty years later, and, in 1859, Sir Charles Trevelyan, Governor of Madras, interfered, and granted permission to the women of the lower castes to wear a cloth over the breasts and shoulders. The following proclamation was issued by the Mahārāja of Travancore:—We hereby proclaim that there is no objection to Shānān women either putting on a jacket like the Christian Shānān women, or to Shānān women of all creeds dressing in coarse cloth, and tying themselves round with it as the Mukkavattigal (fisherwomen) do, or to their covering their bosoms in any manner whatever, but not like women of high castes.” “Shortly after 1858, pamphlets began to be written and published by people of the caste, setting out their claims to be Kshatriyas. In 1874 they endeavoured to establish a right to enter the great Mīnākshi temple at Madura, but failed, and they have since claimed to be allowed to wear the sacred thread, and to have palanquins at their weddings. They say they are descended from the Chēra, Chōla and Pāndya kings; they have styled themselves Kshatriyas in legal papers; labelled their schools Kshatriya academy; got Brāhmans of the less particular kind to do purōhit’s work for them; had poems composed on their kingly origin; gone through a sort of incomplete parody of the ceremony of investiture with the sacred thread; talked much but ignorantly of their gōtras; and induced needy persons to sign documents agreeing to carry them in palanquins on festive occasions.” [During my stay at Nazareth in Tinnevelly, for the purpose of taking measurements of the Shānāns, I received a visit from some elders of the community from Kuttam, who arrived in palanquins, and bearing weapons of old device.] Their boldest stroke was to aver that the coins commonly known as Shānāns’ cash were struck by sovereign ancestors of the caste. The author of a pamphlet entitled ‘Bishop Caldwell and the Tinnevelly Shānārs’ states that he had met with men of all castes who say that they have seen the true Shānār coin with their own eyes, and that a Eurasian gentleman from Bangalore testified to his having seen a true Shānār coin at Bangalore forty years ago. The coin referred to is the gold Venetian sequin, which is still found in considerable numbers in the south, and bears the names of the Doges (Paul Rainer, Aloy Mocen, Ludov Manin, etc.) and a cross, which the Natives mistake for a toddy palm. “If,” Mr. Fawcett writes,40 “one asks the ordinary Malayāli (native of Malabar) what persons are represented on the sequin, one gets for answer that they are Rāma and Sīta: between them a cocoanut tree. Every Malayāli knows what an Āmâda is; it is a real or imitation Venetian sequin. I have never heard any explanation of the word Āmâda in Malabar. The following comes from Tinnevelly. Āmâda was the consort of Bhagavati, and he suddenly appeared one day before a Shānār, and demanded food. The Shānār said he was a poor man with nothing to offer but toddy, which he gave in a palmyra leaf. Āmâda drank the toddy, and performing a mantram (consecrated formula) over the leaf, it turned into gold coins, which bore on one side the pictures of Āmâda, the Shānār, and the tree, and these he gave to the Shānār as a reward for his willingness to assist him.”