Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 2.djvu/11

Rh they use cow leather in making shoes. "The Chucklers or cobblers," the Abbé Dubois writes,* "are considered inferiors to the pariahs all over the peninsula. They are more addicted to drunkenness and debauchery. Their orgies take place principally in the evening, and their villages resound, far into the night, with the yells and quarrels which result from their intoxication. The very Pariahs refuse to have anything to do with the Chucklers, and do not admit them to any of their feasts." In the Madura Manual, 1868, the Chakkiliyans are summed up as "dressers of leather, and makers of slippers, harness, and other leather articles. They are men of drunken and filthy habits, and their morals are very bad. Curiously enough, their women are held to be of the Padmani kind, i.e., of peculiar beauty of face and form, and are also said to be very virtuous. It is well known, however, that zamindars and other rich men are very fond of intriguing with them, particularly in the neighbourhood of Paramagudi, where they live in great numbers." There is a Tamil proverb that even a Chakkili girl and the ears of the millet are beautiful when mature. In the Tanjore district, the Chakkiliyars are said† to be "considered to be of the very lowest status. In some parts of the district they speak Telugu and wear the nāmam (Vaishnavite sect mark) and are apparently immigrants from the Telugu country." Though they are Tamil-speaking people, the Chakkiliyans, like the Telugu Mādigas, have exogamous septs called gōtra in the north, and kilai in the south. Unlike the Mādigas, they do not carry out the practice of making Basavis (dedicated prostitutes).