LEFT-HAND CASTE.
Edagai, Eddayai, . }CAEN. I Idangai, Idam, . Tom. Edagai kula, . . „ I Idakai , 13 The Vaishnava Hindus in the south of India speak of themselves as of the right or left hand. The Karnatic enumeration of the left-hand castes furnishes nine, viz. :— 1. Panchala or artisans. 3. Devangada, weavers.
a. Kammaranu, black- 4. Ganigar, oil-makers. smith. 5. Gollur, money-carriers.
b. Badage, carpenter. 6, 7. Paliwan and Palawan, c. Kansagar, brazier. cultivators.
d. Kallurtiga, stone- 8. Beds, hunters, fowlers. cutter. 9. Madiga, tanners, cur e. Akasalc, goldsmith. riers, and shoemakers.
2. Beri-sethi, traders.
Much animosity and many quarrels occurred between the right and left hand sects, the cause of which, or the points of difference, the disput ants themselves are generally unable to state. Professor H. H. Wilson, in his Hindu Sects, implies that there exists in N. India a sectarian Hindu division into right and left hand sects, and that the left-hand sect are worshippers of the sakti or female powers of the Hindu deities. He says that when the worship of any goddess is performed in a public manner, and agreeably to the Vedic or Puranic ritual, it does not comprehend the im pure practices which are attributed to a different division of the adorers of Sakti, and which are particularly prescribed to the followers of that system. In this form it is termed the Dakebina or right-band form of worship, to distinguish it from the Vami or Vamachari, the left-hand wor shippers, or those who adopt a ritual contrary to that which is usual, and to what, indeed, they dare publicly avow. They worship, ho says, Devi,
Lakshmi, Saraswati, the Matri, the Nayika, the Yogini ; and even the fiend-like Dakini and Sakini are admitted to a share of homage. Siva with the two hands is an object of veneration, espe cially in the form of Bhairava, with which modi fication of the deity it is the object of the worshipper to identify himself. The worship of the Vamachari is derived from a portion of the Tantras. It resolves itself into various subjects, apparently into different meta, of which that of the Kaula or Kulina is declared to be pre-eminent. The object of the worship is, by the reverence of Devi or Sakti, who is one with Siva, to obtain supernatural powers in this life, and to be identi fied after death with Siva and Sakti. All the forms of worship require the use of some or all of the five Mukara,—flesh, flail, wine, women, and mystical gesticulations are the five-fold Mukara which takes away all sin. But such a sect of Sakti worshippers are wholly unknown in the south of the Peninsula of India, in which the enmity between the right and left hand castes is bitter, and which in Madras was only restrained by the energy of Mr. Edward Elliot, the chief magistrate, between 1820 and 1860.—Wilson's Hindu Sects.