Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 8.djvu/49

 KUNBI DASARE. (417)

HE very picturesque figure represented in this Plate is a Dasare, a member of the Kunbi class, who has taken upon himself vows of poverty, mendicancy, and pilgrimages to holy shrines, and the service of God generally, in consequence of some vow. He wears a plume of peacocks' feathers in his turban, which is generally composed of portions of other old turbans of various materials and sizes. He has painted his caste mark in imitation of a Sri Vishnu Brahmin, while he has smeared his face and eyelids with white ashes, and probably the end or lower part of his nose is red with applied vermilion. Round his neck is a perforated copper plate, brightly polished, exhibiting an incarnation of Vishnu, a mounted conch shell, and a necklace of large wooden beads. A dressed soft panther skin is around his waist, which may serve for a seat or a bed at night, and a bell hangs at his waist, which tinkles as lie moves along. In his hand, lying across his knees, is a long straight sword, with a Mahratta handle, and his dress is probably of quilted calico, dyed with the bark of the acacia to that dull yellow-brown colour, which is adopted by all devotees. In his full costume the Dasare looks fearfully savage, and little children who have been told that the Dasare will devour them, are frightened, and run away when he appears. But only the little children; for the gamins of the towns and villages laugh at him, and mock his swagger, while shy girls listen to his plaintive little hymn to Vishnu, and their mothers pour their doles of meal or rice into his wallet as he stands at their doors, and begs in the god's name. Everywhere he is kindly treated, and finds a resting-place anywhere. His religious songs, which among the Canarese and Tamil people are very sweet and pathetic, are always welcome; and he has adventures to relate of journeys to temples and shrines and monasteries he has visited, which interest all hearers. When the Dasare doffs his religious costume, he becomes a meek, inoffensive individual, much resembling all his class, which here, as in other parts of India, is