Page:Castes and tribes of southern India, Volume 5.djvu/86

MORASU that this custom is no longer observed. Instead of the two fingers being amputated, they are now merely bound together, and thus rendered unfit for use. In the Census Report, 1891, it is recorded that this type of deformity is found among the Morasus, chiefly in Cuddapah, North Arcot, and Salem. " There is a sub-section of them called Veralu Icche Kāpulu, or Kāpulu who give the fingers, from a curious custom which requires that, when a grandchild is born in a family, the wife of the eldest son of the grandfather must have the last two joints of the third and fourth fingers of her right hand amputated at a temple of Bhairava." Further, it is stated in the Manual of the Salem district (1883) that "the practice now observed in this district is that, when a grandchild is born in a family, the eldest son of the grandfather, with his wife, appears at the temple for the ceremony of boring the child's ear, and there the woman has the last two joints of the third and fourth fingers chopped off. It does not signify whether the father of the first grandchild born be the eldest son or not, as in any case it is the wife of the eldest son who has to undergo the mutilation. After this, when children are born to other sons, their wives in succession undergo the operation. When a child is adopted, the same course is pursued. " The origin of the custom is narrated by Wilks,* and is briefly this. Mahadeo or Siva, who was in great peril, after hiding successively in a castor-oil and jawāri plantation, concealed himself in a linga-tonde shrub from a rākshasa who was pursuing him, to whom a Marasa Vakkaliga cultivator indicated, with the little finger of his right hand, the hiding-place of Siva. The god was only rescued from his peril by the interposition of Vishnu