Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 2.djvu/370

HOLEYA whatever they can get, beef included. Their worship is addressed to Eiyappa Dēvaru and Chāmundi, or Kāli goddess once every month; and once every year they sacrifice a hog or a fowl." Of the Holeyas of the Mysore province, the following account is given in the Mysore Census Reports, 1891 and 1901. "The Holeyas number 502,493 persons, being 10.53 per cent, of the total population. They constitute, as their name implies, the back-bone of cultivation in the country. Hola is the Kanarese name for a dry-crop field, and Holeya means the man of such field. The caste has numerous sub-divisions, among which are Kannada, Gangadikāra, Maggada (loom), and Morasu. The Holeyas are chiefly employed as labourers in connection with agriculture, and manufacture with hand-looms various kinds of coarse cloth or home-spun, which are worn extensively by the poorer classes, notwithstanding that they are being fast supplanted by foreign cheap fabrics. In some parts of the Mysore district, considerable numbers of the Holeyas are specially engaged in betel-vine gardening. As labourers they are employed in innumerable pursuits, in which manual labour preponderates. The Alēman sub-division furnishes recruits as Barr sepoys. It may not be amiss to quote here some interesting facts denoting the measure of material well-being achieved by, and the religious recognition accorded to the outcastes at certain first-class shrines in Mysore. At Mēlkōte in the Mysore district, the outcastes, i.e., the Holeyas and Mādigs, are said to have been granted by the great Visishtādvaita reformer, Rāmānujāchārya, the privilege of entering the Vishnu temple up to the sanctum sanctorum, along with Brāhmans and others, to perform worship there for three days during the annual car procession. The following