memory of their Founder's doctrine. Otherwise
the Kabirpanthis of each caste make a separate group within it, but
among the lower castes they take food and marry with members of the
caste who are not Kabirpanthis. These latter are commonly known as
Saktaha, a term which in Chhattisgarh signifies an eater of meat as
opposed to a Kabirpanthi who refrains from it. The Mahars and Pankas
permit intermarriage between Kabirpanthi and Saktaha families,
the wife in each case adopting the customs and beliefs of her
husband. Kabirpanthis also wear the _choti_ or scalp-lock and shave
the head for the death of a relative, in spite of Kabir's contempt of
the custom. Still, the sect has in the past afforded to the uneducated
classes a somewhat higher ideal of spiritual life than the chaotic
medley of primitive superstitions and beliefs in witchcraft and devil
worship, from which the Brahmans, caring only for the recognition of
their social supremacy, made no attempt to raise them.

Lingayat Sect

_Lingayat Sect_.--A sect devoted to the worship of Siva which has
developed into a caste. The Lingayat sect is supposed [295] to have
been founded in the twelfth century by one Basava, a Brahman minister
of the king of the Carnatic. He preached the equality of all men and
of women also by birth, and the equal treatment of all. Women were to
be treated with the same respect as men, and any neglect or incivility
to a woman would be an insult to the god whose image she wore and with
whom she was one. Caste distinctions were the invention of Brahmans
and consequently unworthy of acceptance. The _Madras Census Report_
[296] of 1871 further states that Basava preached the immortality of
the soul, and mentions a theory that some of the traditions concerning
him might have been borrowed from the legends of the Syrian Christians,
who had obtained a settlement in Madras at a period not later than the
seventh century. The founder of the sect thus took as his fundamental
tenet the abolition of caste, but, as is usual in the history of
similar movements, the ultimate result has been that the Lingayats have
themselves become a caste. In Bombay they have two main divisions,
Mr. Enthoven states: [297] the Panchamsalis or descendants of the
original converts from Brahmanism and the non-Panchamsalis or later
converts. The latter are further subdivided into a number of groups,
apparently endogamous. Converts of each caste becoming Lingayats form
a s