Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 2.djvu/150

DEVA-DASI marry within their own caste, without restrictions of any kind.

"In Malabar there is no regular community of dancing-girls; nor is there among the Mussalmans of any part of the Presidency."

"No doubt," Monier Williams writes,* " Dāsis drive a profitable trade under the sanction of religion, and some courtesans have been known to amass enormous fortunes. Nor do they think it inconsistent with their method of making money to spend it in works of piety. Here and there Indian bridges and other useful public works owe their existence to the liberality of the frail sisterhood. The large tank (lake) at Channarayapatna in Mysore was built by two dancing-girls. In the Travancore Census Report, 1901, the Dāsis of the Coromandel coast are compared, in the words of a Sanskrit poet, to walking flesh-trees bearing golden fruits. The observant Abbé Dubois noticed that, of all the women in India, it is especially the courtesans who are the most decently clothed, as experience has taught them that for a woman to display her charms damps sensual ardour instead of exciting it, and that the imagination is more easily captivated than the eye.

It was noticed by Lord Dufferin, on the occasion of a Viceregal visit to Madura, that the front part of the dress of the dancing-girls hangs in petticoats, but the back is only trousers. The Rev. A. Margoschis writes in connection with the practice of dilating the lobes of the ears in Tinnevelly, that, as it was once the fashion and a mark of respectability to have long ears, so now the converse is true. Until a few years ago, if a woman had short ears, she