Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 2.djvu/156

DEVA-DASI a fixed sum weekly for her maintenance, and a fixed quantity of new raiment annually, and she works for her family as hard as any other woman. Basavis are outwardly indistinguishable from other women, and are for the most part coolies. In places there is a custom by which they are considered free to change their protectors once a year at the village car-festival or some similar anniversary, and they usually seize this opportunity of putting their partner's affections to the test by suggesting that a new cloth and bodice would be a welcome present. So poor, as a rule, are the husbands that the police aver that the anniversaries are preceded by an unusual crop of petty thefts and burglaries committed by them in their efforts to provide their customary gifts." A recent report of a Police Inspector in the Bellary district states that "crimes are committed here and there,as this is Nagarapanchami time. Nagarapanchami festival is to be celebrated at the next Ammavasya or new-moon day. It is at that time the people keeping the prostitutes should pay their dues on that day; otherwise they will have their new engagements."

In the Kurnool district, the Basavi system is practised by the Bōyas, but differs from that in vogue in Bellary and Mysore. The object of making a Basavi, in these two localities, is to perpetuate the family when there is no male heir. If the only issue in a family is a female, the family becomes extinct if she marries, as by marriage she changes her sept. To prevent this, she is not married, but dedicated as a Basavi, and continues to belong to her father's sept, to which also any male issue which is born to her belongs. In the Kurnool district the motive in making Basavis is different. The girl is not wedded to an idol, but, on an auspicious day, is tied by means of a garland of flowers to the garuda kambham