Preface

PREFACE

MANY a day I passed with a group of Madigas before me, listening to their legends, hearing about their cults. I received glimpses of life in the Indian village community, and I felt the heart-beat of the religious life of the common people of India.

The Madigas are among the humblest and most despised of the Pariahs of Southern India. They are the leather workers in the Telugu country. For centuries they have tanned hides, sewed sandals, prepared leather buckets for the wells of the Sudras, and made trappings for their bullocks. And all their search for truth was carried on while sewing sandals with their hands.

I have described what I heard from them. In some respects I found myself on untrodden ground. With regard to the Matangi cult, the Chermanishta sect, the cult called Perantalu, and the several Reform sects which came to my notice, I cannot quote the researches of others in corroboration of that which I found among the people.

The story of the mass-movement toward Christianity has, I trust, retained in its English rendering some of the quaintness, the distinct originality, that was so fascinating to me, when I heard it from my Madiga friends. Many of them I had known for seventeen years. Memory carried me sufficiently far back to make their reminiscences seem very real and lifelike.

It was my intention not to draw on the fund of information gathered in hearing my husband, Rev. J. E. Clough, D.D., tell of the early days at Ongole. I wanted to put myself into the place of the Madigas, and to see the situation with their eyes. My husband’s side of the story, therefore, still remains to be told.

I am grateful to him and to several friends in India, who furnished me with opportunity to meet Madigas living at a distance, whose memories were stored with tales of the Telugu Pariah tribe, to which they belonged. A Eurasian gentleman in Ongole helped me in gathering legends direct from the people. In my search in libraries in India and in London I have been most courteously aided, and from several members of the Royal Asiatic Society I have received valuable suggestions. All this I would gratefully acknowledge.

E. R. C.

LONDON, 1899.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS