Rev. Samuel Mateer, Ved From Victoria Institutions, Editor
To the present day Pulayars and others are thrust into cages not much better. One which I measured was fifteen feet long by eight feet wide, and five and three-quarters in height, in which twenty-five persons have at times been incarcerated, supplied with stocks all round, and no separation of the sexes. Another was eighteen by eight feet, in which thirty persons have been confined at once; and another was a “black hole” about eight feet square and five and a quarter high, with no opening whatever, for ventilation, not now used “except,” said the peon, “there were a woman, who would be put in there for her comfort!” The Sirkar has long been urged to remedy this serious evil, and has promised amendment, and done something in the larger towns; but much yet remains to be effected throughout the country. In somewhat recent times Shanars also, if they neglected to supply jaggery for public work, were put into cages armed with spikes, and made to eat a quantity of salt with a little rice, or chained to trees like monkeys to their cage-posts. “I once saw,” says Fra Bartolomeo, about A.D. 1780, “five natives suspended from a tree in a forest near Ambalapusha, on account of the supposed crime of killing a cow.” Again he says : “At Quilon, I saw a native of the caste of the Shanars hanging on a gallows for having stolen three cocoanuts in the house of a Nayr. The corpus delicti was suspended from his neck, in order that it might serve as a warning to all passengers.” “For the restoration of peace at that time “(A.D. 1802), says the native historian, Pachu Mutthathu, “punishments were too severe, beyond the law. Krishna Pillai sepoy, and others who rebelled, were tied to the feet of elephants and torn asunder. Blowing from the mouth of a cannon, impaling and hanging, gouging out the eyes, cutting off hands, nose and ears, were inflicted for trifling offences.” Devasagayam Pillai, a convert to Christianity in 1752, was “taken from village to village riding on a buffalo, daily b
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