A Description of the Coasts of East Africa and Malabar in the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century

by Unknown

BETUA.

There is another lower sect of gentiles called betua. Their business is to make salt, to plough and sow rice, and they do not live by anything else: they have houses in the country apart from the roads where respectable people pass. These people have a form of idolatry of their own: they also are slaves of the king and of the nayrs. They live very miserably: the nayrs make them keep far aloof from them, and speak to them from a great distance: they have no intercourse with other people. They are married and their children inherit.

PANEU.

There is another sect even lower of these people, called paneu,[237] who are great practisers of witchcraft, and they do not gain their living by anything else than charms. They visibly speak with devils who put themselves within them, and make them do awful things. When any king falls ill of fevers or any other illness, he immediately sends to call these men and women; of whom the most accomplished charmers come with their wives and children. Twenty-two families establish their dwellings at the gate of the palace of the king, or house of the person who is suffering, and has sent to call them: and there they set up a tent of coloured cloth in which they all place themselves. And there they paint their bodies with colours, and make crowns of painted paper and cloth, and other inventions of many sorts, with plenty of flowers and herbs, and great bonfires, and lighted lamps, and kettle-drums, trumpets, horns, and lutes, which they sound; and in this manner they come out of the tent two and two, with their swords in their hands, shouting and jumping, and running about the place or the court of the palace, and they jump upon one another's backs, and go on this way for some time, sticking one another with knives, and pushing one another naked and barefooted into the fire, until they are tired; and so they come out both men and boys two and two together to do the same thing again: and the women shout and sing with a great noise. And they go on this way for two or three days, night and day, always performing together, and they make rings of earth, and lines of red ochre and white clay, and spread upon them rice and flowers of various colours, and put lights all round, and go on this way until the devil, for whose service they do all this, enters into one of them, and makes him say what the king is suffering from, and what must be done to cure him. And then they tell it to the king, and he remains satisfied and gives them many presents, and does what they tell him, either as to making offerings to their idols, or any other matter which they enjoin him to do. And so he gets well by the work of the devil, to whom they all belong. These also live separated from intercourse with the nayrs and respectable people, and do not touch any other sect. They are great hunters and archers: they kill many boars and stags upon which they maintain themselves. They are married and their children inherit.

RENOLENI.

There is another sect of people still lower, who are called renoleni,[238] who live in the mountains very poorly and miserably. And they have no other occupation than bringing wood and grass to the city for sale, to support themselves. And these people have no intercourse with any others, nor others with them, under pain of death; and they go naked, covering only their middles, many of them do so with only leaves of trees, and some with small and very dirty cloths. They marry and their children are their heirs. The women wear much brass on their ears, necks, arms, and legs, in bracelets, rings, and beads.

PULER.

There is another lower sect of gentiles called puler.[239] These are held as excommunicated and accursed; they live in swampy fields and places where respectable people cannot go: they have very small and abject huts, and plough and sow the fields with rice, they use buffaloes and oxen. They do not speak to the nairs, except from a long way off, as far as they can be heard speaking with a loud voice. When they go along the road they shout, so that whoever comes may speak to them, and that they may withdraw from the roads, and put themselves on the mountains. And whatever woman or man should touch these, their relations immediately kill them like a contaminated thing: and they kill so many of these pulers until they are weary of it, without any penalty. These low people during certain months of the year try as hard as they can to touch some of the nair women, as best they may be able to manage it, and secretly by night, to do harm. So they go by night amongst the houses of the nayrs to touch women, and these take many precautions against this injury during this season. And if they touch any woman, even though no one see it, and though there should be no witnesses, she, the nair woman herself, publishes it immediately, crying out, and leaves her house without choosing to enter it again to damage her lineage. And what she most thinks of doing is to run to the house of some low people, to hide herself, that her relations may not kill her as a remedy for what has happened, or sell her to some strangers as they are accustomed to do. And touching is in this manner, that even if there is no contact from one person to another, yet by throwing anything, such as a stone or a stick, if the person is hit by it, he remains touched and lost. These people are great charmers, thieves, and very vile people.

PARENI.[240]

There is yet another sect of people among them still lower, who live in desert places, called pareni. These likewise do not converse with any one. They are looked upon as worse than the devil, and as altogether condemned:[241] so that by looking at them only they consider themselves as defiled and excommunicated, which they call contaminated. They support themselves on yname, which is like the root of the maize which is found in the island of Antilla, and on other roots and wild fruits, and they cover themselves with leaves and eat the flesh of wild animals. And with these ends the diversity of the sects of the gentiles, which are in all eighteen, each one by itself: they live without intercourse or intermarriage of one with another.