Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 2.djvu/138

DAYARE Hyderabad, still retaining the name of Imām Mahadi. Such pretensions could not be tolerated by the great mass of Muhammadans, and Sayad Ahmed, together with his disciples, being worsted in a great religious controversy, was driven out of Hyderabad, and came to Channapatna in the Bangalore district, where they settled. The descendants of these settlers believe that Sayad Ahmed was the Prophet Imām Mahadi predicted in the Koran. They offer prayers in a masjid of their own, separate from other Muhammadans, and do not intermarry with the rest. They are an enterprising body, and carry on a brisk trade in silk with the western coast." They are mostly domiciled at Channapatna, where a considerable industry in the cocoons of the mulberry silk-moth is carried on. When an adult Hindu joins the Dāyarēs as a convert, an interesting mock rite of circumcision is performed as a substitute for the real operation. A strip of betel leaf is wrapped round the penis, so that it projects beyond the glans, and is snipped instead of the prepuce. Like other Muhammadan classes of Southern India, the Dāyarēs are as a whole dolichocephalic. But the frequent occurrence of individuals with a high cephalic index would seem to point to their recruitment from the mesaticephalic or brachycephalic Canarese classes.