Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/345

Rh she should be honoured with the task of purifying the soul and body of high class Reddis and purse-proud Kōmatis. It must be said that only very few Brāhman families keep up this mysterious ceremony of homage to the Mātangi. She is allowed to come into the house, that is to pass the outer gate. There she besmears a certain spot with cowdung, and places upon it a basket. It is at once filled with cooked food. A layer of rice powder covers the surface of the food, and on it is placed a small lamp, which is lighted. She then holds out a little earthenware pot, and asks for toddy to fill it with. But the Brāhman says that she must be content with water. With the pot in her hand, and wild exultant songs in her mouth, recounting her humiliation of Brāhman and Kshatriya, of saint and sovereign, she moves quickly round the assembled men and women, scattering with a free hand upon them the water from the pot. The women doff their petticoats, and make a present of them to the Mātangi, and the mistress of the house gives her the cloth she is wearing. The men, however, with strange inconsistency, doff their sacred threads, and replace them by new ones after a bath. The origin of the supremacy of the Mātangi is obscure, and shrouded in legends. According to one of them, the head of Renuka, the wife of the sage Bhrigu, who was beheaded by her lord's orders, fell in a Mādiga house, and grew into a Mādiga woman. According to another legend, a certain king prayed to be blessed with a daughter, and in answer the gods sent him a golden parrot, which soon after perched on an ant-hill, and disappeared into it. The disappointed father got the ant-hill excavated, and was rewarded for his pains by finding his daughter rise, a maid of divine beauty, and she came to be worshipped as the Mātangi. It is