MALLEES.
(449)
THIS useful class of people have been previously noticed (ante No. 443). The men represented are evidently making up their baskets for market: one is selecting them, another is washing them in a tub, and the third is probably pulling beans of a favourite sort, which arc universally used, and which grow as a creeper plant. These, with many various kinds of greens, sweet potatoes, turnips, carrots, onions, and the like, form the ordinary food of the people with rice or unleavened bread. Carrots, turnips, and onions are, however, forbidden to Brahmins, on account of their supposed flavour of meat. The Mallees or gardeners are good Hindoos of the Sudra class, ranking with cultivators of the soil, but not usually intermarrying with them. They are industrious and well conducted, and are often clever servants to English families, understanding the cultivation of flowers and English vegetables, as well as of fruits, and the operations of training, grafting, and budding, the treatment of vines, &c. Those represented appear to be followers of Siva, from the horizontal caste mark they wear; and they not unfrequently belong to the Lingayet sect, which has been described ante Nos. 421–2. They employ Brahmins at home festivals, marriages, &c.; but the direct ministrations to them are from their gooroo or spiritual adviser, who is not a Brahmin. They are a quiet., industrious, and very peaceable, inoffensive class of people, sometimes indulging in spirituous liquor or fermented palm juice, but not habitually or to excess. They understand tile art, for so it may be called, of irrigation perfectly, and vegetables cannot be produced without it, nor is there any month in the year in which the market of Madras is not well supplied with ordinary vegetables, together with gourds, pumpkins, and cucumbers of many kinds, as well as with flowers for offerings at temples and domestic use. The Mallees' tools are very simple: a broad hoe shovel, used for digging; a pickaxe, shown in the Plate; a weeding utensil like a small sickle; suffice for his wants. He is not a neat gardener by any means in his own ground, but lie is a very effective one in. regard to produce. In the Deccan and Northern India many Mussulmans follow the trade of Malice, and are skilful cultivators; but they are comparatively rare in the south.
