As the bulk of the capital of the poorer classes is hoarded in the
shape of gold and silver ornaments, these are regularly pledged when
ready money is needed, and the Sunar often acts as a pawnbroker. In
this capacity he too often degenerates into a receiver of stolen
property, and Mr. Nunn suggested that his proceedings should be
supervised by license. Generally, the Sunar is suspected of making
an illicit profit by mixing alloy with the metal entrusted to him by
his customers, and some bitter sayings are current about him. One of
his customs is to filch a little gold from his mother and sister on
the last day of Shrawan (July) and make it into a luck-penny. [657]
This has given rise to the saying, 'The Sunar will not respect even
his mother's gold'; but the implication appears to be unjust. Another
saying is: _'Sona Sunar ka, abharan sansar ka,'_ or, 'The ornament
is the customer's, but the gold remains with the Sunar.' [658] Gold
is usually melted in the employer's presence, who, to guard against
fraud, keeps a small piece of the metal called _chasni_ or _maslo_,
that is a sample, and when the ornament is ready sends it with the
sample to an assayer or _Chokshi_ who, by rubbing them on a touchstone,
tells whether the gold in the sample and the ornament is of the same
quality. Further, the employer either himself sits near the Sunar while
the ornament is being made or sends one of his family to watch. In
spite of these precautions the Sunar seldom fails to filch some of the
gold while the spy's attention is distracted by the prattling of the
parrot, by the coquetting of a handsomely dressed young woman of the
family or by some organised mishap in the inner rooms among the women
of the house. [659] One of his favourite practices is to substitute
copper for gold in the interior, and this he has the best chance of
doing with the marriage ornaments, as many people consider it unlucky
to weigh or test the quality of these. [660] The account must, however,
be taken to apply only to the small artisans, and well-to-do reputable
Sunars would be above such practices.
The goldsmith's industry has hitherto not been affected to any serious
extent by the competition of imported goods, and except during periods
of agricultural depression the Sunar continues to prosper.
A Persian couplet said by a lover to his mistress is, 'Gold has no
scent and in the scent of flowers there is no gold; but thou both
art gold and hast scent.'
_Sundi, Sundhi, Sunri or Sondhi._ [661]--The liquor-distilling
caste of the Uriya country. The transfer of Sambalpur and the Uriya
States to Bihar and Orissa has reduced their strength in the Central
Provinces to about 5000, found in the Raipur District and the Bastar
and Chota Nagpur Feudatory States. The caste is an important one
in Bengal, numbering more than six lakhs of persons and being found
in western Bengal and Bihar as well as in Orissa. The word Sundi is
derived from the Sanskrit Shaundik, a spirit-seller. The caste has
various genealogies of differing degrees of respectability, tracing
their origin to cross unions between other castes born of Brahmans,
Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas. The following story is told of them in
Madras. [662] In ancient times a certain Brahman was famous for his
magical attainments. The king of the country sent for him one day
and asked him to cause the water in a tank to burn. The Brahman saw
no way of doing this, and returned homewards uneasy in his mind. On
the way he met a distiller who asked him to explain what troubled
him. When the Brahman told his story the distiller promised to cause
the water to burn on condition that the Brahman gave him his daughter
in marriage. This the Brahman agreed to do, and the distiller, after
surreptitiously pouring large quantities of liquor into the tank,
set fire to it in the presence of the king. In accordance with the
agreement he married the daughter of the Brahman and the pair became
the ancestors of the Sundi caste. In confirmation of the story it is
alleged that up to the present day the women of the caste maintain the
recollection of their Brahman ancestors by refusing to eat fowls or
the remains of their husbands' meals. Nor will they take food from the
hands of any other caste. Sir H. Risley relates the following stories
current about the caste in Bengal, where its status is very low:
"According to Hindu ideas, distillers and sellers of strong drink
rank among the most degraded castes, and a curious story in the
Vaivarta Purana keeps alive the memory of their degradation. It is
said that when Sani, the Hindu Saturn, failed to adapt an elephant's
head to the mutilated trunk of Ganesh who had been accidentally
slain by Siva, Viswakarma, the celestial artificer, was sent for,
and by careful dissection and manipulation he fitted the incongruous
parts together, and made a man called Kedara Sena from the slices
cut off in fashioning his work. This Kedara Sena was ordered to
fetch a drink of water for Bhagavati, weary and athirst. Finding
on the river's bank a shell full of water he presented it to her,
without noticing that a few grains of rice left in it by a parrot had
fermented and formed an intoxicating liquid. Bhagavati, as soon as
she had drunk, became aware of the fact, and in her anger condemned
the offender to the vile and servile occupation of making spirituous
liquors for mankind." Like other castes in Sambalpur the Sundis have
two subcastes, the Jharua and the Utkal or Uriya, of whom the Jharuas
probably immigrated from Orissa at an earlier period and adopted some
of the customs of the indigenous tribes; for this reason they are
looked down on by the more orthodox Utkalis. The caste say that they
belong to the Nagas or snake gotra, because they consider themselves
to be descended from Basuki, the serpent with a thousand heads who
formed a canopy for Vishnu. They also have _bargas_ or family titles,
but these at present exercise no influence on marriage. The Sundis
have in fact outgrown the system of exogamy and regulate their
marriages by a table of prohibited degrees in the ordinary manner,
the unions of _sapindas_ or persons who observe mourning together at
a death being prohibited. The prohibition does not extend to cognatic
relationship, but a man must not marry into the family of his paternal
aunt. The fact that the old _bargas_ or exogamous groups are still in
existence is interesting, and an intermediate step in the process of
their abandonment may be recognised in the fact that some of them are
subdivided. Thus the Sahu (lord) group has split into the Gaj Sahu
(lord of the elephant), Dhavila Sahu (white lord), and Amila Sahu
sub-groups, and it need not be doubted that this was a convenient
method adopted for splitting up the Sahu group when it became so large
as to include persons so distantly connected with each other that the
prohibition of marriage between them was obviously ridiculous. As
the number of Sundis in the Central Provinces is now insignificant
no detailed description of their customs need be given, but one or
two interesting points may be noted. Their method of observing the
_pitripaksh_ or worship of ancestors is as follows: A human figure
is made of _kusha_ grass and placed under a miniature straw hut. A
lamp is kept burning before it for ten days, and every day a twig for
cleaning the teeth is placed before it, and it is supplied with fried
rice in the morning and rice, pulse and vegetables in the evening. On
the tenth day the priest comes, and after bathing the figure seven
times, places boiled rice before it for the last meal, and then sets
fire to the hut and burns it, while repeating sacred verses. On the
eleventh day after a death, when presents for the use of the deceased
are made to a priest as his representative, the priest lies down in
the new bed which is given to him, and the members of the family rub
his feet and attend on him as if he were the dead man. He is also
given a present sufficient to purchase food for him for a year. The
Sundis worship Suradevi or the goddess of wine, whom they consider
as their mother, and they refuse to drink liquor, saying that this
would be to enjoy their own mother. They worship the still and all
articles used in distillation at the rice-harvest and when the new
mango crop appears. Large numbers of them have taken to cultivation.