One of the good qualities of Sir Thomas Munro, formerly Governor of Madras, was that, like Rāma and Rob Roy, his arms reached to his knees, or, in other words, he possessed the kingly quality of an Ajānubāhu, which is the heritage of kings, or those who have blue blood in them. This particular anatomical character I have met with myself only once, in a Shānān, whose height was 173 cm. and span of the arms 194 cm.(+ 21 cm.). Rob Roy, it will be remembered, could, without stooping, tie his garters, which were placed two inches below the knee.
For a detailed account of demonolatry among the Shānāns, I would refer the reader to the Rev. R.(afterwards Bishop) Caldwell's now scarce 'Tinnevelly Shanans' (1849), written when he was a young and impulsive missionary, and the publication of which I believe that the learned and kind-hearted divine lived to regret.
Those Shānāns who are engaged in the palmyra (Borassus flabellifer) forests in extracting the juice of the palm-tree climb with marvellous activity and dexterity. There is a proverb that, if you desire to climb trees, you must be born a Shānān. A palmyra climber will, it has been calculated, go up from forty to fifty trees, each forty to fifty feet high, three times a day. The story is told by Bishop Caldwell of a man who was sitting upon a leaf-stalk at the top of a palmyra palm in a high wind, when the stalk gave way, and he came down to the ground safely and quietly, sitting on the leaf, which served the purpose of a natural parachute. Wood-peckers are called Shānāra kurivi by birdcatchers, because they climb trees like Shānārs. "The Hindus," the Rev. (afterwards Canon) A. Margöschis writes,*[1]
- ↑ * Christianity and Caste, 1893.
