# Castes and Tribes of Southern India/Gauda

​Gauda.— The Gaudas or Gaudos are a large caste of Canarese cultivators and cattle-breeders. " Gauda and Gaudo," Mr. H. A. Stuart writes,* "are really two distinct castes, the former being Canarese and the latter Uriya. Each name is, however, spelt both ways. The two names are, I presume, etymologically the same. The ordinary derivation is from the Sanskrit go, a cow, but Dr. Gustav Oppert contends † that the root of Gauda is a Dravidian word meaning a mountain. Among the Canarese, and to a less extent among the Uriyas also,the word is used in an honorific sense, a custom which is difficult to account for if Dr. Oppert's philology is correct." "Gaudas," Mr. Stuart writes further, ‡"also called Hālvaklumakkalu (children of the milk class), are very numerously represented in the South Canara district. They have a somewhat elaborate system of caste government. In every village there are two headmen, the Grāma Gauda and the Vattu or Gattu Gauda. For every group of eight or nine villages there is another head called the Māganē Gauda, and for every nine Māganēs there is a yet higher authority called the Kattēmanēyava. The caste is divided into eighteen baris or balis, which are of the usual exogamous character. ​The names of some of these are as follows: Bangāra (gold), Nandara, Malāra (a bundle of glass bangles, as carried about for sale), Sālu, Hemmana (pride or conceit), Kabru, Gōli (Portulaca oleracea, a pot-herb), Basruvōgaru (basru, belly), Balasanna, and Karmannāya. Marriage is usually adult, and sexual license before marriage with a member of the caste is tolerated, though nominally condemned. The dhārē form of marriage (see Bant) is used, but the bridal pair hold in their joined hands five betel leaves, one areca nut and four annas, and, after the water has been poured, the bridegroom ties a tāli to the neck of the bride. Divorce is permitted freely, and divorced wives and widows can marry again. A widow with children, however, should marry only her late husband's elder brother. If she marries any one else, the members of her former husband's family will not even drink water that has been touched by her. They burn their dead. On the third day, the ashes are made into the form of a man, which is cut in two, buried, and a mound made over it. In the house two planks are placed on the ground, and covered with a cloth. On one of these, a vessel containing milk is placed, and on the other a lamp, rice, cocoanut, pumpkin, etc., are deposited. The agnates and some boys go round the plank three times, and afterwards go to the mound, taking with them the various articles in a cloth. Three plantain leaves are spread in front of the mound, and cooked food, etc., placed thereon. Four posts are set up round the mound, and cloths stretched over them, and placed round the sides. On the sixteenth day, sixteen plantain leaves are placed in a row, and one leaf is laid apart. Cakes, cooked fowl's flesh, toddy and arrack (liquor) are placed on the leaves in small leaf-cups. The assembled agnates then say " We have done everything as we should do, and so ​our ancestors who have died must take the man who is now dead to their regions. I put the leaf which is apart in the same row with the sixteen leaves."
"Once a year, in the month of Mituna (June-July), the Gaudas perform a ceremony for the propitiation of all deceased ancestors. They have a special preference for Venkatarāmaswāmi, to whom they make money offerings once a year in September. They employ Brāhmins to give them sacred water when they are under pollution, but they do not seek their services for ordinary ceremonies. They are, for the most part, farmers, but some few are labourers. The latter receive three or four seers of paddy a day as wages. Their house language is Tulu in some places, and Canarese in others, but all follow the ordinary system of inheritance, and not the custom of descent through females. Their title is Gauda."
As bearing on the superstitious beliefs of the people of South Canara, the following case, which was tried before the Sessions Judge in 1908, may be cited. A young Gauda girl became pregnant by her brother-in-law. After three days' labour, the child was born. The accused, who was the mother of the girl, was the midwife. Finding the delivery very difficult, she sent for a person named Korapulu to come and help her. The child was, as they thought, still-born. On its head was a red protuberance like a ball; round each of its forearms were two or three red bands; the eyes and ears were fixed very high in the head; and the eyes, nose, and mouth were abnormally large. Korapulu and the girl's younger sister at once carried the mother out of the out-house lest the devil child should do her harm or kill her. The accused called for a man named Isuf Saiba, who was standing in the yard outside. He came in, and she asked him to call some of the neighbours, to decide ​what to do. The child, she said, was a devil child, and must be cut and killed, lest it should devour its mother. While they were looking at the child, it began to move and roll its eyes about, and turn on the ground. It is a belief of the villagers that such a devil child, when born and brought in contact with the air, rapidly grows, and causes great trouble, usually killing the mother, and sometimes killing all the inmates of the house. The accused told Isuf Saiba to cover the child with a vessel, which he did. Then there was a sound from inside the vessel, either of the child moving or making some sound with its mouth. The accused then put her hand under the vessel, dragged the child halfway out, and then, while Isuf Saiba pressed the edge of the earthenware vessel on the abdomen of the child, the accused took a knife, and cut the body in half. When the body was cut in two, there was no blood, but a mossy green liquid, or a black liquid, oozed out. The accused got two areca leaves, and put one piece of the child on one, and one on the other, and told Isuf Saiba to get a spade, and come and bury them. So they went out into the jungle close to the house, and Isuf Saiba dug two holes about half a yard deep, one on one hillock, and one on another. In these two holes the two pieces of the child were separately buried. The object of this was to prevent the two pieces joining together again, in which case the united devil child would have come out of the grave, and gone to kill its mother. The birth and death of this devil child were not kept secret, but were known throughout the village.
Gauda or Gaudu further occurs as a title of Īdiga, Kuruba, and Vakkaliga, an exogamous sept and gōtra of Kuruba and Kurni, and a sub-division of Golla.
* ↑ * Madras Census Report, 1891
* ↑ † Original Inhabitants of Bharatavarsha.
* ↑ ‡ Manual of the South Canara district.