Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 2.djvu/374

HOLEYA the traditions of birth, immemorial custom, ignorance, and never-to-be-paid-off loads of debt, tend to preserve in greater or less integrity the conditions of semi-slavery under which these agrestic slaves live. It is locally considered the acme of unwisdom to loosen the immemorial relations between capital and labour, especially in the remote backwoods, in which free labour does not exist, and the rich supāri cultivation whereof would be ruined otherwise. In order furthermore to rivet the ties which bind these hereditary labourers to the soil, it is alleged that the local capitalists have improvised a kind of Gretna Green marriage among them. A legal marriage of the orthodox type contains the risk of a female servant being lost to the family in case the husband happened not to be a Huttālu or Mannālu. So, in order to obviate the possible loss, a custom prevails according to which a female Huttālu or Mannālu is espoused in what is locally known as the manikattu form, which is neither more nor less than licensed concubinage. She may be given up after a time, subject to a small fine to the caste, and anybody else may then espouse her on like conditions. Not only does she then remain in the family, but her children will also become the landlord's servants. These people are paid with a daily supply of paddy or cooked food, and a yearly present of clothing and blankets (kamblis). On special occasions, and at car feasts, they receive in addition small money allowances. "In rural circles, in which the Holeyas and Mādigs are kept at arm's length by the Brāmanical bodies, and are not allowed to approach the sacerdotal classes beyond a fixed limit, the outcastes maintain a strict semi-religious rule, whereby no Brāhman can enter the Holeya's quarters without necessitating a purification thereof. They believe that the direst calamities will befall them