Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/353

Rh not to march the army on their towns. But the king would not yield, and sent his troops on Penugonda. The envoys returned home, and narrated their sad tale. A further meeting of the castemen was called at the instance of Bhāskarācharya, the caste guru, and it was resolved that all who wished to maintain the caste rule of mēnarikam should prepare to kill themselves in burning fire-pits. The majority fled rather than comply with the resolution. Those, however, who determined to sacrifice themselves in the fire-pits were 102 gōtras in number, and they assembled in council, and asked Kusuma Srēshti to induce his daughter (who was only seven years old) to die with them. To this she consented, and showed herself in her true form of Paramēsvari, the wife of Siva. On this, the Setti chief returned to his castemen, who asked him to get 103 fire-pits ready in the western portion of the town before the arrival of the king. These were accordingly dug, and decorated with festoons and plantain trunks at the four corners. Then the heads of the 102 gōtras assembled, with their wives, in the courtyard of the temple of Nagarēsvaraswāmi, where Vāsavāmbika was symbolically married to the god. The headmen then tied on vira kankanams (heroes' wrist-threads), and marched in a body, with Vāsavāmbika, to the fire-pits. There they gave counsel to their children that they should not ask vōli (bride-price) for the marriage of their daughters, or communicate their secrets to females, or allow karnams (village accountants), rulers, unbelievers, or those universally abused into their homes. They further counselled them to give their daughters in marriage to the sons of their paternal aunts, even though they should be black-skinned, plain, blind of one eye, senseless, or of vicious habits, and though their horoscopes did not agree, and