Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 2.djvu/165

Rh of the death of the mother and maternal uncle are invariably observed. "The adoption of a dancing-girl is a lengthy ceremony. The application to the temple authorities takes the form of a request that the girl to be adopted may be made heir to both kuti and pati, that is, to the house and temple service of the person adopting. The sanction of the authorities having been obtained, all concerned meet at the house of the person who is adopting, a document is executed, and a ceremony, of the nature of the Jātakarma, performed. The girl then goes through the marriage rite, and is handed over to the charge of the music teacher to be regularly trained in her profession." As bearing on the initiation, laws of inheritance, etc., of Dēva-dāsis, the following cases, which have been argued in the Madras High Court, may be quoted * : —

(a) In a charge against a dancing-girl of having purchased a young girl, aged five, with the intent that she would be used for the purpose of prostitution, or knowing it to be likely that she would be so used, evidence was given of the fact of purchase for sixty rupees, and that numerous other dancing-girls, residing in the neighbourhood, were in the habit of obtaining girls and bringing them up as dancing-girls or prostitutes, and that there were no instances of girls brought up by dancing-girls ever having been married. One witness stated that there were forty dancing-girls' houses in the town (Adōni), and that their chief source of income was prostitution, and that the dancing-girls, who have no daughters of their own, get girls from others, bring them up, and eventually make them dancing-girls or