Castes and Tribes of Southern India/Chandāla

by Edgar Thurston

Chandāla.—At the census, 1901, more than a thousand individuals returned themselves as Chandāla, which is defined as a generic term, meaning one who pollutes, to many low castes. "It is," Surgeon-Major W. R. Cornish writes,*^[1] "characteristic of the Brāhmanical intolerance of the compilers of the code that the origin of the lowest caste of all (the Chandāla) should be ascribed to the intercourse of a Sūdra man and a Brāhman woman, while the union of a Brāhman male with a Sūdra woman is said to have resulted in one of the highest of the mixed classes." By Manu it was laid down that "the abode of the Chandāla and Swapaca must be out of the town. They must not have the use of entire vessels. Their sole wealth must be dogs and asses. Their clothes must be the mantles of the deceased; their dishes for food broken pots; their ornaments rusty iron; continually must they roam from place to place. Let no man who regards his duty, religious and civil, hold any intercourse with them, and let food be given to them in potsherds, but not by the hand of the giver."

1. * Madras Census Report, 1871.