Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 6.djvu/338

SAMAYAMUVARU with authority as censors of morals. No religious ceremony or marriage could be undertaken without gaining their consent by the payment of fees, etc. Under the former Rājas the office was farmed out in all the large towns, and credited in the public accounts as samayāchāra. An important part of the profits arose either from the sale of women accused of incontinency, or from fines imposed on them for the same reason. The unfortunate women were popularly known as Sarkar (Government) wives." " The rules of the system," Wilks writes,* " varied according to the caste of the accused. Among Brāhmans and Kōmatis, females were not sold, but expelled from their caste, and branded on the arm as prostitutes. They then paid to the ijārdār (or contractor) an annual sum as long as they lived, and, when they died, all their property became his. Females of other Hindu castes were sold without any compunction by the ijārdār, unless some relative stepped forward to satisfy his demand. These sales were not, as might be supposed, conducted by stealth, nor confined to places remote from general observation; for, in the large town of Bangalore, under the very eyes of the European inhabitants, a large building was appropriated to the accommodation of these unfortunate women, and, so late as 1833, a distinct proclamation of the Commissioners was necessary to enforce the abolition of this detestable traffic."  Samayamuvāru.— An itinerant class of mendicants attached to the Sālē caste. From a note by Mr. C. Hayavadana Rao, I gather that they say that the name is an abbreviation of Rānasamayamuvāru, or men of the day of battle. According to a legend, when Bhāvana 