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 li