Bangāru Mukkara (gold nose ornament).—A sub-division of Kamma.
Baniya.—The Baniyas or Bunyas are immigrant traders and money-lenders (sowcars) from Northern India, who have settled down in the southern bazars, where they carry on a lucrative business, and wax sleek and wealthy. Bania also occurs as a synonym for the South Indian trading caste, the Kōmatis.
It may be noted, as a little matter of history, that, in 1677, the Court of Directors, in a letter to Fort St. George, offered “twenty pounds reward to any of our servants or soldiers as shall be able to speak, write, and translate the Banian language, and to learn their arithmetic.”[28]
Bānjāri.—A synonym of Lambādi.
Banka (gum).—An exogamous sept of Motāti Kāpu.
Bannagara (a painter).—A synonym of Chitrakāra.
Bannān.—A synonym of Vannān or Mannān, recorded at times of census. In like manner Bannata occurs as a Canarese form of the Malayālam Veluttēdan or Vannattān.
Banni or Vanni (Prosopis spicigera).—An exogamous sept of Kuruba and Kurni. The tree is worshipped because on it “the five Pāndava princes hung up their arms when they entered Virāt Nagra in disguise. On the tree the arms turned to snakes, and remained untouched till the owners returned.” (Lisboa.)
Bant.—For the following account of the Bants I am mainly indebted to Mr. H. A. Stuart’s description of them in the Manual of South Canara. The name Bant, pronounced Bunt, means in Tulu a powerful man or soldier, and indicates that the Bants were originally a military class corresponding to the Nāyars of Malabar. The term Nādava instead of Bant in the northern portions of South Canara points, among other indications, to a territorial organisation by nāds similar to that described by Mr. Logan as prevailing in Malabar. “The Nāyars,” he writes, “were, until the British occupied the country, the militia of the district. Originally they seem to have been organised into ‘Six Hundreds,’ and each six hundred seems to have had assigned to it the protection of all the people in a nād or country. The nād was in turn split up into taras, a Dravidian word signifying originally a foundation, the foundation of a house, hence applied collectively to a street, as in Tamil teru, in Telugu teruvu, and in Canarese and Tulu terāvu. The tara was the Nāyar territorial unit for civil purposes.” It has been stated that “the Malabar Nair chieftain of old had his nād or barony, and his own military class; and the relics of this powerful feudal system still survive in the names of some of the tāluks (divisions) of modern Malabar, and in the official designations of certain Nair families, whose men still come out with quaint-looking swords and shields to guard the person of the Zamorin on the occasion of the rice-throwing ceremony, which formally constitutes him the ruler of the land. Correspondingly, the Bants of the northern parts of Canara still answer to the territorial name of Nād Bants, or warriors of the nād or territory. It is necessary to explain that, in both ancient Kēralam and Tulu, the functions of the great military and dominant classes were so distributed that only certain classes were bound to render military service to the ruling prince. The rest were lairds or squires, or gentleman farmers, or the labourers and artisans of their particular community, though all of them cultivated a love of manly sports.”[29]
Few traces of any such organisation as has been indicated now prevail, great changes having been made when the Vijayanagar Government introduced, more than five hundred years ago, a system of administration under which the local Jain chiefs, though owing allegiance to an overlord, became more independent in their relations with the people of the country. Under the Bednūr kings, and still more under the Mysore rule, the power of the chiefs was also swept away, but the old organisation was not reverted to.