Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 2.djvu/337

Rh of reputed sanctity, and as a class are the pests of society and incorrigible rogues. Some of them can read, and a few may be learned; but for the most part they are stolidly ignorant. Most of them wear a yellowish cloth, by which they make themselves conspicuous. The Gōsāyis, although by profession belonging to the religious class, apply themselves nevertheless to commerce and trade. As merchants, bankers and tradesmen, they hold a very respectable position. They never marry. One of the chief peculiarities of this caste is that Brāhmans, Kshatriyās, Vaisyās, and Sūdras, the two former especially, may, if they choose, become Gōsāyis; but if they do so, and unite with the members of this fraternity in eating and drinking, holding full and free intercourse with them, they are cut off for ever from their own tribes. It is this circumstance which constitutes Gōsāyis a distinct and legitimate caste, and not merely a religious order. At death a horrible custom is observed. A cocoanut is broken on the head of the deceased by a person specially appointed for the purpose, until it is smashed to pieces. The body is then wrapped in a reddish cloth, and thrown into the Ganges. A partial explanation of this practice is furnished in Southern India. The final aim of Hindu religious life is Nirvāna or Mōksham in the next life, and this can only be attained by those holy men, whose life escapes, after smashing the skull, through the sushumnā nādi, a nerve so called, and supposed to pervade the crown of the head. The dying or dead Sanyāsi is considered to have led such a holy life as to have expired in the orthodox manner, and the fiction is kept up by breaking the skull post mortem, in mimicry of the guarantee of his passage to eternal bliss. Accordingly, the dead body of a Brāhman Sanyāsi in Southern India undergoes the