Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/232

KANNADIYAN persecution as the cause of their emigration has not an air of certainty about it, it is at least plausible. If the beginning of the eighteenth century is the earliest, the end of that century is the latest date that can be set down for the Lingāyat emigration. That century was perhaps the most troublous one in the modern history of India. Armies were passing and repassing the ghats, and I have heard from some old gentlemen that the Chingleput Lingāyats, who are mostly shepherds, accompanied the troops in the humble capacity of purveyors of milk and butter. Whatever the causes of their emigration, we find them in the Chingleput district ordinarily reckoning the Mysore, Salem and Bellary Lingāyats as of their own stock. They freely mix with each other, and I hear contract marital alliances with one another. They speak the Kannada (Kanarese) language — the language of Mysore and Bellary. They call themselves by the name of Kannadiyans or Kannadiyars, after the language they speak, and the part of the village they inhabit — Kannadipauliem, or village of the Kannadiyars. In parts of Madras they are known as Kavadi and Kavadiga (=bearers of head-loads). Both men and women are possessed of great stamina. Almost every other day they walk to and fro, in all seasons, more than twenty miles by road to sell their butter and curds in Madras. While so journeying, they carry on their heads a curd pot in a rattan basket containing three or four Madras measures of curds, besides another pot containing a measure or so of butter. Some of the men are good acrobats and gymnasts, and I have seen a very old man successively break in two four cocoanuts, each placed on three or four crystals of common salt, leaving the crystals almost