Arab.--A Muhammadan territorial name, returned at times of census. In the Mysore Census Report, 1901, the Arabs are described as itinerant tradesmen, whose chief business is horse-dealing, though some deal in cloths.
Aradhya.--For the following note I am indebted to Mr. C. Hayavadana Rao. The Aradhyas are a sect of Brahmans found mainly in the four northern districts of the Madras Presidency, and to a smaller extent in the Cuddapah and Kurnool districts. A few are also found in the Mysore State. They differ in almost every important respect from other Brahmans. Basava, the founder of the Lingayat religion, was born in a family of Brahmans, who, with others round about them, were apparently the first converts to his religion. According to Mr. C. P. Brown, [64] they were "in all probability his personal friends; he persuaded them to lay aside their name, and call themselves Aradhya or Reverend.' They revere the four Aradhyas, visionary personages of the Lingayat creed, of whom very little is known. At all social and religious functions, birth, marriage, initiation and funerals, four vases of water are solemnly placed in their name, and then invoked to preside over them. Their names are Revanaradhya, Marularadhya, Ekoramaradhya, and Panditaradhya. In four ages, it is said, these four successively appeared as precursors of the divine Basava, and were, like Basava, Brahmans. A Purana, known as the Panditaradhya Charitra, is named after the last of these. Versions thereof are found both in Canarese and Telugu. A Sanskrit poem, called Siddhanta Sikhamani, represents Revanaradhya as a human manifestation of one of the ministers of Siva.
As might be expected, the members of this sect are staunch Saivites. They wear both the Brahminical sacred thread, and the linga suspended from another thread. They revere in particular Ganapathi. The lingam which they wear they usually call the prana lingam, or life lingam. The moment a child, male or female, is born, it is invested with the lingam; otherwise it is not considered to have pranam or life. The popular belief is that, if by some accident the lingam is lost, a man must either fast until he recovers it, or not survive so dire a calamity. This is a fixed dogma with them. A man who loses his prana linga stands up to his neck in water, and repeats mantrams (sacred formulæ) for days together; and, on the last day, the lost lingam comes back to him miraculously, if he has been really orthodox in his life. If he does not succeed in recovering it, he must starve and die. The theory is that the lingam is the life of the man who wears it, and, when it is lost beyond recovery, he loses his own life. Incredible stories of miraculous recoveries of the lingam are told. In one case, it is said to have returned to its owner, making a loud noise in water; and in another it was found in a box under lock and key. In this connection, the following story is narrated by Colonel Wilks. [65] "Poornia, the present minister of Mysore, relates an incident of a Lingayat friend of his, who had unhappily lost his portable God, and came to take a last farewell. The Indians, like more enlightened nations, readily laugh at the absurdities of every sect but their own, and Poornia gave him better counsel. It is a part of the ceremonial preceding the sacrifice of the individual that the principal persons of the sect should assemble on the bank of some holy stream, and, placing in a basket the lingam images of the whole assembly, purify them in the sacred waters. The destined victim in conformity to the advice of his friend, suddenly seized the basket, and overturned its contents into the rapid Caveri. Now, my friends, said he, we are on equal terms; let us prepare to die together. The discussion terminated according to expectation. The whole party took an oath of inviolable secrecy, and each privately provided himself with a new image of the lingam."