According to the census of 1875, the number of distinct castes found in Travancore is no less than 420; but many of these are merely subdivisions of other castes, or large families separated from the parent stock through various causes. Some may eat together, but individuals belonging to distinct castes never intermarry. People of any caste coming from a neighbouring country are usually treated as distinct by their fellows here, their customs and social consideration often being, in some respects, different. Thus there are Ilavars in Tinnevelly, and Ilavars in Canara, who are in a much more degraded condition than with us. Caste is not a mere form of “division of labour.”
This theory is but an excuse offered by some for Hindu Caste. The institution is based and defended on definite religious grounds, and is strictly maintained in practice, being woven into the very texture of Hindu society. “Caste,” says Barth in his ‘ Religions of India,’ “is the express badge of Hinduism.
Caste is not merely the symbol of Hinduism; but, according to the testimony of all who have studied it on the spot, it is its stronghold. It is, therefore, a religious fact of the first order.” The gulf which separates one caste from another is often very great, as great, almost, as between distinct species of animals; or as that which exists between mankind and their cattle or dogs. The cordon of division is strangely effective and complete in its operation. There are little hamlets of low caste people situated in secluded valleys and corners of the rice fields, near which one might pass for years without observing them; and there are Brahman agrárams or closes, intentionally retired from public view, where the entrance of a stranger would be regarded with hostility, horror, and alarm, and would lead at once to personal attack upon him.
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Pretences are sometimes made by individuals to higher than their real caste. During a festival at Trevandrum, several goldsmiths putting on the dress and ornaments of a superior caste, walked boldly into the temple. We have known one or two apostates from Christianity, well educated in English, who assumed Sudra names, and passed in distant parts of the country as such. But impostors are detected by very simple means. A Shanar youth who took the high-caste seat at a public cook-shop was discovered by his mode of eating rice, picking it up with the fingers, while a Brahman scoops it up gently with the side of the hand lest he should tear with his nails the leaves which they are accustomed to use as plates. Strangers at feasts are therefore closely scrutinized and watched. Still, changes in caste do, in odd instances, succeed. A Tamilian, for instance, readily alters his kudumi from the back to the front of the head; and becomes a Malayali.
Eating together is one of the grand tests of identity of caste, and earnest discussions are often held as to what constitutes pollution in eating. A typical case occurred in Calicut. A Brahman had been confined in the jail there, and bathed in the common well; but after his release asserted that he had eaten no cooked food, only fruits, which do not convey pollution, and drank only the water of the cocoanut. The Ranee of Calicut charged him with polluting the temple, of which she is manager, by entering it, he being now impure and out-caste, and his daily prayers without efficacy. Tamil Brahmans, it is said, might do all this without losing caste, but in Malabar opinions differ. The suit, as such, was dismissed by the British Courts, but it was very properly held that the Ranee’s permission was needed to enter her temple. Brahman prisoners in the jail at Trevandrum are taken outside for their meals, so that their caste standing may not be affected.
In the Pújapura jail, where there are no Brahmans, but a few caste men, it is somewhat amusing to see small clay walls of about a foot in height built to separate between the cooking places of the different castes—a feeble but harmless attempt to preserve their caste purity.
In 1873, when the Nagercoil temple was declared to have been polluted by the entrance of the children of Sesha Iyengar, a Brahman who had given his young virgin daughter again in marriage after the death of her betrothed husband, expensive ceremonies were performed for the purification of the sacred edifice. The priests, though professedly celibate, were known to live in intercourse with the temple women; wicked men and cheats of various kinds might enter, but not a remarried widow, or any who had “aided and abetted “in her crime.
A minor purification was first performed, but a greater and more thorough cleansing being required, Namburi Brahmans skilled in the Tantras were called. The ceremonies cost the Sirkar over Rs. 320. A sacrificial fire was kindled and fed with choice material, sprigs of Ficus religiosa, milk, butter, and ghee. Around this fire were one large and twenty-one small pots representative of demons, each girt with cotton cloth, painted with mystic diagrams, and adorned with flowers and mango leaves. Propitiatory offerings were made and incantations uttered; then the contents of the smaller vessels were poured into the large one, and all emptied over the head of the serpent god who had been insulted. The ceremony closed with the gift of a cow to Brahmans.
In the Satapatha Brahmana of the White Yajur Veda, ceremonial impurity proceeding during the celebration of sacrificial rites from the touch of a carpenter, or any other sacrificially impure person, is represented as removed by the sprinkling of sacrificial water. This passage Dr. John Wilson thinks “forms a key to the caste institution of sparsha, or defilement by contact. What occurred at sacrifices was afterwards extended to what may occur in any circumstance in social life, to the debasement of large classes of the community.”
This absurd notion is carried to a preposterous extreme in Travancore, and is certainly one of the greatest evils that afflict the country—the fons et origo of much distress and suffering to nearly all classes. Ordinary cleanliness is doubtless a virtue, and the pretty tanks close by the temples are, when supplied with clean water, both ornamental and useful. But the idea of ceremonial caste pollution sadly hinders the people from social intercourse with one another and from improving intimacy with other nations. Europeans, because they eat flesh and mingle with all castes, are excluded from access to the interior of a native house, or entering beyond the common reception hall of a Hindu palace.
After shaking hands with a European, the caste Hindu must bathe to remove the pollution; and there are special occasions when it is highly inconvenient to them to meet foreigners even in the most casual manner.
A native gentleman once conversing with an English visitor at such a time, was obliged to ask him to excuse the omission of the usual shaking of hands, and to lay his letter on the table, whence it could be lifted without pollution. A distinguished Brahman priest and Rajah once granted an interview on the express condition that I should not expect to shake hands, as the old gentleman could not conveniently bathe just then ! Some intelligent natives, however, are beginning to feel weary of these absurd and tiresome regulations, and express the wish that they were rid of them.
A British military officer of rank offering his hand to a young Hindu noble one day, the latter drew back exclaiming, “I cannot touch you to-day. I am holy just now. We are a very religious people, you know.” The gallant officer only remarked, “Well, you will shake hands with me the next time that I ask you.” “Oh, certainly,” replied the innocent youth. This is precisely the spirit so severely condemned in Holy Scripture—“ Stand by thyself, come not near to me; for I am holier than thou.”
Some naughty boys, however, after playing with others of inferior caste, only go round the corner, wait a while there, and then return and tell their mother they have bathed.
Should a Pulayan touch a Brahman, the latter must make expiation by immediately bathing, and reading much of the sacred books, and changing his Brahmanical thread. If the same man touch a Nayar, he has only to bathe afterwards.
Temples must not be approached within a certain distance by the low castes. The stone lingam in front of the temple at Cottayam is said to be a slave, turned into stone for too near approach ! A European unwittingly passed along the Brahmans’ pathway with his palankeen bearers, between the temple and the tank. Complaint was at once made that the temple was polluted; and the Sirkar had to pay the expense of reconsecration. During the continuance of the Murajapam festival, Europeans are excluded from nearly the whole of the fort in Trevandrum. In former times the Mission catechists had difficulty even in passing through the streets outside the fort to attend for report at the Mission House.
Brahman temples, therefore, are not for the use of all classes. The low castes have their own temples and deities of an inferior kind, and dare not touch even the outer walls of a Hindu temple. They may, indeed, make offerings to noted shrines from a distance; their money, fortunately, is not polluted, nor raw rice and other provisions which it is their work to cultivate and gather, else the Brahmans would starve outright. At several temples there are special festival days on which the lower castes have permission to approach a little nearer for worship and amusement.
(Source: Native Life in Travancore, Samuel Mateer, Ch. XXXII)
