Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/233

Rh intact. And I have heard that there are men who can so break fifty cocoanuts — perhaps an exaggeration for a considerable number. In general the women may be termed beautiful, and, in Mysore, the Lingāyat women are, by common consent, regarded as models of feminine beauty. These Lingāyats are divided into two classes, viz., Gauliyars of Dāmara village, and Kadapēri or Kannadiyars proper, of Chembrambākam and other places.The Gauliyars carry their curd pots in rattan baskets; the Kannadiyars in bamboo baskets. Each class has its own beat in the city of Madras, and, while the majority of the rattan basket men traffic mainly in Triplicane, the bamboo basket men carry on their business in George-town and other localities. The two classes worship the same gods, feed together, but do not intermarry. The rattan is considered superior to the bamboo section. Both sections are sub-divided into a large number of exogamous septs or bēdagagulu, of which the meaning, with a few exceptions, e.g., split cane, bear, and fruit of Eugenia Jambolana, is not clear. Monogamy appears to be the general rule among them, but polygamy to the extent of having two wives, the second to counteract the sterility of the first, is not rare. Marriage before puberty is the rule, which must not be transgressed. And it is a common thing to see small boys grazing the cattle, who are married to babies hardly more than a year old. Marriages are arranged by the parents, or through intermediaries, with the tacit approval of the community as a whole. The marriage ceremony generally lasts about nine or ten days, and, to lessen the expenses for the individual, several families club together and celebrate their marriages simultaneously. All the preliminaries such as inviting the