Note 1 — Kabīrpanthi

Lingāyat Sect.—A sect devoted to the worship of Siva which has developed into a caste. The Lingāyat sect is supposed1 to have been founded in the twelfth century by one Bāsava, a Brāhman minister of the king of the Carnatic. He preached the equality of all men and of women also by birth, and the equal treatment of all. Women were to be treated with the same respect as men, and any neglect or incivility to a woman would be an insult to the god whose image she wore and with whom she was one. Caste distinctions were the invention of Brāhmans and consequently unworthy of acceptance. The Madras Census Report2 of 1871 further states that Bāsava preached the immortality of the soul, and mentions a theory that some of the traditions concerning him might have been borrowed from the legends of the Syrian Christians, who had obtained a settlement in Madras at a period not later than the seventh century. The founder of the sect thus took as his fundamental tenet the abolition of caste, but, as is usual in the history of similar movements, the ultimate result has been that the Lingāyats have themselves become a caste. In Bombay they have two main divisions, Mr. Enthoven states:3 the Panchamsālis or descendants of the original converts from Brāhmanism and the non-Panchamsālis or later converts. The latter are further subdivided into a number of groups, apparently endogamous. Converts of each caste becoming Lingāyats form a separate group of their own, as Ahīr Lingāyats, Bania Lingāyats and so on, severing their connection with the parent caste. A third division consists of members of unclean castes attached to the Lingāyat community by reason of performing to it menial service. A marked tendency has recently been displayed by the community in Bombay to revert to the original Brāhmanic configuration of society, from which its founder sought to free it. On the occasion of the census a complete scheme was supplied to the authorities professing to show the division of the Lingāyats into the four groups of Brāhman, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Sūdra.