of ashes collected in the oven over night, and depositing them at the root of the nearest fruit tree on their land."
Most of the Bants are Hindus by religion, and rank as Sūdras, but about ten thousand of them are Jains. Probably they originally assumed Jainism as a fashionable addition to the ancestral demon worship, to which they all still adhere, whether they profess to be Vaishnavites, Saivites, or Jains. It is probable that, during the political supremacy of the Jains, a much larger proportion of the Bants professed adherence to that religion than now-a-days.
There are four principal sub-divisions of the caste, viz., Māsādika, who are the ordinary Bants of Tuluva; Nādava or Nād, who speak Canarese, and are found in the northern part of South Canara; the Parivāara, who do not follow the aliya santāna system of inheritance ; and the Jains. Members of these sub-divisions may not intermarry, but instances have occurred of marriage between members of the Māsādika and Nād sub-divisions.
Nothing very definite is known of the origin of the Bants, but Tuluva seems, in the early centuries of the Christian era, to have had kings who apparently were sometimes independent and sometimes feudatories of overlords, such as the Pallavas, the early Kadambas, the early Chālukyans, the later Kadambas, the western Chālukyans, the Kalachurians, and the Hoysal Ballāls. This indicates a constant state of fighting, which would account for an important class of the population being known as Bantaru or warriors; and, as a matter of course, they succeeded in becoming the owners of all the land which did not fall to the share of the priestly class, the Brāhmans. Ancient inscriptions speak of kings of
