Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/455

Rh sometimes they but swayed to and fro, as if in a Roman mimus, while the best voice in the company sang their songs for them. Now and then, the musicians would break into a chorus, which strikingly recalled, but for the absence of dancing, the Greek tragic chorus, especially in their idea of inevitable destiny, and in their lamentations over the disastrous end of the undertaking. Meanwhile, the buffoon played his part with more or less success, and backed up the astonishingly skilful and witty acting of the players, who provided the comic relief. In most Tamil dramas the action of the play is now and again suspended, while one or more comedians stroll on to the stage, and amuse the audience by a vēsham, i.e., an impersonation of different well-known street characters representing men (and women) not only of different castes, but of different nations. Needless to say, the parts they play have little or nothing to do with the subject of the drama, but they afford great scope for delineation of character. There is not, of course, in Southern India, the uniformity in dress that we notice in England of the present day. A man's trade, profession, religion, and sect are expressed by his dress and ornament — or lack of both. To mention three of the different veshangal shown on this occasion, there were a Mahrattah tattooing-woman, a north country fakir, and a man and woman of the Malsar caste, each of the parts being dressed to perfection, and admirably sustained. The Malsars are a low caste, and employed in certain parts as bearers of announcements of death (written on palm leaves) from the family of the deceased to relatives at a distance. As they hobbled about, bending over their short crooked crutch sticks, with turbans of twisted straw and bark, and girt with scanty and dirty sackcloth kilts, they would have made a mummy laugh;