Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India.djvu/520

BRAHMAN 'yam' (Colocasia), and the Holuas go a step further, and engage in ordinary cultivation — actual participation in which is forbidden to Brāhmans by Manu, as it involves taking the lives of worms and insects. A few of the Sāruas are qualified to act as purōhits, but the Holuas hardly ever are, and they were shown in the 1891 census to be the most illiterate of all the Brāhmans of the Presidency. Few of them even perform the Sandhya and Tarpana, which every Brāhman should scrupulously observe. Yet they are regarded as ceremonially pure,and are often cooks to the zamindars. Regarding the sixth class, the Bhodris, a curious legend is related. Bhodri means a barber, and the ancestor of the sub-division is said to have been the son of a barber who was brought up at Puri with some Sānto boys, and so learned much of the Vēdas and Shāstras. He left Puri and went into Jeypore, wearing the thread and passing himself off as a Brāhman, and eventually married a Brāhman girl, by whom he got children who also married Brāhmans. At last, however, he was found out, and taken back to Puri, where he committed suicide. The Brāhmans said they would treat his children as Brāhmans if a plant of the sacred tulsi grew on his grave, but, instead of tulsi, a plant of tobacco appeared there, and so his descendants are Bhodris or barber Brāhmans, and even Karnams, Gaudos, and Mahantis decline to accept water at their hands. They cultivate tobacco and 'yams,' but nevertheless officiate in temples, and are purōhits to the lower non-polluting castes. Of the remaining six divisions, the Bāruas are the only ones who do purōhit's work for other castes, and they only officiate for the lower classes of Sūdras. Except the Sodeibālyas, the others all perform the Sandhya and Tarpana. Their