LECTURE THIRD.

ON THE MISSIONS AMONG THE SHÁNÁRS

IN

TINNEVELLY AND SOUTH TRAVANCORE.

Of all the Protestant Missions, which have been established in India, the mission in TINNEVELLY has been more extensively spoken of, and is better known by name among christians in general than any other, unless it be the mission in Krishnaghur. And many are the circumstances which justify the notice it has received, and the interest it has excited in the church at large. The great fact that in Tinnevelly there are thousands of native christians is quite true; but in regard to other points: such as, what sort of christians they are; why they became christians in such large numbers; and how the gospel is really progressing among them, not a few mistakes are prevalent, which it may be well to correct. During my recent visit to Madras I spent nearly a month among these missions and the kindred missions of South Travancore in their immediate neighbourhood. I saw much of the country and of the people; preached by an interpreter in several of the churches; examined many of the schools, and had numerous conversations with the resident missionaries upon various topics connected with their work. It was these two missions that I particularly wished to see, and my lengthened stay in their various stations has given me perhaps a deeper impression respecting them, than I received concerning any others. To understand a mission thoroughly, we should know something of its locality; the people among whom it is carried on; their former condition and history; their habits of life; the history of missionary effort among them; and its present character and fruits. I shall endeavour to notice all these subjects in the following sketch.

THE SHANAR COUNTRY.

TINNEVELLY and TRAVANCORE are the two provinces which lie at the very southern extremity of Hindustán. They are separated from each other by a range of ghauts running from north to south between them like a huge back-bone. These mountains are in many parts high and precipitous, covered with jungle, and very dangerous to health. Their highest part is to the north, where they spring from the Nilgherry hills : the Pulney hills on the west of Madura here form a part of the range. As they advance to the southward they become lower, and passes easily ascended have been formed right across them. At length five ghauts appear standing alone, one after the other: the level ground runs forward quite flat for six miles, diminishing in width, and at last ends in a low reef of black rocks at Cape Comorin. TINNEVELLY thus lies between the ghauts and the eastern sea; TRAVANCORE, between the same ghauts and the Indian Ocean. The province of Tinnevelly, called by the natives PANDY, is about a hundred and fifty miles long; and in its upper part is seventy broad. It is a dry country, watered like Tanjore and the other eastern provinces of the Madras Presidency by rain at the end of the year and by the full rivers in May. Shut up on the west by these high and majestic ghauts, and lying only eight degrees from the equator, its climate is very hot, especially in April and May, the summer season. In many parts, broad barren plains spread out for miles and miles, covered with low bushes and grass, varied here and there by the graceful umbrella tree; and containing extensive swamps. Along the east coast, the sub-soil is chiefly sandstone, and being impregnated (like all the country from Orissa to Cape Comorin) with iron which is rusted by the air, naturally produces wide spread tracts of loose red sand. There are three such tracts of special note in Tinnevelly, called Tieris; of which two cover no less than forty square miles each. Except in the centre, they are covered with forests of palms. No roads are formed through these red deserts; foot-prints are every where visible; there are no standard marks to point one way more than another, and except by day, or during the clear bright night, it is next to impossible to travel across them to any direct spot. Almost all missionaries of long standing in Tinnevelly have at one time or other lost themselves in the sandfields and wandered about a whole night in the dense darkness. I crossed all three, and lost my way on two occasions. The north part of Tinnevelly is more suited for tillage than the south : and there is found the black soil, so favourable to the growth of cotton: of this district Tuticorin is the chief port. The great feature which dis

tinguishes all central and southern Tinnevelly, especially near the sea, from other parts of the country, is the abundant growth of the PALM TREE: exactly resembling the TAL, or fan-palm of Bengal. Wherever the traveller's eye turns he sees scarcely any thing but palm trees. In some places they closely cover such immense tracts as to become forests, containing many thousand trees. In others they are fewer in number and only appear as copses or topes. The red sand-fields are in great part covered by the palm forests. "God hath made every thing beautiful in its season." Even these sand-fields of Tinnevelly, that nourish only palm trees, feed thousands of human beings, to whom the trees furnish almost entire support. As I passed over their bare surface, I could not but think of their wondrous use, as well as admire their strange beauty and their intense solitude.

SOUTH TRAVANCORE, though adjoining Tinnevelly, possesses altogether a different soil and climate. It contains fine undulations and broad fertile plains. The mountains with their numerous streams and gushing waterfalls furnish ample supplies of water: in all the low grounds between the hills and the sea, rice is raised in abundance; on the slopes and higher localities grows the hardy palm. The wet and dry crops, of rice and corn, form a large item in the revenue returns, and more than a hundred thousand persons are employed in the pepper cultivation alone. Nothing but injustice, oppression and tyranny in the authorities, producing distrust and chicanery in the poor, prevent the people of this favoured extremity of India, from becoming as to worldly circumstances both rich and prosperous.

The difference between the two districts is produced chiefly by the different monsoons that prevail. Travancore enjoys the south-west monsoon, which blows with clouds and rain from the Indian Ocean, in the hottest months of the year. The climate is thus greatly modified and the heat tempered by the cool sea-breeze. At that same season, Tinnevelly is burning under a vertical sun, the ghauts like a wall intercepting the heavy rain clouds that pour their precious burdens upon Travancore, and preventing them from visiting also the neighbouring province. These rains on the west coast are much heavier than those of the Madras monsoon in October; more soil has consequently been washed from the hills: heat, water and fertile earth, the three chief elements of vegetable growth, are present in abundance, and if it were not for MAN, the country would flourish greatly.

TINNEVELLY and TRAVANCORE meet beyond the last ghaut, and the

traveller can walk on level ground from one province into the other. Beside the passes between the last five ghauts, this level ground is six miles long and southward ends in the sea at CAPE COMORIN. I visited the Cape, when travelling among the out-stations of the Nagercoil mission, and was much struck by its numerous peculiarities. Near the shore is a fine group of palm trees; and close beside them stands a Hindu temple. On the very shore itself is a well-cut choultry, consisting of a corniced roof resting on twelve carved pillars, all built of stone. Directly in front of this choultry is the low black rock, which constitutes the last point of solid land in Hindustán. On the east side of the temple, there lies on the shore, a large mass of purple sand, which on examination, proves to be a collection of minute garnets, broken out of the granite rock of south India, in which it abounds, and strangely washed together in one spot. Close to the black rock is another curiosity; a mass of sand, each grain of which is as large as the ordinary grains of raw rice, whence it is called rice-sand. There is a singular legend told about its origin that may be thought interesting. It is told in various ways; but the following account is most common. It is said that the youngest daughter of the king of Pandy, named KANIA KÓMORI, was sought in marriage by a foreign giant named Vánásaram. She accepted his suit, and agreed to marry him, on one condition which she hoped he could never fulfil; namely, that he should, on the wedding-day, give the guests to eat, rice which had been sown, grown, cut, winnowed, and cooked upon that very day. Much to her astonishment, the ugly monster performed the task. Greatly enraged, she cursed the rice, which became stones; she cursed the chaff, which became sand: she broke down a bridge which the giant had built there for his convenience, and finally slew the giant himself.

THE SHANAR PEOPLE.

The people who inhabit Tinnevelly and the southern part of Travancore belong, with few exceptions, to a single tribe and call themselves SHANARS. In locality, they immediately follow the Hindu Tamils of Tanjore and Madura, fill up all the south part of the Eastern continent, and, going round Cape Comorin, extend for thirty miles up Travancore. They are then followed by the Ilavas, a people similar to themselves. The whole tribe seems to number upwards of half a million of souls. In Tinnevelly they form about half the entire population of all castes, reckoned at 800,000 and in South Travancore they are set down in the Government

census at a hundred thousand. The Ilavas number 180,000 people. Their legends declare that they came last from Ceylon, which lies immediately opposite to Tinnevelly; and RABON, whom the Hindus esteem an unholy giant, they look on as their divine king. On his birth-day is held their greatest annual festival. Their language is a rough, uneducated Tamil, without any mixture of Sanskrit, and furnishes a strong proof, cognate with others, that these Shánárs are another portion of the great aboriginal Tartar race, which first overran the soil of India.

They live in a singular manner. Where no rice or corn whatever is to be had, they subsist entirely upon the palm tree, whose latent riches long experience has taught them to develop. Where the soil is favourable to rice cultivation, or any kind of vegetables or fruit can be purchased, the produce of the palm forms only a part of their living. Of these two plans the latter is most common on the Travancore side. The people obtain their food from the palm in this way. The flower of the tree is contained in a large sheath, which when cut and pressed, furnishes a considerable quantity of fresh sweet juice. If newly cut and attended to every day, the juice is deposited daily; but if left for a couple of days, the juice thickens and the vessels in which it lies become hard and cease to secrete it. This palm-juice is the life of the Shánár population: and in order to get it regularly they are compelled to pass their life in painful and incessant toil. From forty to sixty trees are required to feed one family. The Shánár peasant furnishes himself with a large pot and several small ones, a staff with a cross at the top, and a pair of wooden pincers. Arriving at his tope of trees, he puts the large vessel on the ground, and hangs a small pot and the pincers to his waist. He next slips a small band round one of his feet: plants his stick against the tree, and, clasping the trunk with both arms, begins to climb. He first places one foot on the head of the stick: this is his start: he then slips both feet into the band, which prevents them from going apart, and clasping the trunk alternately with his arms and his bound feet, climbs speedily to the top. He there cuts the bud of the tree or plucks off a small strip; squeezes the juice into his little pot, presses it gently with his wooden pincers and comes down again. Pouring the contents of his pot into the large vessel, he climbs another tree, and another and another, until he has gone over his fifty trees. By this time, in the favourable seasons of the year, he has collected a large quantity of palm juice and returns home. In the evening, he goes the same round: and thus climbs full a hundred times a day. In the dry seasons, he must climb each tree three times a day; but he never does it