Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 7.djvu/484

YANADI is in charge of a local area for weal or woe. Subbarāyudu, Venkatēswaralu, Panchala, Narasimhulu, and others, are the gods who control destinies over a wider area. The Yānādis are their own priests. The objects of worship take various forms: a wooden idol at Srīharikota; bricks; stones; pots of water with margosa (Melia Azadirachta) leaves; images of gods drawn on the walls of their houses; or mere handfuls of clay-squeezed into shape, and placed on a small platform erected under an aruka tree, which, like other Hindus, they hold sacred. They use a red powder, flowers, turmeric, etc., for worship; burn camphor and incense; and distribute fruit, dhāl (pulse of Cajanus indicus), and the like. In worshipping ancestors, they resemble the Kurumbas. The house of the gods is a sanctum, into which no polluting object is allowed to enter. The most pious perform rites every Friday. At Srīharikota they do so once a fortnight, or once a month. The ordinary Yānādi only worships on occasion of a marriage, funeral, etc. A belief lingers that the pious are en rapport with the deity, who converses with them and even inspires them. The goddess receives animal sacrifices, but Chenchu Dēvudu is a strict vegetarian, whose votaries are bound, at times of worship, to subsist on a single daily meal of roots and fruits. The Yānādis, like Hindus, wear sect marks, and are even divided into Vaishnavites and Saivites. They are supposed, during worship, to endow inanimate objects, and the spirits of geographical features, with life and mind, and supernatural powers. Some Yānādis are converts to Christianity.

The Yānādis live in low conical huts, rudely built of bamboo and palmyra leaves, grass, or millet stalks, with a small entrance, through which grown-up people have