SCATTERED AND IN SERVITUDE
Various causes may have worked together to scatter the tribe of the Matangas and to give to their descendants a home on the outskirts of the villages throughout the Telugu country. There were probably inter-tribal wars in ancient times. Subjugated by some stronger tribe, the Madigas may have been forced into servitude by the rights of warfare. On the other hand, the search for occupation may have been the motive that led to emigration, until the old tribal home was forgotten.
Only in faint outlines can a picture of ancient India be drawn, as it was before the Indo-Aryan appeared, who introduced gradually but surely a new order of society. Vestiges of the customs of the ancient Dravidian village community still remain. They form a clue to the primitive state of society in which caste-distinction was unknown, where all worked together to meet the needs of the community, and none were despised as outcasts.
The territory of Southern India was probably divided among Dravidian clans, or tribes, who had their chiefs and their tribal constitution. The members of the clans settled in groups, forming villages, that they might aid each other, for tigers and other wild animals of the jungles were plentiful, and there were clannish wars that called for united resistance. Each village sought to maintain its interests and provide for its simple wants. There was division of labour, and, in turn, each family received an allotment of land, or was paid in kind, so that all had enough.
The hereditary head-man, a distinctively original feature of the Dravidian village system, and the prototype of the Munsiff of to-day, was given the best and largest holding of land in the village. For the worship of the deity there was a similar provision. The village craftsmen and menials were not paid by the job; they were given a small holding of land rent free, or they received a given number of sheaves of corn or measures of grain. In the simple village community the leather worker was probably a respected artisan. He had his rights and they were respected; for the arrangements of the community were made on the principle of mutual service.
But the time came when great Dravidian kingdoms arose in the extreme southern part of the peninsula. Conquests were made. There were petty Rajahs at first, until all were subjugated by a powerful dynasty. The villages now became tributary to some central government, which levied taxes and demanded tribute. New features were introduced into the Dravidian village. The head-man, with his old tribal authority and small magisterial power, was overshadowed by a kind of second head-man, the Karnam of to-day, who was necessarily literate, and could keep accounts and make out statistical returns. The days of simple wants met in simple ways were over.
Gradually the influence of the Aryan colonists began to make itself felt. The primitive Dravidians were filled with respect when they saw the intellectual superiority of the Brahminical hermits who settled in their forests. They became pupils, and looked up to them as masters. With a natural curiosity and interest they must have listened to the stories told by the strangers in their midst concerning the northern country whence they had come. They heard of the feats of valour performed by the warlike Kshatriyas, the rulers of the north. Vaisya traders came among them, representing the third caste of the twice-born Aryan.
There was a fourth caste in the north, the Sudra caste, composed of the Aryan servants and some of the more civilized aboriginal races who had been conquered by the invaders. The free, unconquered Dravidians of the south stood far above the Sudras of the north. Yet, by some process, not unsupported probably by the talent of the Brahmins for flattery and intrigue, the Dravidians did not regard in the light of dishonour the place accorded to them as Sudras in the scale of caste-distinction.
For the Madigas there was no place within the pale of the Indian caste-system. In the primitive Dravidian village it was probably a matter of amicable settlement that the leather workers should live together in a group of houses on the outskirts of the village. Not until the harsh lines of the Aryan caste-system were drawn was the group of dwellings transformed into the hovels of the outcast. And the rulers of the land demanded service of the Madigas under provisions closely resembling slavery.
The condition of the Madiga community has probably changed more during the past thirty years under British rule than during many centuries previous to the influence of Western civilization. Old men have told me of conditions which had undoubtedly been in force since time immemorial, of which their sons knew nothing by experience. A glimpse of the life of the Madiga in the Indian village community, thirty years ago, furnishes, therefore, a link to the past all the more valuable because the ancient lines are fast disappearing.
In the old days, when there were petty Rajahs, tributary to some powerful dynasty, it happened occasionally that the Rajah or his minister, the Dewan, came to visit his domain. It was convenient for them, at such times, to find everything provided for them in the places where they halted. The potter was expected to provide pots; the washermen’s service was required; the Munsiff brought eggs and milk; and the whole village drew on its resources. In turn for this service, the Rajah made grants of land to each according to the value of the service required of him on such occasions. To the Madigas fell the lot of being the burden-bearers; for, when roads were few and often impassable, the camp-baggage was placed upon the Yettis, to be borne from place to place. They, too, received a grant of land, seldom, it seems, more than four acres; and it yielded but little, for the Madigas had not the bullocks to plough, nor the time to watch their growing crops.
Moreover, Yetti-service was not confined to the time when the Rajah came, or when he sent his Dewan; those in authority could at any time demand the service of the Yettis, and it was always service without pay. When the Karnam came to a village to collect the tax for the Rajah, the Yettis had to stand at the entrances of the village and see that neither man nor cattle went out. After the tax had been gathered, the money was tied into the scant clothing of the Yetti, and, two together, they went long distances to deliver it at the centres of the districts. They looked poor and ragged, and none suspected that they had money concealed about them. Arrived at the place of destination, they dared not approach the Brahmin accountants within. They stood afar off, and held the package high in their hands, till a Sudra servant came out to deliver it to the Brahmins within, who would have considered it pollution to accept anything from the hands of a Madiga direct.
There were daily recurring tasks for the Yettis. They had to gather wood for fuel for the Karnam’s household. If there were letters to carry from village to village, the Yettis were pressed into service. If any one wanted a guide to point the way on an untravelled road, the Yettis were placed at his disposal. Travellers who wanted burden-bearers made their request to the Karnam. He furnished the Yettis, but kept the payment for himself, giving them, at their clamorous entreaties, a mere fraction of what they had earned. If ever they dared to refuse to work, they were ill-treated, their few heads of cattle were driven to the pound, and the misery of their condition was only increased by their remonstrance.
Some of the petty Rajahs ordered their Karnams, or Dewans, to look for able-bodied Madiga men on the fields or in their huts, and to secure them for menial service. Accordingly they took men away from their homes, and, if they resisted, they were treated cruelly. This mode of procedure was resorted to especially when a Rajah desired to dig a tank in order to irrigate a district of land. A Madiga told me that his father was taken away from home by the servants of a Rajah, and forced to work on the tank at Podili for months. They threatened that they would beat him or bind him, if he demurred. He received only enough to provide himself with food while digging. To his family there was nothing to send; they had to shift for themselves as best they could.
The taxes levied by the Rajahs were an additional heavy burden. After the grain had been harvested and cleaned, and the Sudras had measured out to the Madigas the part of the harvest that was theirs, on the principle of mutual service, the servants of the Rajah came and put a seal upon it. The women could not use it for cooking until after they had paid their tax. If they bought a cloth, about one-eighth of the cost had to be paid as tax, and often the Rajah’s servants went to the washermen to look over the clothes, and if any were found without the seal, they took them away.
The relation of the Madigas to the Brahmins was, and is, serfdom, without the relieving feature of a paternal interest. The Sudras, on the other hand, though they have every opportunity for oppression, take the part of friends and protectors. The Madiga family that does not bear to some Sudra land-holder the relation of serf to master is considered unfortunate, and finds it difficult to get food sufficient to ward off starvation. The Madiga serves the same Sudra family from generation to generation. When there is a marriage in the Sudra family, the Madiga celebrates the event by a marriage in his own hamlet. The Madiga does not go upon a journey, nor does he enter upon any serious undertaking, without consulting his Sudra master. He is at the Sudra’s bidding day and night. At seedtime and harvest he is at hand, and while the crop is growing he watches in the field to chase away the crows in the day and to guard against thieves in the night. In turn for his labours he is paid, not in coin, but in kind. The measures of grain are meted out to him according to the plentiful or scant nature of the harvest.
The leather-work for the Sudras is also done on the principle of mutual service. When among herds of cows and goats, kept by the Sudra landholder, a head of cattle dies, the Madigas are called. They secure the hide, and, in turn, they tan the leather, sew the sandals for the Sudra, make the trappings for his bullocks, and do any other leather-work that is required. In parts of the country where the soil is dry and hard, the Sudras dig deep wells in their fields and with the help of bullocks draw the water to the surface, where, through little channels, it irrigates the whole field. For this purpose large leather buckets are required, and the Madiga community finds frequent employment in making them and keeping them in repair.
By right of trade the Madiga secures not only the hide of cattle, the carcase too is his. As death is always caused by disease, never by slaughter the flesh is poisonous and loathsome in the extreme, especially in a country where decomposition is a rapid process. In this phase of their occupation lies the beginning and the end of the Madiga’s degradation. Hungry many a day in the year, living by the month on one meal a day, seldom in possession of the means to buy meat fit to eat, they do not shrink from the loathsomeness of the meal which is furnished them by the carcase that is theirs by right of trade. It is this to which their legends point as the curse with which their tribe has been laid low. Perhaps in the early days, when Jambuvu, “the grandfather of the Madigas,” lived, it was less difficult to obtain food to quench hunger. A famine, such as is told of in ancient records, that swept the land and almost depopulated it, may have taught the Madigas to eat the flesh that poisoned the blood in their veins, that rendered them filthy and an object of abhorrence to the Hindu, who is forbidden to kill and eat flesh of any kind. And afterwards he was unable to raise himself from abject poverty.
The Madigas are miserably poor. I enquired into their condition in several districts, and found that, striking an average, only one-third of the Madiga population is above absolute want. But the possessions of this favoured one-third, too, are readily enumerated. Each family lives in a hut built of stone laid in mud, and covered with thatch, giving a room about ten feet square. By way of furniture there are a few cots, made of a frame of wood with twine woven across, and a few low stools. Earthen pots, large and small, used as cooking utensils, a few baskets, a few brass utensils, a stone to pound the rice, and a roller to grind the curry-powder complete the arrangements of the household. There may be a cow, perhaps a buffalo, several calves and some fowls. Each member of the family has two suits of clothes and a cotton sheet for covering at night. The women have strings of beads and a little cheap jewellery. Perhaps a bamboo box hangs from the beam that supports the roof of the house, containing red clothes to wear when invited to festivals. A family whose possessions are as above specified is considered a thrifty, well-to-do Madiga family.
But two-thirds of the Madiga community have only a portion of the above-mentioned possessions. Cattle is lacking, there are no cots, no brass vessels, no red clothes for holiday attire. A few suits of clothes constitute the outfit of the whole family. If any of them need to make themselves presentable, they wear the better part of the wardrobe of the family. Many a day in the year they go hungry, glad if they can get a meal of boiled grain of a kind that is cheaper even than rice, and a little pepper-water poured over it to give it a relish.
Crushed by serfdom, debased by poverty, the Madigas yet uphold among them village jurisdiction on a small scale. The Sudra village has its headman, the Madiga hamlet has its Madiga chief. He represents the Madiga village on special occasions. If hospitality is to be extended, it is his roof that must shelter the guest. Disputes and quarrels are brought to him for settlement. If public opinion in the Madiga hamlet is roused against the misdeeds of one who has his home in it, the Madiga headman, perhaps with several of the older men to assist him, passes judgment, levies a fine, or expels the evil-doer from the borders of the village. The fines pass into the hands of the Madiga headman, as remuneration for the expense borne in extending hospitality and the time given to his administrative duties.
Thus, though scattered and in servitude, the Madigas cling to their ancient tribal organization. They submit to the Munsiff and the Karnam; they bend low and even cringe before those who have authority over them. But, in their own hamlet, they give to one of their number the dignity of representing the interests of all. They thus prove their affinity to the stronger Dravidian tribes. And the tenacity of their tribal character becomes the vehicle of civilizing and educating forces at the present time.