DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

2.3] VAIDUS AND VADDARS 31
The burial form resembles* that of southern megalithic tombs and cists.
Because individuals trade for private gain as far away as Bombay, they
have neither chief nor guild-structure, but remain a guild-like closed caste
group. Another neighbouring Telugu-speaking tribal unit which has
similarly become a quasi-guild are the Vaddars, now masons who shape
the stone blocks used in construction work. Their women (like those of
Pardhis and Vaidus but not Ramosis) still wear the simple one-piece
tribal dress, daily collecting brushwood, thorn-scrub, or twigs for fuel, as
they once did in the jungle ; the men have adopted the general lower
middle class dress (cap, shirt and dhoti) being individually contractors
for dressing stone, though they have not learned to use the fair sums of
money earned thereby to improve their hygiene or standard of living. A
generation ago, their chief was the foreman through whom all contracts
* The resemblance is increased by a dab of lime (cuna) or minium on the forehead,
or at times on the shoulders of the deceased among the more conservative Vaidus.
Megalithic cists and pit-circles (AIA, 192, 196) show the use of lime to seal the
entrance. The nearest modern custom seems to be among the Mahars, who often
sprinkle the ground above a burial with lime. The central stone of the burial cairns
generally erected by Mang-Garudis and also by Mahars is coated either with red lead,
or lime, the coat renewed periodically. Red pigment of some sort (gulal, kumkum) is
sprinkled on the corpse, on the way to the burning ground, by several higher, castes,
but the direct use of lime seems unknown. Though only children, and those not regularly,
are inserted in pots before burial by some of the lowest castes, the presence of
potters to officiate or to assist at the funeral (sometimes at weddings also) is so
common all over India in spite of brahminisation of most ritual that it should be
connected with ancient urn-burials. On the other hand, burial is cheaper than cremation
so that the burial of those who die of smallpox, leprosy, and some epidemics, or
throwing them in rivers may have been thrust upon some of the cremating castes by
poverty, just as the richer among originally burying castes tend to cremate their dead.
Sitting burial is known also among some subcastes of the Mahars, who otherwise
bury the dead in the recumbent position. The lime has, presumably, some purificatory
significance. Some Vetala stones and an occasional Hanuman has a smear of lime in
addition to the red sindura in the Bhor region. Vetalas are mostly whitewashed, with
little red or none. White lime prophylactic homo-signs to keep ghosts from killing
members of the household guard some doorways.