Mss Eur G91(194c)

Genre: Ethnographical Photography

Full-length portrait, seated cross-legged on floor. This portrait is also used in Watson and Kaye's 'People of India': see Photo 972/8 (417). It is there captioned, 'Kunbi Dasare, Hindoo, Mysore': 'The very picturesque figure represented...is a Dasare, a member of the Kunbi class, who has taken upon himself vows of poverty, mendicancy, and pilgrimages to holy shrines, and the service of God generally, in consequence of some vow. He wears a plume of peacocks' feathers in his turban, which is generally composed of portions of other old old turbans of various materials and sizes. He has painted his caste mark in imitation of a Sri Vishnu Brahmin, while he has smeared his face and eyelids with white ashes, and probably the end or lower part of his nose is red with applied vermilion. Round his neck is a perforated copper plate, brightly polished, exhibiting an incarnation of Vishnu, a mounted conch shell, and a necklace of large wooden beads. A dressed soft panther skin is around his waist...In his hand, lying across his knees, is a long straight sword, with a Mahratta handle, and his dress is probably of quilted calico, dyed with the bark of the acacia...When the Dasare doffs his religious costume, he becomes a meek, inoffensive individual, much resembling all his class, which here, as in other parts of India, is gentle, industrious, faithful, and trustworthy...The man is a Kunbi, or , as it is called in Canarese, Vokaliger, a tiller of the soil, like his brethren of Northern India, Berar, and Maharashtra. He is a Sudra of good caste, numbers of whom sometimes take service as servants, porters, and members of the police; but for the most part preferring agricultural pursuits, in which they are very successful.'

[Albumen print, 92x116mm].

Subjects = ascetics; Bowring Collection; Brahmins (caste); castes; mendicants

Location = India; Karnataka; Mysore district