Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/376

KOMATI the Vādas for the Vaisyas." Three of them further added that, in their opinion, the Judges ought to pass a decision, awarding that the Kōmatis are to continue to perform religious rites according to the rules laid down in the book called Purānam (i.e., in the Purānōktha form), as are at present observed by the corrupt or degenerate Vaisyas or Kōmatis and others. On appeal, the Sudder Dēwani Adawlut reversed the decisions of the lower Courts, "having maturely weighed the evidence produced, and considered the unbiassed and concurring opinions of the four law officers of the Provincial Courts." On further appeal to the Privy Council, Lord Brougham, in delivering judgment, observed that "the plaintiffs, not having, in their opinion, alleged any case of injury done to them by the defendants upon which they were entitled to go into evidence, and not having therefore established any case for damages in their suit against the defendants, no question remained but of a mere declaration of a right to perform certain religious ceremonies; that, if the Courts had jurisdiction to proceed to the determination of that question in this suit (upon which their Lordships guard themselves in their judgment), the plaintiffs have not produced sufficient evidence to establish such a right; that, under these circumstances, all the decrees therefore ought to be reversed, and the plaint dismissed (the reversal of the Sudder Court amounts in fact to a dismissal of the plaint); but it is not, as it ought to be, a dismissal without costs; and that this decision should be without prejudice to the existence or non-existence of the right claimed by the appellants, in any other suit, in which such a question may be properly raised." The Kōmatis wear the sacred thread, and utter the Gāyatri and other sacred mantras, A number of them,