Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 2.djvu/146

DEVA-DASI subsist by dancing and music, and the practice of 'the oldest profession in the world.' The Dāsis were probably in the beginning the result of left-handed unions between members of two different castes, but they are now partly recruited by admissions, and even purchases, from other classes. The profession is not now held in the consideration it once enjoyed. Formerly they enjoyed a considerable social position. It is one of the many inconsistencies of the Hindu religion that, though their profession is repeatedly and vehemently condemned by the Shāstras, it has always received the countenance of the church. The rise of the caste, and its euphemistic name, seem both of them to date from about the ninth and tenth centuries A.D., during which much activity prevailed in Southern India in the matter of building temples, and elaborating the services held in them. The dancing-girls' duties, then as now, were to fan the idol with chamaras (Tibetan ox tails), to carry the sacred light called kumbarti, and to sing and dance before the god when he was carried in procession. Inscriptions * show that, in A.D. 1004, the great temple of the Chōla king Rājarāja at Tanjore had attached to it four hundred talic' chēri pendugal, or women of the temple, who lived in free quarters in the four streets round about it, and were allowed tax-free land out of the endowment. Other temples had similar arrangements. At the beginning of the last century there were a hundred dancing-girls attached to the temple at Conjeeveram, who were, Buchanan tells us,† ' kept for the honour of the deities and the amusement of their votaries; and any familiarity between these girls and an infidel would occasion scandal.' At Madura, Conjeeveram, and Tanjore there are still