Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/211

Rh his home and friends, and set out on a boating excursion in a river close by Pazhūr. The night was dark, and it was midnight when he reached the middle of the stream. A severe storm, accompanied by rain, had come on, and the river was in flood. He was swept away to an unknown region, and scrambled ashore in torrents of rain and in darkness, when he saw a light in a house near where he landed, and he made for it in an exhausted condition. On reaching it, he lay down in the verandah at the gate of the house, musing on the untoward events of the night, and on his affectionate family whom he had left. The hut belonged to the family of a Kaniyan,* who, as it happened, had had a quarrel with his wife that day, and had left his hut. Anxiously expecting her husband's return, the wife opened the door about midnight, and, seeing a man lying in the verandah, mistook him for her husband. The man was so wrapt in his thoughts of his home that he in turn mistook her for his wife. When the Brāhman woke up from his slumber, he found her to be a Kaniya woman. On looking at the star in the heavens to calculate the precise time, he saw that the prediction that he would become an outcaste had been fulfilled. He accepted the degradation, and lived the rest of his days with the Kaniya woman. She bore him several sons, whom in due course he educated in the lore of his profession, and for whom, by his influence, he obtained an important place in the Hindu social system as astrologers (Ganikans). It is said that, according to his instruction, his body, after his death, was placed in a coffin, and buried in the courtyard of the house. The spot is still shown, and an elevated platform is constructed,