Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 2.djvu/492

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JAIN VAISYA
438

have been impaled on a stake on a false charge of theft. And Rāmānuja, the Guru of the Vaishnavites, is also said to have impaled heretics on stakes in the Mysore province. The events recorded in the narrative of Sammandha and the Jains are gone through at five of the twelve annual festivals at the Madura temple. On these occasions, which are known as impaling festival days, an image representing a Jain impaled on a stake is carried in procession. According to a tradition the villages of Mēla Kīlavu and Kīl Kīlavu near Sōlavandān are so named because the stakes (kīlavu) planted for the destruction of the Jains in the time of Tirugnāna extended so far from the town of Madura.

For details of the literature relating to the Jains, I would refer the reader to A. Guérinot's ' Essai de Bibliographie Jaina,' Annales du Musée Guimet, Paris, 1906.

Jain Vaisya. — The name assumed by a small colony of "Banians," who have settled in Native Cochin. They are said *[1] to frequent the kalli (stone) pagoda in the Kannuthnād tāluk of North Travancore, and believe that he who proceeds thither a sufficiently large number of times obtains salvation. Of recent years, a figure of Brahma is said to have sprung up of itself on the top of the rock, on which the pagoda is situated.

Jakkula.— Described †[2]as an inferior class of prostitutes, mostly of the Balija caste; and as wizards and a dancing and theatrical caste. At Tenali, in the Kistna district, it was customary for each family to give up one girl for prostitution. She was "married " to any chance comer for one night with the usual ceremonies. Under the influence of social reform, the members of the caste,

  1. * N. Sunkuni Wariar. Ind, Ant., XXI, 1892.
  2. † Madras Census Report, 1901; Nellore Manual.