Sōnagan.—See Jōnagan.
Sonar.—The Sonars or Sonagāras of South Canara are described by Mr. H. A. Stuart[54] as a goldsmith caste, who “speak Konkani, which is a dialect of Marāthi, and are believed to have come from Goa. The community at each station has one or two Mukhtēsars or headmen, who enquire into, and settle the caste affairs. Serious offences are reported to the swāmy of Sode, who has authority to excommunicate, or to inflict heavy fines. They wear the sacred thread. Marriages within the same gōtra are strictly prohibited. Most of them are Vaishnavites, but a few follow Siva. The dead are burned, and the ashes are thrown into a river. They eat fish, but not flesh. Their title is Setti.” They consider it derogatory to work in metals other than gold and silver.
In the Madras Census Report, 1901, the Sunnāri (or Sonnāri) are described as Oriya goldsmiths (see Risley, Tribes and Castes of Bengal, Sonar). These goldsmiths, in the Oriya portion of the Madras Presidency, are, I am informed, Kamsalas from the Telugu country. Unlike the Oriyas, and like other Telugu classes, they invariably have a house-name, and their mother tongue is Telugu. They are Saivites, bury their dead, claim to be descendants of Viswakarma, and call themselves Viswa Brāhmans. They do not eat meals prepared by Brāhmans, or drink water at the hands of Brāhmans.
In former times, goldsmiths held the post of Nottakāran (tester) or village shroff (money-changer). His function was to test the rupees tendered when the land revenue was being gathered in, and see that they were not counterfeit. There is a proverb, uncomplimentary to the goldsmiths, to the effect that a goldsmith cannot make an ornament even for his wife, without first secreting some of the gold or silver given him for working upon.
It has been noted[55] that “in Madras, an exceedingly poor country, there is one male goldsmith to every 408 of the total population; in England, a very rich country, there is only one goldsmith to every 1,200 inhabitants. In Europe, jewellery is primarily for ornament, and is a luxury. In India it is primarily an investment, its ornamental purpose being an incident.”
The South Indian goldsmith at work has been well described as follows.[56] “A hollow, scooped out in the middle of the mud floor (of a room or verandah), does duty for the fireplace, while, close by, there is raised a miniature embankment, semi-circular in shape, with a hole in the middle of the base for the insertion of the bellows. Crucibles of clay or cow-dung, baked hard in the sun, tongs and hammers, potsherds of charcoal, dirty tins of water, and little packets of sal-ammoniac, resin, or other similar substances, all lie scattered about the floor in picturesque confusion. Sitting, or rather crouching on their haunches, are a couple of the Pānchāla workmen. One of them is blowing a pan of charcoal into flame through an iron tube some eighteen inches long by one in diameter, and stirring up the loose charcoal. Another is hammering at a piece of silver wire on a little anvil before him. With his miserable tools the Hindu goldsmith turns out work that well might, and often deservedly does, rank with the greatest triumphs of the jeweller’s art.”
Sondi.—The Sondis or Sundis are summed up in the Madras Census Report, 1901, as “Oriya toddy-selling caste. They do not draw toddy themselves, but buy it from Siolos, and sell it. They also distill arrack.” The word arrack or arak, it may be noted en passant, means properly “perspiration, and then, first the exudation of sap drawn from the date-palm; secondly, any strong drink, distilled spirit, etc.”[57] A corruption of the word is rack, which occurs, e.g., in rack punch.
According to a Sanskrit work, entitled Parāsarapaddati, Soundikas (toddy-drawers and distillers of arrack) are the offspring of a Kaivarata male and a Gaudike female. Both these castes are pratiloma (mixed) castes. In the Matsya Purāna, the Soundikas are said to have been born to Siva of seven Apsara women on the bank of the river Son. Manu refers to the Soundikas, and says that a Snātaka[58] may not accept food from trainers of hunting dogs, Soundikas, a washerman, a dyer, pitiless man, and a man in whose house lives a paramour of his wife.
In a note on the allied Sunris or Sundis of Bengal, Mr. Risley writes[59] that “according to Hindu ideas, distillers and sellers of strong drink rank among the most degraded castes, and a curious story in the Vaivarta Purāna keeps alive the memory of their degradation. It is said that when Sani, the Hindu Saturn, failed to adapt an elephant’s head to the mutilated trunk of Ganēsa, who had been accidentally beheaded by Siva, Viswakarma, the celestial artificer, was sent for, and by careful dissection and manipulation he fitted the incongruous parts together, and made a man called Kedāra Sena from the slices cut off in fashioning his work. This Kedāra Sena was ordered to fetch a drink of water for Bhagavati, weary and athirst. Finding on the river’s bank a shell full of water, he presented it to her, without noticing that a few grains of rice left in it by a parrot had fermented and formed an intoxicating liquid. Bhagavati, as soon as she had drunk, became aware of the fact, and in her anger condemned the offender to the vile and servile occupation of making spirituous liquor for mankind. Another story traces their origin to a certain Bhāskar or Bhāskar Muni, who was created by Krishna’s brother, Balarām, to minister to his desire for strong drink. A different version of the same legend gives them for ancestor Niranjan, a boy found by Bhāskar floating down a river in a pot full of country liquor, and brought up by him as a distiller.”
For the following note on the Sondis of Vizagapatam, I am indebted to Mr. C. Hayavadana Rao. According to a current tradition, there was, in days of old, a Brāhman, who was celebrated for his magical powers. The king, his patron, asked him if he could make the water in a tank (pond) burn, and he replied in the affirmative. He was, however, in reality disconsolate, because he did not know how to do it. By chance he met a distiller, who asked him why he looked so troubled, and, on learning his difficulty, promised to help him on condition that he gave him his daughter in marriage. To this the Brāhman consented. The distiller gave him a quantity of liquor to pour into the tank, and told him to set it alight in the presence of the king. The Brāhman kept his word, and the Sondis are the descendants of the offspring of his daughter and the distiller. The caste is divided into several endogamous divisions, viz., Bodo Odiya, Madhya kūla, and Sanno kūla. The last is said to be made up of illegitimate descendants of the two first divisions.