...In an Indian village the people from different castes are found. All the innumerable castes in India are not found in one village. From outside one can never guess the caste nature of an Indian village. From outside it looks like a random cluster of houses. However there is a strong caste pattern in this seemingly randomness. There are many adjoining clusters of houses in the village. There are clusters alongside clusters. The people belonging to a given caste live in the houses or huts that clustered together, the helmet. The high caste people live in the important area of the village which is usually the middle of it. Their houses are usually big and large. Other castes live around them and in clusters. The untouchables usually live at the inauspicious southern end of the village or outside the southern end of the village. The inauspicious people live in the inauspicious direction. Such a positioning meant that they absorbed all the ill effects due inauspicious southern direction. This direction is considered inauspicious probably since Rig Vedic days when the settlements of Vedic people were prone to violent attack from the southern side where the natives of the land lived. Considering the history of this land, the northern direction should be the inauspicious because all the attacks on land come from there.
The untouchables generally have their small mud huts in an isolated corner as an indication of their poverty and isolation. These hamlets have mud huts with hardly anything inside them. They have hardly anything to sleep on; few torn and ragged clothes to put on; few old cooking utensils and a small box. This small box can hold inside it more things than they can accumulate in their lifetime. The earning abilities granted to them by sacred and pure Varna dharma can be easily dwarfed by a handful of grains....
No comments:
Post a Comment