Servēgāra.—The Servēgāras are a caste found in South Canara, and to a small extent in Bellary. “They are said to be a branch of the Konkan Marāthis of Goa, from whence they were invited by the Lingāyat kings of Nagara to serve as soldiers and to defend their forts (kōtē), whence the alternative name of Kōtēyava (or Kōtēgāra). Another name for them is Rāmakshatri. The mother-tongue of the Servēgāras of South Canara is Canarese, while their brethren in the north speak Konkani. They have now taken to cultivation, but some are employed in the Revenue and Police departments as peons (orderlies) and constables, and a few are shopkeepers. The name Servēgāra is derived from the Canarese servē, an army. In religion they are Hindus, and, like most West Coast castes, are equally partial to the worship of Siva and Vishnu. They wear the sacred thread. Karādi Brāhmans are their priests, and they owe allegiance to the head of the Sringēri mutt. Their girls are married before puberty, and the remarriage of widows is neither allowed nor practiced. Divorce is permitted only on the ground of the unchastity of the wife. The body of a child under three years is buried, and that of any person exceeding that age is cremated. They eat flesh, but do not drink. Their titles are Nāyak, Aiya, Rao, and Sheregar.”[37] In the Census Report, 1901, Bomman Vālēkāra is returned as a synonym, and Vīlayakāra as a sub-caste of Servēgāra.
Setti.—See Chetti.
Settukkāran.—A castle title, meaning economical people, sometimes used by Dēvāngas instead of Setti or Chetti.
Sevagha Vritti.—A sub-division of Kaikōlan.
Sēvala (service).—An exogamous sept of Golla.
Shānān.—The great toddy-drawing caste of the Tamil country, which, a few years ago, came into special prominence owing to the Tinnevelly riots in 1899. “These were,” the Inspector-General of Police writes,[38] “due to the pretensions of the Shānāns to a much higher position in the religio-social scale than the other castes are willing to allow. Among other things, they claimed admission to Hindu temples, and the manager of the Visvanathēswara temple at Sivakāsi decided to close it. This partial victory of the Shānāns was keenly resented by their opponents, of whom the most active were the Maravans. Organised attacks were made on a number of the Shānān villages; the inhabitants were assailed; houses were burnt; and property was looted. The most serious occurrence was the attack on Sivakāsi by a body of over five thousand Maravans. Twenty-three murders, 102 dacoities, and many cases of arson were registered in connection with the riots in Sivakāsi, Chinniapuram, and other places. Of 1,958 persons arrested, 552 were convicted, 7 being sentenced to death. One of the ring-leaders hurried by train to distant Madras, and made a clever attempt to prove an alibi by signing his name in the Museum visitor’s book. During the disturbance some of the Shānāns are said to have gone into the Muhammadan fold. The men shaved their heads, and grew beards; and the women had to make sundry changes in their dress. And, in the case of boys, the operation of circumcision was performed.”
The immediate bone of contention at the time of the Tinnevelly riots was, the Census Superintendent, 1901, writes, “the claim of the Shānāns to enter the Hindu temples, in spite of the rules in the Agama Shāstras that toddy-drawers are not to be allowed into them; but the pretensions of the community date back from 1858, when a riot occurred in Travancore, because female Christian converts belonging to it gave up the caste practice of going about without an upper cloth.” On this point Mr. G. T. Mackenzie informs us[39] that “in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the female converts to Christianity in the extreme south ventured, contrary to the old rules for the lower castes, to clothe themselves above the waist. This innovation was made the occasion for threats, violence, and series of disturbances. Similar disturbances arose from the same cause nearly thirty years later, and, in 1859, Sir Charles Trevelyan, Governor of Madras, interfered, and granted permission to the women of the lower castes to wear a cloth over the breasts and shoulders. The following proclamation was issued by the Mahārāja of Travancore:—We hereby proclaim that there is no objection to Shānān women either putting on a jacket like the Christian Shānān women, or to Shānān women of all creeds dressing in coarse cloth, and tying themselves round with it as the Mukkavattigal (fisherwomen) do, or to their covering their bosoms in any manner whatever, but not like women of high castes.” “Shortly after 1858, pamphlets began to be written and published by people of the caste, setting out their claims to be Kshatriyas. In 1874 they endeavoured to establish a right to enter the great Mīnākshi temple at Madura, but failed, and they have since claimed to be allowed to wear the sacred thread, and to have palanquins at their weddings. They say they are descended from the Chēra, Chōla and Pāndya kings; they have styled themselves Kshatriyas in legal papers; labelled their schools Kshatriya academy; got Brāhmans of the less particular kind to do purōhit’s work for them; had poems composed on their kingly origin; gone through a sort of incomplete parody of the ceremony of investiture with the sacred thread; talked much but ignorantly of their gōtras; and induced needy persons to sign documents agreeing to carry them in palanquins on festive occasions.” [During my stay at Nazareth in Tinnevelly, for the purpose of taking measurements of the Shānāns, I received a visit from some elders of the community from Kuttam, who arrived in palanquins, and bearing weapons of old device.] Their boldest stroke was to aver that the coins commonly known as Shānāns’ cash were struck by sovereign ancestors of the caste. The author of a pamphlet entitled ‘Bishop Caldwell and the Tinnevelly Shānārs’ states that he had met with men of all castes who say that they have seen the true Shānār coin with their own eyes, and that a Eurasian gentleman from Bangalore testified to his having seen a true Shānār coin at Bangalore forty years ago. The coin referred to is the gold Venetian sequin, which is still found in considerable numbers in the south, and bears the names of the Doges (Paul Rainer, Aloy Mocen, Ludov Manin, etc.) and a cross, which the Natives mistake for a toddy palm. “If,” Mr. Fawcett writes,[40] “one asks the ordinary Malayāli (native of Malabar) what persons are represented on the sequin, one gets for answer that they are Rāma and Sīta: between them a cocoanut tree. Every Malayāli knows what an Āmâda is; it is a real or imitation Venetian sequin. I have never heard any explanation of the word Āmâda in Malabar. The following comes from Tinnevelly. Āmâda was the consort of Bhagavati, and he suddenly appeared one day before a Shānār, and demanded food. The Shānār said he was a poor man with nothing to offer but toddy, which he gave in a palmyra leaf. Āmâda drank the toddy, and performing a mantram (consecrated formula) over the leaf, it turned into gold coins, which bore on one side the pictures of Āmâda, the Shānār, and the tree, and these he gave to the Shānār as a reward for his willingness to assist him.”
In a petition to myself from certain Shānāns of Nazareth, signed by a very large number of the community, and bearing the title “Short account of the Cantras or Tamil Xātrās, the original but down-trodden royal race of Southern India,” they write as follows. “We humbly beg to say that we are the descendants of the Pāndya or Dravida Xatra race, who, shortly after the universal deluge of Noah, first disafforested and colonized this land of South India under the guidance of Agastya Muni. The whole world was destroyed by flood about B.C. 3100 (Dr. Hale’s calculation), when Noah, otherwise called Vaivasvata-manu or Satyavrata, was saved with his family of seven persons in an ark or covered ship, which rested upon the highest mountain of the Āryāvarta country. Hence the whole earth was rapidly replenished by his descendants. One of his grandsons (nine great Prajāpatis) was Atri, whose son Candra was the ancestor of the noblest class of the Xatras ranked above the Brahmans, and the first illustrious monarch of the post-diluvian world.”
“Apparently,” the Census Superintendent continues, “judging from the Shānān’s own published statements of their case, they rest their claims chiefly upon etymological derivations of their caste name Shānān, and of Nādān and Grāmani, their two usual titles. Caste titles and names are, however, of recent origin, and little can be inferred from them, whatever their meaning may be shown to be. Brāhmans, for example, appear to have borne the titles of Pillai and Mudali, which are now only used by Sūdras, and the Nāyak kings, on the other hand, called themselves Aiyar, which is now exclusively the title of Saivite Brāhmans. To this day the cultivating Vellālas, the weaving Kaikōlars, and the semi-civilised hill tribe of the Jātapus use equally the title of Mudali, and the Balijas and Telagas call themselves Rao, which is properly the title of Mahrātta Brāhmans. Regarding the derivation of the words Shānān, Nādān and Grāmani, much ingenuity has been exercised. Shānān is not found in the earlier Tamil literature at all. In the inscriptions of Rājarāja Chōla (A. D. 984–1013) toddy-drawers are referred to as Īluvans. According to Pingalandai, a dictionary of the 10th or 11th century, the names of the toddy-drawer castes are Palaiyar, Tuvasar, and Paduvar. To these the Chūdāmani Nikandu, a Tamil dictionary of the 16th century, adds Saundigar. Apparently, therefore, the Sanskrit word Saundigar must have been introduced (probably by the Brāhmans) between the 11th and 16th centuries, and is a Sanskrit rendering of the word Īluvan. From Saundigar to Shānān is not a long step in the corruption of words. The Shānāns say that Shānān is derived from the Tamil word Sānrār or Sānrōr, which means the learned or the noble. But it does not appear that the Shānāns were ever called Sānrār or Sānrōr in any of the Tamil works. The two words Nādān and Grāmani mean the same thing, namely, ruler of a country or of a village, the former being a Tamil, and the latter a Sanskrit word. Nādān, on the other hand, means a man who lives in the country, as opposed to Ūrān, the man who resides in a village. The title of the caste is Nādān, and it seems most probable that it refers to the fact that the Īluvan ancestors of the caste lived outside the villages. (South Indian Inscriptions, vol. II, part 1.) But, even if Nādān and Grāmani both mean rulers, it does not give those who bear these titles any claim to be Kshatriyas. If it did, all the descendants of the many South Indian Poligars, or petty chiefs, would be Kshatriyas.”
The Census Superintendent, 1891, states that the “Shānāns are in social position usually placed only a little above the Pallas and the Paraiyans, and are considered to be one of the polluting castes, but of late many of them have put forward a claim to be considered Kshatriyas, and at least 24,000 of them appear as Kshatriyas in the caste tables. This is, of course, absurd, as there is no such thing as a Dravidian Kshatriya. But it is by no means certain that the Shānāns were not at one time a warlike tribe, for we find traces of a military occupation among several toddy-drawing castes of the south, such as the Billavas (bowmen), Halēpaik (old foot soldiers), Kumārapaik (junior foot). Even the Kadamba kings of Mysore are said to have been toddy-drawers. ‘The Kadamba tree appears to be one of the palms, from which toddy is extracted. Toddy-drawing is the special occupation of the several primitive tribes spread over the south-west of India, and bearing different names in various parts. They were employed by former rulers as foot-soldiers and bodyguards, being noted for their fidelity.[41]’ The word Shānān is ordinarily derived from Tamil sāru, meaning toddy; but a learned missionary derives it from sān (a span) and nār (fibre or string), that is the noose, one span in length, used by the Shānāns in climbing palm-trees.” The latter derivation is also given by Vellālas.