Note 5 — XI Some Agricultural Ceremonies

The fact that the Cherumans, who are agrestic serfs, play a leading part in some of the festivals which have just been described, is significant. In an interesting note on the privileges of the servile classes, Mr M. J. Walhouse writes5 that “it is well known that the servile castes in Southern India once held far higher positions, and were indeed masters of the land on the arrival of the Brāhmanical race. Many curious vestiges of their ancient power still survive in the shape of certain privileges, which are jealously cherished, and, their origin being forgotten, are much misunderstood. These privileges are remarkable instances of survivals from an extinct state of society—shadows of long-departed supremacy, bearing witness to a period when the present haughty high-caste races were suppliants before the ancestors of degraded classes, whose touch is now regarded as pollution. In the great festival of Siva at Trivalūr in Tanjore, the headman of the Parēyans is mounted on the elephant with the god, and carries his chauri (yak-tail fly fan). In Madras, at the annual festival of the goddess of the Black Town (now George Town6), when a tāli (marriage badge) is tied round the neck of the idol in the name of the entire community, a Parēyan is chosen to represent the bridegroom. At Mēlkote in Mysore, the chief seat of the followers of Rāmānuja Achārya, and at the Brāhman temple at Bēlur, the Holeyas or Parēyans have the right of entering the temple on three days in the year, specially set apart for them.”