It is noted, in the Gazetteer of the Madura district, that “a Kusavan can claim the hand of his paternal aunt’s daughter. Marriage occurs before puberty. The tāli is tied by the bridegroom’s sister, and the usual bride-price is paid. The ceremonies last three days. One of them consists in the bridegroom’s sister sowing seeds in a pot, and, on the last day of the wedding, the seedlings which have sprouted are taken with music to a river or tank (pond), and thrown into it. When the bride attains maturity, a ceremony is conducted by the caste priest, and consummation follows on the next auspicious day.”
Among the Kusavans, divorce and remarriage are permissible on mutual agreement, on one party paying to the other the expenses of the latter’s original marriage (parisam). A case came before the High Court of Madras,[77] in which a Kusavan woman in the Tinnevelly district, on the ground of ill-treatment, repaid her husband the parisam, thereby dissolving the marriage, and married another man.
The potters are considered to be adepts in the treatment of cases of fracture. And it is still narrated how one of them successfully set in splints the broken arm of Lord Elphinstone, when Governor of Madras, after the English doctors had given up the job as hopeless.[78] “In our village,” it is recorded,[79] “cases of dislocations of bones and fractures, whether simple, compound, comminuted or complicated, are taken in hand by the bone-setters, who are no other than our potters. The village barber and the village potter are our surgeons. While the barber treats cases of boils, wounds, and tumours, the potter confines himself to cases of fracture and dislocations of bones.” The amateur treatment by the unqualified potter sometimes gives rise to what is known as potter’s gangrene.
For the notes of the following case I am indebted to Captain F. F. Elwes, I.M.S. A bricklayer, about a month and a half or two months prior to admission into hospital, fell from a height, and injured his left arm. He went to a potter, who placed the arm and forearm in a splint, the former in a line with the latter, i.e., fully extended. He kept the splint on for about a month and, when it was removed, found that he was unable to bend the arm at the elbow-joint. When he was examined at the hospital, practically no movement, either active or passive, could be obtained at the elbow-joint. The lower end of the humerus could be felt to be decidedly thickened both anteriorly and posteriorly. There had apparently been a fracture of the lower end of the humerus. Röntgen ray photographs showed an immense mass of callus extending over the anterior surface of the elbow-joint from about two and a half inches above the lower end of the humerus to about an inch below the elbow-joint. There was also some callus on the posterior surface of the lower end of the humerus.
Concerning potter’s gangrene, Captain W. J. Niblock, I.M.S., writes as follows.[80] “Cases of gangrene, the result of treatment of fractures by the village potters, used to be frequently met with in the General Hospital, Madras. These were usually brought when the only possible treatment consisted in amputation well above the disease. Two of these cases are indelibly impressed on my mind. Both were cases of gangrene of the leg, the result of tight splinting by potters. The first patient was a boy of thirteen. Whilst a student was removing the dressings on his admission, the foot came off in his hands, leaving two inches of the lower ends of the tibia and fibula exposed, and absolutely devoid of all the soft tissues, not even the periosteum being left. The second case was that of a Hindu man, aged 46. He was taken to the operation theatre at once. Whilst engaged in disinfecting my hands, I heard a dull thud on the floor of the operation theatre, turned round, and found that the gangrenous leg, as the result of a struggle whilst chloroform was being administered, had become separated at the knee-joint, and had fallen on floor; or, to put it tersely, the man had kicked his leg off.”
In connection with the Tamil proverb “This is the law of my caste, and this is the law of my belly,” the Rev. H. Jensen notes[81] that “potters are never Vaishnavas; but potters at Srirangam were compelled by the Vaishnava Brāhmans to put the Vaishnava mark on their foreheads; otherwise the Brāhmans would not buy their pots for the temple. One clever potter, having considered the difficulty, after making the Saivite symbol on his forehead, put a big Vaishnava mark on his stomach. When rebuked for so doing by a Brāhman, he replied as above.” The proverb “Does the dog that breaks the pots understand how difficult it is to pile them up?” is said by Jensen to have reference to the pots which are piled up at the potter’s house. A variant is “What is many days’ work for the potter is but a few moment’s work for him who breaks the pots.”
In the Madura district, the Kusavans have Vēlan as a title.
The insigne of the Kusavans, recorded at Conjeeveram, is a potter’s wheel.[82]
Kutikkar.—A name for Dāsis in Travancore.
Kutraki (wild goat).—An exogamous sept of Jātapu.