are believed to possess healing and other virtues. They also smear their bodies with the ashes. The pūjāri, and some of the devotees, then become possessed, and run about the burning-ground, seizing and gnawing partly burnt bones. Tradition runs to the effect that, in olden times, they used to eat the dead bodies, if they came across any. And the people are so afraid of their doing this that, if a death should occur, the corpse is not taken to the burning-ground till the festival is over. "In some cases," Herbert Spencer writes,[1] "parts of the dead are swallowed by the living, who seek thus to inspire themselves with the good qualities of the dead; and we saw that the dead are supposed to be honoured by this act."
Sembunādu.— The name, meaning the Pāndya country, of a sub-division of Maravan.
Semmadi.— A Telugu form of Sembadavan.
Semmān.— The Semmāns are described, in the Madras Census Report, 1891, as "an insignificant caste of Tamil leather-workers, found only in the districts of Madura and Tinnevelly (and in the Pudukōttaī State). Though they have returned tailor and lime-burner as their occupations, the original occupation was undoubtedly leather-work. In the Tamil dictionaries Semmān is explained as a leather-worker, and a few of them, living in out-of-the way villages, have returned shoe-making as their occupation. The Semmāns are, in fact, a sub-division of the Paraiyans, and they must have been the original leather-workers of the Tamil tribes. The immigrant Chakkiliyans have, however, now taken their place." The Semmāns are described, in the Madura Manual, as burning and selling lime for building
- ↑ Principles of Sociology.
