tins of water, and little packets of sal-ammoniac, resin, or other similar substances, all lie scattered about the floor in picturesque confusion. Sitting, or rather crouching on their haunches, are a couple of the Pānchāla workmen. One of them is blowing a pan of charcoal into flame through an iron tube some eighteen inches long by one in diameter, and stirring up the loose charcoal. Another is hammering at a piece of silver wire on a little anvil before him. With his miserable tools the Hindu goldsmith turns out work that well might, and often deservedly does, rank with the greatest triumphs of the jeweller's art."
Sondi.—The Sondis or Sundis are summed up in the Madras Census Report, 1901, as "Oriya toddy-selling caste. They do not draw toddy themselves, but buy it from Siolos, and sell it. They also distill arrack." The word arrack or arak, it may be noted en passant means properly "perspiration, and then, first the exudation of sap drawn from the date-palm; secondly, any strong drink, distilled spirit, etc." *[1] A corruption of the word is rack, which occurs, e.g., in rack punch.
According to a Sanskrit work, entitled Parāsara-paddati, Soundikas (toddy-drawers and distillers of arrack) are the offspring of a Kaivarata male and a Gaudike female. Both these castes are pratiloma (mixed) castes. In the Matsya Purāna, the Soundikas are said to have been born to Siva of seven Apsara women on the bank of the river Son. Manu refers to the Soundikas, and says that a Snātaka †[2] may not accept food from trainers of hunting dogs, Soundikas, a washerman, a dyer, pitiless man, and a man in whose house lives a paramour of his wife.
