Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/378

KOMATI claimed that it had been the custom for all parties to live together, and that it would be an infringement of the rules of caste for them to be forced into a separate quarter. The chief of the Kōmatis entered the town in procession, on horseback with an umbrella held over his head. This assumption of rank was regarded by the Banajigas with the utmost indignation. To such a pitch did the quarrel reach that, at the time of Buchanan's visit, there was a rumour current as to the necessity of killing a jack-ass in the street, which would cause the immediate desolation of the place. "There is," he writes, "not a Hindu in Karnata, that would remain another night in it, unless by compulsion. Even the adversaries of the party would think themselves bound in honour to fly. This singular custom seems to be one of the resources upon which the natives have fallen to resist arbitrary oppression, and may be had recourse to whenever the Government infringes, or is considered to have infringed upon the custom of any caste. It is of no avail against any other kind of oppression." A brief reference may be made to the part which the Kōmatis took, in bygone days, in the faction fights known as right and left-hand caste disputes. Some of the South Indian castes, including the Kōmatis, belong to the former, and others to the latter. Those belonging to the left-hand would not let those belonging to the right-hand pass through their streets with their marriage and other processions. The right-hand section was equally jealous of the left. The Kōmatis, who were among the early settlers in the town of Madras in the seventeenth century, were involved in faction disputes on two recorded occasions, once, in 1652 A.D., during the Governorship of Aaron Baker, and later on during that