Chapter 9

Kurumba.Kurumba.Mysore Census Report, 1891—Kādu Kuruba or Kurumba.—“The tribal name of Kuruba has been traced to the primeval occupation of the race, viz., the tending of sheep, perhaps when pre-historic man rose to the pastoral stage. The Uru or civilised Kurubas, who are genuine tillers of the soil, and who are dotted over the country in populous and thriving communities, and many of whom have, under the present ‘Pax Britannica,’ further developed into enterprising tradesmen and withal lettered Government officials, are the very antipodes of the Kādu or wild Kurubas or Kurumbas. The latter, like the Iruligās and Sōligās, are the denizens of the backwoods of the country, and have been correctly classed under the aboriginal population. The Tamilised name of Kurumba is applied to certain clans dwelling on the heights of the Nīlgiris, who are doubtless the offshoots of the aboriginal Kādu Kuruba stock found in Mysore.”W. R. King. Aboriginal Tribes of the Nilgiri Hills—”Kurumbas.—This tribe is of another race from the shepherd Kurumbas. The Nīlgiri tribe have neither cattle nor sheep, and in language, dress, and customs, have no affinity whatever with their namesakes.”G. Oppert. Original Inhabitants of India—”Kurubas or Kurumbas.—However separated from each other, and scattered among the Dravidian clans with whom they have dwelt, and however distant from one another they still live, there is hardly a province in the whole of Bharatavarasha which cannot produce, if not some living remnants of this race, at least some remains of past times which prove their presence. Indeed, the Kurumbas must be regarded as very old inhabitants of this land, who can contest with their Dravidian kinsmen the priority of occupation of the Indian soil. The terms Kuruba and Kurumba are originally identical, though the one form is, in different places, employed for the other, and has thus occasionally assumed a special local meaning. Mr. H. B. Grigg appears to contradict himself when, while speaking of the Kurumbas, he says that ‘in the low country they are called Kurubas or Cūrubāru, and are divided into such families as Ānē or elephant, Nāya or dog, Māle or hill Kurumbas.’56Such a distinction between mountain Kurumbas and plain Kurumbas cannot be established. The Rev. G. Richter will find it difficult to prove that the Kurubas of Mysore are only called so as shepherds, and that no connection exists between these Kurubas and the Kurumbas. Mr. Lewis Rice calls the wild tribes as well as the shepherds Kurubas, but seems to overlook the fact that both terms are identical, and refer to only the ethnological distinction.”The above extracts will suffice for the purpose of showing that the distinction between the jungle Kurumbas and the more civilised Kurubas, and their relationship towards each other, call for a ‘permanent settlement.’ And I may briefly place on record the results of anthropometric observations on the jungle Kurumbas of the Nīlgiris, and the domesticated Kurubas of Mysore and the Bellary district, whose stature and nasal index (two factors of primary importance) are compared with those of the jungle Paniyans of Malabar and Kādirs of the Ānaimalai mountains—Stature.Nasal index.Average.Average.Maximum.cm.Kurubas, Bellary162.774.992Kurubas, Mysore163.973.286Kurumbas, Nilgiris157.588.8111Paniyans157.495.1108Kādirs151.789115A glance at the above table at once shows that there is a closer affinity between the three dark-skinned, short, platyrhine jungle tribes, than between the jungle Kurumbas and the lighter-skinned, taller, and more leptorhine Kurubas.The domesticated Kurubas are dealt with separately, and, in the remarks which follow, I am dealing solely with the jungle Kurumbas.The Kādu, or wild Kurumbas of Mysore are divided into “(a) Betta or hill Kurumbas, with sub-divisions called Ānē (elephant), Bevina (nīm tree:Melia Azadirachta), and Kolli (fire-brand)—a small and active race, capable of great fatigue, who are expert woodmen; (b) Jēnu or honey Kurumbas, said to be a darker andinferior race, who employ themselves in collecting honey and bees-wax.”57For the following note on the Kādu Kurumbas I am indebted to the Mysore Census Report, 1891. “There are two clans among them, viz., Bettada and Jēnu. The former worship the forest deities Nārāli and Māstamma; eat flesh and “drink liquor, a favourite beverage being prepared from rāgi (Eleusine Coracana) flour. Some of their habits and customs are worth mentioning, as indicating their plane of civilization. They have two forms of marriage. One is similar to the elaborate ceremony among the Vakkaligas, while the other is the simple one of a formal exchange of betel leaves and areca nuts, which concludes the nuptials. The Kādu Kurubas can only eat meals prepared by members of the higher castes. During their periodical illnesses, the females live outside the limits of the Hādi (group of rude huts) for three days. And, in cases of childbirth, none but the wet nurse or other attendant enters the room of the confined woman for ten days. In cases of sickness, no medical treatment is resorted to; on the other hand, exorcisms, charms, incantations, and animal sacrifices are more generally in vogue. The male’s dress consists of either a bit of cloth to cover their nudity, or a piece of coarse cloth tied round the waist, and reaching to the knees. They wear ornaments of gold, silver, or brass. They are their own barbers, and use broken glass for razors. The females wear coarse cloth four yards long, and have their foreheads tattooed in dots of two or three horizontal lines, and wear ear-rings, glass bangles, and necklaces of black beads. Strangers are not allowed to enter their hādis or hamlets with shoes or slippers on.In case of death, children are buried, whilst adults are burned. On the occurrence of any untoward event, the whole site is abandoned, and a new hādi set up in the vicinity. The Kādu Kurubas are very active, and capable of enduring great fatigue. It is said that they are revengeful, but, if treated kindly, they will do willing service. The Jēnu Kurubas live in small detached huts in the interior of thick jungles, far away from inhabited places. Their habits are no less wild. The male dress consists of either a woollen kambli or coarse cloth, and a skull cap. The female’s sādi is white coarse cloth, their wonted ornaments being a pair of brass ear-rings, strings of black beads tied round the neck, and glass bangles on the wrist. These people do not allow to outcasts and Musalmans access to their premises, or permit shoes being brought into their houses or streets. They eat flesh, and take meals from Vakkaligas, Lingāyats, and other superior castes. They subsist on wild bamboo seed, edible roots, etc., found in the jungle, often mixed with honey. They are said not unfrequently to make a dessert out of bees in preference to milk, ghī (clarified butter), etc. They are engaged chiefly in felling timber in the forests, and other similar rude pursuits, but they never own or cultivate land for themselves, or keep live-stock of their own. They are very expert in tracking wild animals, and very skilfully elude accidental pursuits thereby. Their children, more than two years old, move about freely in the jungle. They are said to be hospitable to travellers visiting their place at any unusual hour. They are Saivites, and Jangams are their gurus. The ceremonial pollution on account of death lasts for ten days, as with the Brāhmans. Children are buried, while adults, male or female, are cremated. A curious trait of this primitiverace is that the unmarried females of the village or hādi generally sleep in a hut or chāvadi set apart for them, whilst the adult bachelors and children have a separate building, both under the eye of the head tribesman. The hut for the latter is called pundugār chāvadi, meaning literally the abode of vagabonds.” The Jēnu Kurumbas are said to eat, and the Betta Kurumbas to abstain from eating the flesh of the ‘bison’ (Bos gaurus).Kurumbas.Kurumbas.In a note on the Jēnu and Betta Kurumbas of Mysore, Mr. M. Venkatanarnappa writes as follows. “The Betta are better clothed and fed than the Jēn Kurumbas. Their occupation is kumri (burning and shifting) cultivation. Their women are clever at basket-making. They can be distinguished by the method of dress which their women have adopted, and the way in which the men wear their hair. A Betta woman covers her body below the shoulders by tying a long cloth round the arm-pits, leaving shoulders and arms bare, whereas a Jēn woman in good circumstances dresses up like the village females, and, if poor, ties a piece of cloth round her loins, and wears another to partially conceal the upper part of her body. Among males, a Betta Kurumba leaves his hair uncut, and gathers it from fore and aft into a knot tied on the crown of the head. A Jēn Kurumba shaves like the ryots, leaving a tuft behind, or clips or crops it, with a curly or bushy growth to protect the head from heat and cold. The Betta and Jēn Kurumbas never intermarry.” The Betta Kurumbas are, I am told, excellent elephant mahauts (drivers), and very useful at keddah (elephant-catching) operations.Of the Kādu and Betta Kurumbas, as they were at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the followingaccount is given by Buchanan.58“The Cad Curubaru are a rude tribe, who are exceedingly poor and wretched. In the fields near the villages, they build miserable low huts, have a few rags only for clothing, and the hair of both sexes stands out matted like a mop, and swarms with vermin. Some of them hire themselves out as labouring servants to the farmers, and receive monthly wages. Others, in crop seasons, watch the fields at night, to keep off elephants and wild hogs. In the intervals between crops, they work as daily labourers, or go into the woods, and collect the roots of wild yams (Dioscorea), part of which they eat, and part exchange with the farmers for grain. Their manner of driving away the elephant is by running against him with a burning torch made of bamboos. The animal sometimes turns, waits till the Curubaru comes close up; but these poor people, taught by experience, push boldly on, dash their torches against the elephant’s head, who never fails to take to immediate flight. Should their courage fail, and should they attempt to run away, the elephant would immediately pursue, and put them to death. The Curubaru have no means of killing so large an animal, and, on meeting with one in the day-time, are as much alarmed as any other of the inhabitants. During the Sultan’s reign they caught a few in pitfalls. [I have heard of a clever Kurumba, who caught an elephant by growing pumpkins and vegetable marrow, for which elephants have a partiality, over a pit on the outskirts of his field.—E.T.] The wild hogs are driven out of the fields by slings, but they are too fierce for the Curubaru to kill. These people frequently suffer from tigers, against which their wretched huts are a poor defence;and, when this wild beast is urged by hunger, he is regardless of their burning torches. These Curubaru have dogs, with which they catch deer, antelopes, and hares; and they have the art of taking in snares, peacocks, and other esculent birds. They believe that good men, after death, will become benevolent Dēvas, and bad men destructive Dēvas. They are of such known honesty that on all occasions they are entrusted with provisions by the farmers, who are persuaded that the Curubaru would rather starve than take one grain of what was given to them in charge. The spirits of the dead are believed to appear in dreams to their old people, and to direct them to make offerings to a female deity named Bettada Chicama, that is, the mother of the hill. Unless these offerings are made, this goddess occasions sickness. In cases of adultery, the husband flogs his wife severely, and, if he is able, beats her paramour. If he be not able, he applies to the gaudo (headman), who does it for him.” The Betta Curubaru, Buchanan continues, “live in poor huts near the villages, and the chief employment of the men is the cutting of timber, and making of baskets. With a sharp stick they also dig up spots of ground in the skirts of the forest, and sow them with rāgi (Eleusine Coracana). The men watch at night the fields of the farmers, but they are not so dexterous at this as the Cad Curubaru. In this class, the Cutigas are women that prefer another man to their husband, or widows, who do not wish to relinquish carnal enjoyment. Their children are not considered as illegitimate.”Kurumba.Kurumba.Of the casual system of clearing the jungle in vogue among the Kurumbas, I may quote the following description.59“In their search for food, this wild tribenaturally prefers a forest cleared of all undergrowth, in which to move about, and the ingenuity with which they attain this end, and outwit the vigilant forest subordinates, is worthy of a better object. I have heard of a Kurumba walking miles from his hādi or hamlet, with a ball of dry smouldering elephant dung concealed in his waist-cloth. This he carried to the heart of the forest reserve, and, selecting a suitable spot, he placed the smouldering dung, with a plentiful supply of dry inflammable grass over it, in such a position as to allow the wind to play upon it, and fan it into a flame with the pleasing certainty that the smoke from the fire would not be detected by the watchers on the distant fire-lines until the forest was well alight, the flames beyond all control, and the Kurumba himself safe at home in his hādi, awaiting the arrival of the forest subordinate to summon the settlement to assist in the hopeless task of extinguishing the fire.”Kurumba village.Kurumba village.Of the Kurumbas who are found in the Wynād, Calicut, and Ernād tāluks of Malabar, the following account is given in the Gazetteer of that district. “They are sub-divided into Mullu (bamboo) Kurumbans, Jēn or Tēn (honey) Kurumbans, also called Kādu or Shōla Nāyakkans (or Jēnu Koyyo Shōla Nāyakas,i.e., honey-cutting lords of the woods), and Ūrali or Bēt Kurumbans; of which the first-named class, who consider themselves superior to the others, are cultivators and hunters; the second wood-cutters and collectors of honey; and the third make baskets and implements of agriculture. The Mullu and Tēn Kurumbans have headmen with titles of Mūppan and Mudali respectively conferred by their janmis (landlords). The Kurumbans, like many of the other hill-tribes, use bows and arrows, with which they are expert. The caste deity of the Tēn Kurumbans is called Masti. It is perhaps worthremarking that the Ūrali Kurumbans of the Wynaad differ from the other two classes in having no headmen, observing a shorter period of pollution after a birth than any other Malabar tribe and none at all after a death, and in not worshipping any of the Malabar animistic deities.”The chief sub-divisions of the Kurumbas on the Nīlgiris, and in the Wynād, are said, in the Madras Census Report, 1891, to be “Mullu (thorn), Betta or Vetta (hill), Ūrāli (Ūr, a village), Tēn (honey), and Tac’chanādan Mūppan (carpenter headman). Of these, the first and last speak Malayālam, and wear a lock in front of their head in the Malabar fashion. The rest speak Canarese. Ūrāli Kurumbas work in metals.”The villages of the Kurumbas on the Nīlgiri hills are, Mr. Grigg writes,60called mottas. They consist generally of only four or five huts, made of mud and wattle, with thatched roofs. The front of the house is sometimes whitewashed, and ornamented with rude drawings of men and animals in red earth or charcoal. They store their grain in large oval baskets, and for bottles they use gourds. They clear a patch round about the village, and sow the ground with rāgi (Eleusine Coracana), tenne (Setaria italica), or kiri (Amarantus). They dig up roots (called gāsū) for food, and collect the jungle produce, honey, resin, gall-nuts, etc., which they barter with low-country traders, and they are clever in catching game in nets, and dispose of the flesh in a surprisingly short time. Kurumbas occasionally take work on coffee plantations, and some earn a livelihood by officiating as priests to the Badagas. They are also employed as musicians at wedding feasts and funerals of the other tribes, wherethey play on clarionets, drums, and tambourines, as well as the būguri. They make baskets of rattan and milk vessels out of a joint of bamboo, as well as nets of a thread called oilhatti. Their women confine themselves to the limited work of their households, fetching water, cooking, etc. The following extract embraces all that can be said of the religion of the Kurumbas. “Some profess to worship Siva, and occasionally women mark their foreheads with the Siva spot. Others, living near Barliar, worship Kuribattraya (lord of many sheep) and the wife of Siva under the name of Musni. They worship also a rough stone under the name of Hiriadēva, setting it up either in a cave, or in a circle of stones like the so-called Kurumba kōvil of the Badagas, which the latter would seem to have borrowed from the Kurumbas. To this they make pūja, and offer cooked rice at the sowing time. They also profess to sacrifice to Hiriadēva a goat, which they kill at their own houses, after sprinkling water, and eat, giving a portion of flesh to the pūjāri (priest). Others say that they have no pūjāri: among such a scattered tribe customs probably vary in each motta”—(Breeks). It is recorded by Dr. Rivers, in connection with the Toda legendary stories of Kwoten, that “one day Kwoten went with Erten of Keadr, who was spoken of as his servant to Poni, in the direction of Polkat (Calicut). At Poni there is a stream called Palpa, the commencement of which may be seen on the Kundahs. Kwoten and Erten went to drink water out of the stream at a place where a goddess (teu) named Terkosh had been bathing.... Finally, they came to Terkosh, who said to Kwoten, “Do not come near me, I am a teu.” Kwoten paid no heed to this, but said “You are a beautiful woman,” and went and lay with her. Then Terkosh went away to her hill at Poni, where she is now,and to this day the Kurumbas go there once a year and offer plantains to her, and light lamps in her honour.”It is further recorded by Dr. Rivers that “two ceremonial objects are obtained by the Todas from the Kurumbas. One is the tall pole called tadrsi or tadri, which is used in the dance at the second funeral ceremonies, and afterwards burnt. Poles of the proper length are said to grow only on the Malabar side of the Nīlgiris, and are probably most easily obtained from the Kurumbas. The other is the teiks, or funeral post at which the buffalo is killed.” Besides supplying the Badagas with the elephant-pole required at their funerals, the Kurumbas have to sow the first handful of grain for the Badagas every season. The ceremony is thus described by Harkness.61“A family of the Burghers (Badagas) had assembled, which was about to commence ploughing. With them were two or three Kurumbas, one of whom had set up a stone in the centre of the spot on which we were standing, and, decorating it with wild flowers, prostrated himself to it, offered incense, and sacrificed a goat, which had been brought there by the Burghers. He then took the guidance of the plough, and, having ploughed some ten or twelve paces, gave it over, possessed himself of the head of the sacrificed animal, and left the Burghers to prosecute their labours.... The Kurumba, sowing the first handful, leaves the Burgher to go on with the remainder, and, reaping the first sheaf, delivers it with the sickle to him, to accomplish the remainder of the task. At harvest time, or when the whole of the grain has been gathered in, the Kurumba receives his dues, or proportion of the produce.” The relations of the Kurumbas with theBadagas at the present day, and the share which the former take in the ceremonies of the latter, are dealt with in the account of the Badagas.Kurumba cave.Kurumba cave.I am informed that, among the Kurumbas of the Nīlgiris, it is the custom for several brothers to take one wife in common (adelphogamy), and that they do not object to their women being open to others also. There is said to be no marriage rite. A man and woman will mate together, and live as husband and wife. And, if it happens that, in a family, there has been a succession of such wives for one or two generations, it becomes an event, and is celebrated as such. The pair sit together, and pour water over each other from pots. They then put on new cloths, and a feast is partaken of. Among the Shōla Nāyakkars, a feature of the marriage ceremony is said to be for the bride to roll a cheroot of tobacco leaves, which both parties must smoke in turn.Writing concerning the Irulas and Kurumbas, Mr. Walhouse says62that “after every death among them, they bring a long water-worn stone (devva kotta kallu), and put it into one of the old cromlechs sprinkled over the Nīlgiri plateau. Some of the larger of these have been found piled up to the cap-stone with such pebbles, which must have been the work of generations. Occasionally, too, the tribes mentioned make small cromlechs for burial purposes, and place the long water-worn pebbles in them. Mr. Breeks reports that the Kurumbas in the neighbourhood of the Rangasvāmi peak and Barliar burn their dead, and place a bone and a small round stone in the sāvu-mane (death-house)—an old cromlech.” The conjecture is hazarded by Fergusson63that the Kurumbas are the remnant of a great and widelyspread race, who may have erected dolmens. As bearing on the connection between Kurumbas and Kurubas, it is worthy of note that the latter, in some places, erect dolmens as a resting-place for the dead. (SeeKuruba.)It is noted, in the Gazetteer of the Nīlgiris, that the Kurumbas “trade largely on the extraordinary dread of their supposed magical powers which possesses the Todas and the Badagas—the latter especially. Stories are told of how they can summon wild elephants at will, and reduce rocks to powder merely by scattering mystic herbs upon them.”“The Kurumbas,” Harkness writes, “have a knowledge of herbs and medicinal roots, and the Burghers (Badagas) say that they limit their knowledge thereof to those which are noxious only, and believe that, with the assistance of their magic, they are able to convey them into the stomachs of those to whom they have any dislike. The violent antipathy existing between the Burghers and the Kurumbas, and the dread and horror which the former entertain of the preternatural powers of the latter, are, perhaps, not easily accounted for; but neither sickness, death, nor misfortune of any kind, ever visit the former, without the latter having the credit of producing it. A few years before, a Burgher had been hanged by the sentence of the provincial court for the murder of a Kurumba. The act of the former was not without what was considered great provocation. Disease had attacked the inhabitants of the hamlet, a murrain their cattle. The former had carried off a great part of the family of the murderer, and he himself had but narrowly escaped its effects. No one in the neighbourhood doubted that the Kurumba in question had, by his necromancy, caused all this misfortune, and, after several fruitless attempts, a party of them succeeded in surroundinghim in open day, and effecting their purpose.” In 1835 no less than forty-eight Kurumbas were murdered, and a smaller number in 1875 and 1882. In 1900 a whole family of Kurumbas was murdered, of which the head, who had a reputation as a medicine-man, was believed to have brought disease and death into a Badaga village. The sympathies of the whole country-side were so strongly with the murderers that detection was made very difficult, and the persons charged were acquitted.64In this case several Todas were implicated. “It is,” Mr. Grigg writes, “a curious fact that neither Kota, Irula, or Badaga will slay a Kurumba until a Toda has struck the first blow, but, as soon as his sanctity has been violated by a blow, they hasten to complete the murderous work, which the sacred hand of the Toda has begun.” The Badaga’s dread of the Kurumba is said to be so great that a simple threat of vengeance has proved fatal. My Toda guide—a stalwart representative of his tribe—expressed fear of walking from Ootacamund to Kotagiri, a distance of eighteen miles along a highroad, lest he should come to grief at the hands of Kurumbas; but this was really a frivolous excuse to get out of accompanying me to a distance from his domestic hearth. In like manner, Dr. Rivers records that, when he went to Kotagiri, a Toda who was to accompany him made a stipulation that he should be provided with a companion, as the Kurambas were very numerous in that part. In connection with the Toda legend of Ön, who created the buffaloes and the Todas, Dr. Rivers writes that “when Ön saw that his son was in Amnodr (the world of the dead), he did not like to leave him there alone, and decided to go away to the same place. So he called together all thepeople, and the buffaloes and the trees, to come and bid him farewell. All the people came except a man of Kwodrdoni named Arsankutan. He and his family did not come. All the buffaloes came except the Arsaiir, the buffaloes of the Kwodroni ti (sacred dairy). Some trees also failed to come. Ön blessed all the people, buffaloes and trees present, but said that, because Arsankutan had not come, he and his people should die by sorcery at the hands of the Kurumbas, and that, because the Arsaiir had not come, they should be killed by tigers, and that the trees which had not come should bear bitter fruit. Since that time the Todas have feared the Kurumbas, and buffaloes have been killed by tigers.”On the Nīlgiri hills, honey-combs are collected by Jēn Kurumbas and Shōlagas. The supply of honey varies according to the nature of the season, and is said to be especially plentiful and of good quality whenStrobilanthesflowers.65The Kurumbas are said to have incredibly keen eye-sight, gained from constantly watching the bee to his hive. When they find a hive not quite ready to take, they place a couple of sticks in a certain position. This sign will prevent any other Kurumba from taking the honey, and no Badaga or other hillman would meddle with it on any account, for fear of being killed by sorcery.Fortified by a liberal allowance of alcohol and tobacco, the Kurumbas, armed with bamboo torches, will follow up at night the tracks of a wounded ‘bison’ (Bos gaurus), and bring back the head and meat to camp. A European sportsman recounts that he has often seen his Kurumba shikāri (tracker) stop, and, with the one word “honey,” point to the top of an adjacent tree. “How doyou know?” he asked, “Oh! I saw a bee” was the answer given with the greatest nonchalance. On one occasion he found himself close to a swarm of bees. The Kurumba, seeing him hesitate, thrust his stick clean through the swarm, and, with the bare remark “No honey,” marched on. The District Forest Officer, when out shooting, had an easy shot at a stag, and missed it. “There,” said the Kurumba, pointing to a distant tree, “is your bullet.” His trained sense of hearing no doubt enabled him to locate the sound of the bullet striking the tree, and his eyes, following the sound, instantly detected the slight blaze made by the bullet on the bark. The visual acuity of a number of tribes and castes inhabiting the mountains, jungles, and plains, has been determined by Dr. W. H. R. Rivers and myself, by means of the Cohn letter E method. And, though the jungle man, who has to search for his food and mark the tracks or traces of wild beasts, undoubtedly possesses a specially trained keenness of vision for the exigencies of his primitive life, our figures show that, as regards ordinary visual acuity, he has no advantage over the more highly civilised classes.“The Kurumbas of the Mysore forests,” Mr. Theobald writes, “make fire by friction. They follow the same method as the Todas, as described by Mr. Thurston, but never use the powdered charcoal in the cavity of the horizontal piece of wood which is held down by their feet, or by a companion. The fine brown powder, formed during the rotation of the longer vertical piece, gives sufficient tinder, which soon ignites, and is then placed on a small piece of cotton rag, rolled loosely, and gently blown until it is ignited. The vertical stick is held between the palms, and has a reciprocal motion, by the palms being moved in opposite directions, at the sametime using a strong downward pressure, which naturally brings the palms to the bottom, when they are at once raised to their original position, and the operation continued till the naturally formed tinder ignites.”In his report on Forest Administration in Coorg, 1902–1903, Mr. C. D’A. McCarthy writes as follows concerning the Kurumbas, who work for the Forest department. “We experienced in connection with the Kurumbas one of those apparent aberrations of sense and intellect, the occurrence of which amongst this peculiar race was foreshadowed in the last report. The Chief Commissioner is aware that, in the interests of the Kurubas themselves, we substitute for a single cash payment distributions to the same value of food-grains, clothes and cash, in equal proportions of each. Now, seventy years ago, before the annexation of Coorg, the Kurubas and similar castes were prædial slaves of the dominant Coorgs, receiving no other remuneration for service than food and clothing. In fact, this institution, nothing less than real slavery, was not entirely broken up until the great demand for local labour created by the opening up of the country for coffee cultivation so late as 1860–1870, so that the existing generation are still cognisant of the old state of affairs. Last year, during the distribution of rewards for the successful protection of the reserves that season from fire, it seems that the idea was put into the heads of these people that our system of remuneration, which includes the distribution of food and clothing, was an attempt to create again at their expense a system of, as it were, forest slavery; with the result that for a time nothing would induce many of them to accept any form of remuneration for the work already performed, much less to undertake the same duties for the approaching season. It was some time, and afterno little trouble, that the wherefore of this strange conduct was discovered, and the suspicions aroused put at rest.” In his report, 1904–1905, Mr. McCarthy states that “the local system of fire protection, consisting of the utilisation of the Kuruba jungle population for the clearing of fire lines and patrolling, and the payment of rewards according to results, may now be said to be completely established in Coorg. The Kurubas appear to have gained complete confidence in the working of the system, and, provided the superior officers personally see to the payment of the rewards, are evidently quite satisfied that the deductions for failures are just and fair.”The Kurumbas are said to have been very useful in the mining operations during the short life of the Wynād gold-mines. A few years ago, I received the skulls of two Kurumbas, who went after a porcupine into a deserted tunnel on the Glenrock Gold-mining Company’s land in the Wynād. The roof fell in on them, and they were buried alive.In a note on the ‘Ethnogénie des Dravidiens’,66Mr. Louis Lapicque writes as follows. “Les populations caractéristiques du Wainaad sont les Panyer, les négroides les plus accusés et les plus homogenes que j’ai vus, et probablement qui existent dans toute l’Inde. D’autre part, les tribus vivant de leur côté sur leurs propres cultures, fortement négroides encore, mais plus mélangées. Tels sont les Naiker et les Kouroumbas.”——Indice nasal.Indice céphalique.Taille.54 Panyer847415428 Kouroumbas817515712 Naiker8076.9157Concerning Nāyakas or Naikers and Kurumbas, Mr. F. W. F. Fletcher writes to me as follows from Nellakotta, Nīlgiris. “It may be that in some parts of Wynaad there are people known indifferently as Kurumbas and Shola Nāyakas; but I have no hesitation in saying that the Nāyakas in my employ are entirely distinct from the Kurumbas. The two classes do not intermarry; they do not live together; they will not eat together. Even their prejudices with regard to food are different, for a Kurumba will eat bison flesh, and a Nāyaka will not. The latter stoutly maintains that he is entirely distinct from, and far superior to, the Kurumba, and would be grievously offended if he were classed as a Kurumba. The religious ceremonies of the two tribes are also different. The Nāyakas have separate temples, and worship separate gods. The chief Kurumba temple in this part of the country is close to Pandalur, and here, especially at the Bishu feast, the Kurumbas gather in numbers. My Nāyakas do not recognise this temple, but have their place of worship in the heart of the jungle, where they make theirpūja(worship) under the direction of their own priest. The Nāyakas will not attend the funeral of a Kurumba; nor will they invite Kurumbas to the funeral of one of their own tribe. There is a marked variation in their modes of life. The Kurumba of this part lives in comparatively open country, in the belt of deciduous forest lying between the ghāts proper and the foot of the Nīlgiri plateau. Here he has been brought into contact with European Planters, and is, comparatively speaking, civilised. The Nāyaka has his habitat in the dense jungle of the ghāts, and is essentially a forest nomad, living on honey, jungle fruits, and the tuberous roots of certain jungle creepers. By constant association with myself, my Nāyaka men have lost thefear of the white man, which they entertained when I first came into the district; but even now, if I visit the village of a colony who reside in the primæval forest, the women and children will hide themselves in the jungle at sight of me. The superstitions of the two tribes are different. Some Nāyakas are credited with the power of changing themselves at will into a tiger, and of wreaking vengeance on their enemies in that guise. And the Kurumba holds the Nāyaka in as much awe as other castes hold the Kurumba. Lower down, on the flat below the ghāts I am opening a rubber estate, and here I have another Nāyaka colony, who differ in many respects from their congeners above, although the two colonies are within five miles as the crow flies. The low-country Nāyaka does his hair in a knot on one side of his head, Malayālam fashion, and his speech is a patois of Malayālam. The Nāyaka on the hills above has a mop of curly hair, and speaks a dialect of his own quite distinct from the Kurumba language, though both are derived from Kanarese. But that the low-country people are merely a sept of the Nāyaka tribe is evident from the fact that intermarriage is common amongst the two colonies, and that they meet at the same temple for their annual pūja. The priest of the hill colony is the pūjāri for both divisions of the Nāyakas, and the arbiter in all their disputes.”Kurumba (Shōla Naiker).Kurumba (Shōla Naiker).Kurumo.—The Kurumos are a caste of Oriya agriculturists, found mainly in the Russellkonda tāluk of Ganjam. They are called Kurumo by Oriyas, and Kudumo by Telugus. There is a tradition that their name is derived from Srikurmam in the Vizagapatam district, where they officiated as priests in the Siva temple, and whence they were driven northward. The Kurumos say that, at the present day, some membersof the caste are priests at Saivite temples in Ganjam, bear the title Rāvulo, and wear the sacred thread. It is noted in the Madras Census Report, 1901, that “some of them wear the sacred thread, and follow Chaitanya, and Oriya Brāhmans will accept drinking-water at their hands. They will eat in Brāhmans’ houses, and will accept drinking-water from Gaudos, Bhondāris, and Rāvulos.” Bhondāris wash the feet of Kurumos on ceremonial occasions, and, in return for their services, receive twice the number of cakes given to other guests at feasts.In addition to the Kurumos proper, there is a section called Kūji Kurumo, which is regarded as lower in the social status. The caste titles are Bissoyi, Bēhara, Dudi, Majhi, Nāyako, Podhāno, Rāvulo, Ravuto, Sēnāpati, and Udhdhandra. Those who bear the title Dudi are priests at the temples of the village deities. The title Udhdhandra was conferred by a zamindar, and is at present borne by a number of families, intermarriage among members of which is forbidden. Every village has a headman entitled Adhikari, who is under the control of a chief headman called Bēhara. Both these appointments are hereditary.Among other deities, the Kurumos worship various Tākurānis (village deities), such as Bōdo Rāvulo, Bāgha Dēvi, Kumbēswari, and Sathabhavuni. In some places, there are certain marriage restrictions based on the house-gods. For example, a family whose house-god is Bōdo Rāvulo may not intermarry with another family which worships the same deity. Every family of Kurumos apparently keeps the house-god within the house, and it is worshipped on all important occasions. The god is usually represented by five areca nuts, which are kept in a box. These nuts must be filled with pieces ofgold, silver, iron, copper, and lead, which are introduced through a hole drilled in the base of the nut, which is plugged with silver.Infant marriage is the rule, and, if a girl does not secure a husband before she reaches maturity, she has to go through the mock-marriage rite, called dharma bibha, with her grandfather or other elder. On the evening of the day previous to that of the real marriage, called gondo sona, the paternal aunt of the bridegroom goes to a tank (pond), carrying thither a brass vessel. This is placed on the tank bund (embankment), and worshipped. Some cowry (Cypræa arabica) shells are then thrown into the tank, and the vessel is filled with water, and taken to the house. At the entrance thereto, a Sullokhondia Gaudo stands, holding a vessel of water, from which a little water is poured into the vessel brought from the tank. The bride’s aunt then goes to three or five houses of members of her own caste, and receives water therefrom in her vessel, which is placed near the house-gods, and eventually kept on the marriage dais throughout the wedding ceremonies. Over the marriage dais (bēdi) at the bridegroom’s house, four brass vessels, and four clay lamps fed with ghī (clarified butter), are placed at the four corners. Round the four posts thereof seven turns of thread are made by a Brāhman purōhit. The bridegroom, wearing mokkuto (forehead chaplet) and sacred thread, after going seven times round the dais, breaks the thread, and takes his seat thereon. AfterZizyphus Jujubaleaves and rice have been thrown over him, he is taken in procession to a temple. On his return home, he is met by five or seven young girls and women at the entrance to the house, andZizyphusleaves are again thrown over him. A Bhondāri woman sprinkles water from mango leavesover him, and he proceeds in a palanquin to the home of the bride. At the marriage ceremony, the bride throws rice on the head of the bridegroom over a screen which is interposed between them. After their hands have been tied together, a grinding-stone and roller are placed between them, and they face each other while their fingers are linked together above the stone. On the seventh day, the newly married couple worship seven posts at the bride’s house. The various articles used in connection with the marriage ceremonies, except one pot, are thrown into a tank. On his return thence, the bridegroom breaks the pot, after he has been sprinkled with the water contained in it by a Bhondāri. At times of marriage, and on other auspicious occasions, the Kurumos, when they receive their guests, must take hold of their sticks or umbrellas, and it is regarded as an insult if this is not done.On the fifth and eighth days after the birth of a child, a new cloth is spread on the floor, on which the infant is placed, with a book (bāgavatham) close to its head, and an iron rod, such as is used by Oriya castes for branding the skin of the abdomen of newly-born babies, at its side. The relations and friends assemble to take part in the ceremonial, and a Brāhman purōhit reads a purānam. Betel leaves and areca nuts are then distributed. On the twenty-first day, the ceremonial is repeated, and the purōhit is asked to name the child. He ascertains the constellation under which it was born, and announces that a name commencing with a certain letter should be given to it.Like other Oriya castes, the Kurumos are particular with regard to the observation of various vratams (fasts). One, called sudasa vratam, is observed on a Thursday falling on the tenth day after new moon in the monthof Karthika (November-December). The most elderly matron of the house does pūja (worship), and a purānam is read. Seven cubits of a thread dyed with turmeric are measured on the forearm of a girl seven years old, and cut off. The deity is worshipped, and seven knots are made in the piece of thread, which is tied on to the left upper arm of the matron. This vratam is generally observed by Oriya castes.Kurup.—In a note on the artisan classes of Malabar, it is recorded67that “the Kolla-Kurups combine two professions which at first sight seem strangely incongruous, shampooing or massage, and the construction of the characteristic leather shields of Malabar. But the two arts are intimately connected with the system of combined physical training, as we should now call it, and exercise in arms, which formed the curriculum of the kalari (gymnasium), and the title kurup is proper to castes connected with that institution. A similar combination is found in the Vil-Kurups (bow-Kurups), whose traditional profession was to make bows and arrows, and train the youth to use them, and who now shampoo, make umbrellas, and provide bows and arrows for some Nāyar ceremonies. Other classes closely connected are the Kollans or Kurups distinguished by the prefixes Chāya (colour), Palissa (shield), and Tōl (leather), who are at present engaged in work in lacquer, wood, and leather.” Kurup also occurs as a title of Nāyars, in reference to the profession of arms, and many of the families bearing this title are said68to still maintain their kalari.Kuruvikkāran.—The Kuruvikkārans are a class of Marāthi-speaking bird-catchers and beggars, who huntjackals, make bags out of the skin, and eat the flesh thereof. By Telugu people they are called Nakkalavāndlu (jackal people), and by Tamilians Kuruvikkāran (bird-catchers). They are also called Jāngal Jāti and Kāttu Mahrāti. Among themselves they are known as Vagiri or Vagirivala. They are further known as Yeddu Marigē Vētagāndlu, or hunters who hide behind a bullock. In decoying birds, they conceal themselves behind a bullock, and imitate the cries of birds in a most perfect manner. They are said to be called in Hindustani Paradhi and Mīr Shikāri.As regards their origin, there is a legend that there were once upon a time three brothers, one of whom ran away to the mountains, and, mixing with Kanna Kuruvans, became degraded. His descendants are now represented by the Dommaras. The descendants of the second brother are the Lambādis, and those of the third Kuruvikkārans. The lowly position of these three classes is attributed to the fact that the three brothers, when wandering about, came across Sīta, the wife of Rāma, about whose personal charms they made remarks, and laughed. This made Sīta angry, and she uttered the following curse:—“Mālitho shikar, naitho bhikar,”i.e., if (birds) are found, huntsmen; if not, beggars. According to a variant of the legend,69many years ago in Rājputāna there lived two brothers, the elder of whom was dull, and the younger smart. One day they happened to be driving a bullock along a path by the side of a pool of water, when they surprised Sīta bathing. The younger brother hid behind his bullock, but the elder was too stupid to conceal himself, and so both were observed by the goddess, who was muchannoyed, and banished them to Southern India. The elder she ordered to live by carrying goods about the country on pack-bullocks, and the younger to catch birds by means of two snares, which she obligingly formed from hair plucked from under her arm. Consequently the Vagirivalas never shave that portion of the body.The Kuruvikkārans are nomadic, and keep pack-bullocks, which convey their huts and domestic utensils from place to place. Some earn their living by collecting firewood, and others by acting as watchmen in fields and gardens. Women and children go about the streets begging, and singing songs, which are very popular, and imitated by Hindu women. They further earn a livelihood by hawking needles and glass beads, which they may be seen in the evening purchasing from Kayalans (Muhammadan merchants) in the Madras bazar.One of the occupations of the Kuruvikkārans is the manufacture and sale of spurious jackal horns, known as narikompu. To catch the jackals, they make an enclosure of a net, inside which a man seats himself, armed with a big stick. He then proceeds to execute a perfect imitation of the jackal’s cry, on hearing which the jackals come running to see what is the matter, and are beaten down. A Kuruvikkāran, whom the Rev. E. Löventhal interviewed, howled like a jackal, to show his skill as a mimic. The cry was quite perfect, and no jackal would have doubted that he belonged to their class. Sometimes the entire jackal’s head is sold, skin and all. The process of manufacture of the horn is as follows. After the brain has been removed, the skin is stripped off a limited area of the skull, and the bone at the place of junction of the sagittal and lambdoid suturesabove the occipital foramen is filed away, so that only a point, like a bony outgrowth, is left. The skin is then brought back, and pressed over the little horn, which pierces it. The horn is also said to be made out of the molar tooth of a dog or jackal, introduced through a small hole in a piece of jackal’s skin, round which a little blood or turmeric paste is smeared, to make it look more natural. In most cases only the horn, with a small piece of skull and skin, is sold. Sometimes, instead of the skin from the part where the horn is made, a piece of skin is taken from the snout, where the long black hairs are. The horn then appears surrounded by long black bushy hairs. The Kuruvikkārans explain that, when they see a jackal with such long hairs on the top of its head, they know that it possesses a horn. A horn-vendor, whom I interviewed, assured me that the possessor of a horn is a small jackal, which comes out of its hiding-place on full-moon nights to drink the dew. According to another version, the horn is only possessed by the leader of a pack of jackals. The Sinhalese and Tamils alike regard the horn “as a talisman, and believe that its fortunate possessor can command the realisation of every wish. Those who have jewels to conceal rest in perfect security if, along with them, they can deposit a narricomboo.”70The ayah (nurse) of a friend who possessed such a talisman remarked “Master going into any law-court, sure to win the case.” This, as has been pointed out, does not show much faith in the British administration of justice, if a so-called jackal’s horn can turn the scale. Two spurious horns, which I possessed, were promptly stolen from my study table, to bring luck to some Tamil member of my establishment.Some Kuruvikkārans carry suspended from their turban or body-cloth a small whistle, with which they imitate the song of birds, and attract them. Young boys often have with them a bundle of small sticks strung together, and with a horse-hair noose attached to them. The sticks are driven into the ground, and grain is strewn around to entice birds, which get caught in the noose.The women wear a petticoat and an ill-fitting bodice. Among other classes “Wearing the bodice like a Kuruvikkāran woman” is used as a taunt. The petticoat may never be taken off till it is tattered and torn, and replaced by a new one; and, when a woman bathes, she has to do so with the garment on. Anything which has come in contact with the petticoat, or rice husked with a woman’s feet, is polluted, and may not be used by men. Women adorn themselves with necklaces of beads and cowry shells, or sometimes, like the Lambādis, wear shell bracelets. Both men and women stain their teeth with a preparation of myrabolams,Acacia arabicapods, and sulphates of copper and iron. Females may not blacken their teeth, or wear a necklace of black beads before marriage.A young married woman, wherever she may be during the daytime, must rejoin her husband at night. If she fails to do so, she has to go through the ordeal of grasping a red-hot iron bar or sickle, and carrying it sixteen paces without dropping it. Another form of ordeal is dipping the hands in a pot containing boiling cowdung water, and picking out therefrom a quarter-anna piece. If the woman is innocent, she is able to husk a small quantity of paddy (rice) by rubbing it between her hands immediately after the immersion in the liquid. If a man has to submit to trial by ordeal, seven arka (Calotropis gigantea) leaves are tied to his palm, and a piece of red-hotiron placed thereon. His innocence is established if he is able to carry it while he takes seven long strides.The Kuruvikkārans have exogamous septs, of which Rānaratōd seems to be an important one, taking a high place in the social scale. Males usually add the title Sing as a suffix to their names.Marriage is always between adults, and the celebration, including the betrothal ceremony, extends over five days, during which meat is avoided, and the bride keeps her face concealed by throwing her cloth over it. Sometimes she continues to thus veil herself for a short time after marriage. On the first day, after the exchange of betel, the father of the bride says “Are you ready to receive my daughter as your daughter-in-law into your house? I am giving her to your son. Take care of her. Do not beat her when she is ill. If she cannot carry water, you should help her. If you beat her, or ill-treat her in any way, she will come back to us.” The future father-in-law having promised that the girl will be kindly treated, the bridegroom says “I am true, and have not touched any other woman. I have not smiled at any girl whom I have seen. Your daughter should not smile at any man whom she sees. If she does so, I shall drive her back to your house.” In the course of the marriage ceremonies, the bride is taken to the home of her mother-in-law, to whom she makes a present of a new cloth. The Nyavya (headman) hands a string of black beads to the mother-in-law, who ties it round the bride’s neck, while the assembled women sing. At a marriage of the first daughter of a member of the Rānaratōd sept, a Brāhman purōhit is invited to be present, and give his blessing, as it is believed that a Gujarāti Brāhman was originally employed for the marriage celebration.The principal tribal deity of the Kuruvikkārans is Kāli or Durga, and each sept possesses a small plate with a figure of the goddess engraved on it, which is usually kept in the custody of the headman. It is, however, frequently pledged, and money-lenders give considerable sums on the security of the idol, as the Kuruvikkārans would on no account fail to redeem it. When the time for the annual festival of the goddess draws nigh, the headman or an elder piles upVigna Catiangseeds in five small heaps. He then decides in his mind whether there is an odd or even number of seeds in the majority of heaps. If, when the seeds are counted, the result agrees with his forecast, it is taken as a sign of the approval of the goddess, and arrangements are made for the festival. Otherwise it is abandoned for the year. On the day of the festival, nine goats and a buffalo are sacrificed. While some cakes are being cooked in oil, a member of the tribe prays that the goddess will descend on him, and, taking some of the cakes out of the boiling liquid, with his palm rubs the oil on his head. He is then questioned by those assembled, to whom he gives oracular replies, after sucking the blood from the cut throat of a goat. It is noted in the North Arcot Manual that the Vagirivalas assemble two or three times in the year at Varadāreddipalli for worship. The objects of this are three saktis called Mahan Kāli, Chāmundi, and Mahammāyi, represented by small silver figures, which are mortgaged to a Reddi of the village, and lent by him during the few days of the festival.Kūsa.—A sub-division of Holeyas in South Canara, who also call themselves Uppāra. Some of them say that they are the same as Uppāras of Mysore, whose hereditary occupation was the manufacture of saltfrom salt-earth (ku, earth). Kūsa further occurs as a synonym of the Otattu, or tile-making section of the Nāyars, and Kūsa Mārān as a class of potters in Travancore. Kūsa is also an exogamous sept of the Bōyas.Kusavan.—The Kusavans are the Tamil potters. “The name,” Mr. H. A. Stuart writes,71“is said to be derived from the Sanskrit word ku signifying earth, the material in which they work, and avan, a personal termination. They wear the sacred thread, and profess both Saivism and Vaishnavism. Their ceremonials are somewhat like those of the Vellālas. The eating of flesh is permitted, but not widow marriage. Some have priests of their own caste, while others employ Brāhmans. Kusavans sometimes officiate as pūjaris in Pidāri temples. Their titles are Udayan and Vēlān. Their stupidity and ignorance are proverbial.” At times of census, Kulālan has been returned as a synonym of Kusavan, and Kusavan as an occupational division of Paraiyans. The Kusavans are divided into the territorial sections Chōla, Chēra, and Pāndya, and say that “these are descended from the three sons of their original ancestor Kulālan, who was the son of Brahma. He prayed to Brahma to be allowed, like him, to create and destroy things daily; so Brahma made him a potter.”72In ancient days, the potters made the large pyriform sepulchral urns, which have, in recent times, been excavated in Tinnevelly, Madura, Malabar, and elsewhere. Dr. G. U. Pope shows73that these urns are mentioned in connection with the burial of heroes and kings as late as the eighth century A.D., andrenders one of the Tamil songs bearing on the subject as follows:—

Kurumba.Kurumba.Mysore Census Report, 1891—Kādu Kuruba or Kurumba.—“The tribal name of Kuruba has been traced to the primeval occupation of the race, viz., the tending of sheep, perhaps when pre-historic man rose to the pastoral stage. The Uru or civilised Kurubas, who are genuine tillers of the soil, and who are dotted over the country in populous and thriving communities, and many of whom have, under the present ‘Pax Britannica,’ further developed into enterprising tradesmen and withal lettered Government officials, are the very antipodes of the Kādu or wild Kurubas or Kurumbas. The latter, like the Iruligās and Sōligās, are the denizens of the backwoods of the country, and have been correctly classed under the aboriginal population. The Tamilised name of Kurumba is applied to certain clans dwelling on the heights of the Nīlgiris, who are doubtless the offshoots of the aboriginal Kādu Kuruba stock found in Mysore.”W. R. King. Aboriginal Tribes of the Nilgiri Hills—”Kurumbas.—This tribe is of another race from the shepherd Kurumbas. The Nīlgiri tribe have neither cattle nor sheep, and in language, dress, and customs, have no affinity whatever with their namesakes.”G. Oppert. Original Inhabitants of India—”Kurubas or Kurumbas.—However separated from each other, and scattered among the Dravidian clans with whom they have dwelt, and however distant from one another they still live, there is hardly a province in the whole of Bharatavarasha which cannot produce, if not some living remnants of this race, at least some remains of past times which prove their presence. Indeed, the Kurumbas must be regarded as very old inhabitants of this land, who can contest with their Dravidian kinsmen the priority of occupation of the Indian soil. The terms Kuruba and Kurumba are originally identical, though the one form is, in different places, employed for the other, and has thus occasionally assumed a special local meaning. Mr. H. B. Grigg appears to contradict himself when, while speaking of the Kurumbas, he says that ‘in the low country they are called Kurubas or Cūrubāru, and are divided into such families as Ānē or elephant, Nāya or dog, Māle or hill Kurumbas.’56Such a distinction between mountain Kurumbas and plain Kurumbas cannot be established. The Rev. G. Richter will find it difficult to prove that the Kurubas of Mysore are only called so as shepherds, and that no connection exists between these Kurubas and the Kurumbas. Mr. Lewis Rice calls the wild tribes as well as the shepherds Kurubas, but seems to overlook the fact that both terms are identical, and refer to only the ethnological distinction.”The above extracts will suffice for the purpose of showing that the distinction between the jungle Kurumbas and the more civilised Kurubas, and their relationship towards each other, call for a ‘permanent settlement.’ And I may briefly place on record the results of anthropometric observations on the jungle Kurumbas of the Nīlgiris, and the domesticated Kurubas of Mysore and the Bellary district, whose stature and nasal index (two factors of primary importance) are compared with those of the jungle Paniyans of Malabar and Kādirs of the Ānaimalai mountains—Stature.Nasal index.Average.Average.Maximum.cm.Kurubas, Bellary162.774.992Kurubas, Mysore163.973.286Kurumbas, Nilgiris157.588.8111Paniyans157.495.1108Kādirs151.789115A glance at the above table at once shows that there is a closer affinity between the three dark-skinned, short, platyrhine jungle tribes, than between the jungle Kurumbas and the lighter-skinned, taller, and more leptorhine Kurubas.The domesticated Kurubas are dealt with separately, and, in the remarks which follow, I am dealing solely with the jungle Kurumbas.The Kādu, or wild Kurumbas of Mysore are divided into “(a) Betta or hill Kurumbas, with sub-divisions called Ānē (elephant), Bevina (nīm tree:Melia Azadirachta), and Kolli (fire-brand)—a small and active race, capable of great fatigue, who are expert woodmen; (b) Jēnu or honey Kurumbas, said to be a darker andinferior race, who employ themselves in collecting honey and bees-wax.”57For the following note on the Kādu Kurumbas I am indebted to the Mysore Census Report, 1891. “There are two clans among them, viz., Bettada and Jēnu. The former worship the forest deities Nārāli and Māstamma; eat flesh and “drink liquor, a favourite beverage being prepared from rāgi (Eleusine Coracana) flour. Some of their habits and customs are worth mentioning, as indicating their plane of civilization. They have two forms of marriage. One is similar to the elaborate ceremony among the Vakkaligas, while the other is the simple one of a formal exchange of betel leaves and areca nuts, which concludes the nuptials. The Kādu Kurubas can only eat meals prepared by members of the higher castes. During their periodical illnesses, the females live outside the limits of the Hādi (group of rude huts) for three days. And, in cases of childbirth, none but the wet nurse or other attendant enters the room of the confined woman for ten days. In cases of sickness, no medical treatment is resorted to; on the other hand, exorcisms, charms, incantations, and animal sacrifices are more generally in vogue. The male’s dress consists of either a bit of cloth to cover their nudity, or a piece of coarse cloth tied round the waist, and reaching to the knees. They wear ornaments of gold, silver, or brass. They are their own barbers, and use broken glass for razors. The females wear coarse cloth four yards long, and have their foreheads tattooed in dots of two or three horizontal lines, and wear ear-rings, glass bangles, and necklaces of black beads. Strangers are not allowed to enter their hādis or hamlets with shoes or slippers on.In case of death, children are buried, whilst adults are burned. On the occurrence of any untoward event, the whole site is abandoned, and a new hādi set up in the vicinity. The Kādu Kurubas are very active, and capable of enduring great fatigue. It is said that they are revengeful, but, if treated kindly, they will do willing service. The Jēnu Kurubas live in small detached huts in the interior of thick jungles, far away from inhabited places. Their habits are no less wild. The male dress consists of either a woollen kambli or coarse cloth, and a skull cap. The female’s sādi is white coarse cloth, their wonted ornaments being a pair of brass ear-rings, strings of black beads tied round the neck, and glass bangles on the wrist. These people do not allow to outcasts and Musalmans access to their premises, or permit shoes being brought into their houses or streets. They eat flesh, and take meals from Vakkaligas, Lingāyats, and other superior castes. They subsist on wild bamboo seed, edible roots, etc., found in the jungle, often mixed with honey. They are said not unfrequently to make a dessert out of bees in preference to milk, ghī (clarified butter), etc. They are engaged chiefly in felling timber in the forests, and other similar rude pursuits, but they never own or cultivate land for themselves, or keep live-stock of their own. They are very expert in tracking wild animals, and very skilfully elude accidental pursuits thereby. Their children, more than two years old, move about freely in the jungle. They are said to be hospitable to travellers visiting their place at any unusual hour. They are Saivites, and Jangams are their gurus. The ceremonial pollution on account of death lasts for ten days, as with the Brāhmans. Children are buried, while adults, male or female, are cremated. A curious trait of this primitiverace is that the unmarried females of the village or hādi generally sleep in a hut or chāvadi set apart for them, whilst the adult bachelors and children have a separate building, both under the eye of the head tribesman. The hut for the latter is called pundugār chāvadi, meaning literally the abode of vagabonds.” The Jēnu Kurumbas are said to eat, and the Betta Kurumbas to abstain from eating the flesh of the ‘bison’ (Bos gaurus).Kurumbas.Kurumbas.In a note on the Jēnu and Betta Kurumbas of Mysore, Mr. M. Venkatanarnappa writes as follows. “The Betta are better clothed and fed than the Jēn Kurumbas. Their occupation is kumri (burning and shifting) cultivation. Their women are clever at basket-making. They can be distinguished by the method of dress which their women have adopted, and the way in which the men wear their hair. A Betta woman covers her body below the shoulders by tying a long cloth round the arm-pits, leaving shoulders and arms bare, whereas a Jēn woman in good circumstances dresses up like the village females, and, if poor, ties a piece of cloth round her loins, and wears another to partially conceal the upper part of her body. Among males, a Betta Kurumba leaves his hair uncut, and gathers it from fore and aft into a knot tied on the crown of the head. A Jēn Kurumba shaves like the ryots, leaving a tuft behind, or clips or crops it, with a curly or bushy growth to protect the head from heat and cold. The Betta and Jēn Kurumbas never intermarry.” The Betta Kurumbas are, I am told, excellent elephant mahauts (drivers), and very useful at keddah (elephant-catching) operations.Of the Kādu and Betta Kurumbas, as they were at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the followingaccount is given by Buchanan.58“The Cad Curubaru are a rude tribe, who are exceedingly poor and wretched. In the fields near the villages, they build miserable low huts, have a few rags only for clothing, and the hair of both sexes stands out matted like a mop, and swarms with vermin. Some of them hire themselves out as labouring servants to the farmers, and receive monthly wages. Others, in crop seasons, watch the fields at night, to keep off elephants and wild hogs. In the intervals between crops, they work as daily labourers, or go into the woods, and collect the roots of wild yams (Dioscorea), part of which they eat, and part exchange with the farmers for grain. Their manner of driving away the elephant is by running against him with a burning torch made of bamboos. The animal sometimes turns, waits till the Curubaru comes close up; but these poor people, taught by experience, push boldly on, dash their torches against the elephant’s head, who never fails to take to immediate flight. Should their courage fail, and should they attempt to run away, the elephant would immediately pursue, and put them to death. The Curubaru have no means of killing so large an animal, and, on meeting with one in the day-time, are as much alarmed as any other of the inhabitants. During the Sultan’s reign they caught a few in pitfalls. [I have heard of a clever Kurumba, who caught an elephant by growing pumpkins and vegetable marrow, for which elephants have a partiality, over a pit on the outskirts of his field.—E.T.] The wild hogs are driven out of the fields by slings, but they are too fierce for the Curubaru to kill. These people frequently suffer from tigers, against which their wretched huts are a poor defence;and, when this wild beast is urged by hunger, he is regardless of their burning torches. These Curubaru have dogs, with which they catch deer, antelopes, and hares; and they have the art of taking in snares, peacocks, and other esculent birds. They believe that good men, after death, will become benevolent Dēvas, and bad men destructive Dēvas. They are of such known honesty that on all occasions they are entrusted with provisions by the farmers, who are persuaded that the Curubaru would rather starve than take one grain of what was given to them in charge. The spirits of the dead are believed to appear in dreams to their old people, and to direct them to make offerings to a female deity named Bettada Chicama, that is, the mother of the hill. Unless these offerings are made, this goddess occasions sickness. In cases of adultery, the husband flogs his wife severely, and, if he is able, beats her paramour. If he be not able, he applies to the gaudo (headman), who does it for him.” The Betta Curubaru, Buchanan continues, “live in poor huts near the villages, and the chief employment of the men is the cutting of timber, and making of baskets. With a sharp stick they also dig up spots of ground in the skirts of the forest, and sow them with rāgi (Eleusine Coracana). The men watch at night the fields of the farmers, but they are not so dexterous at this as the Cad Curubaru. In this class, the Cutigas are women that prefer another man to their husband, or widows, who do not wish to relinquish carnal enjoyment. Their children are not considered as illegitimate.”Kurumba.Kurumba.Of the casual system of clearing the jungle in vogue among the Kurumbas, I may quote the following description.59“In their search for food, this wild tribenaturally prefers a forest cleared of all undergrowth, in which to move about, and the ingenuity with which they attain this end, and outwit the vigilant forest subordinates, is worthy of a better object. I have heard of a Kurumba walking miles from his hādi or hamlet, with a ball of dry smouldering elephant dung concealed in his waist-cloth. This he carried to the heart of the forest reserve, and, selecting a suitable spot, he placed the smouldering dung, with a plentiful supply of dry inflammable grass over it, in such a position as to allow the wind to play upon it, and fan it into a flame with the pleasing certainty that the smoke from the fire would not be detected by the watchers on the distant fire-lines until the forest was well alight, the flames beyond all control, and the Kurumba himself safe at home in his hādi, awaiting the arrival of the forest subordinate to summon the settlement to assist in the hopeless task of extinguishing the fire.”Kurumba village.Kurumba village.Of the Kurumbas who are found in the Wynād, Calicut, and Ernād tāluks of Malabar, the following account is given in the Gazetteer of that district. “They are sub-divided into Mullu (bamboo) Kurumbans, Jēn or Tēn (honey) Kurumbans, also called Kādu or Shōla Nāyakkans (or Jēnu Koyyo Shōla Nāyakas,i.e., honey-cutting lords of the woods), and Ūrali or Bēt Kurumbans; of which the first-named class, who consider themselves superior to the others, are cultivators and hunters; the second wood-cutters and collectors of honey; and the third make baskets and implements of agriculture. The Mullu and Tēn Kurumbans have headmen with titles of Mūppan and Mudali respectively conferred by their janmis (landlords). The Kurumbans, like many of the other hill-tribes, use bows and arrows, with which they are expert. The caste deity of the Tēn Kurumbans is called Masti. It is perhaps worthremarking that the Ūrali Kurumbans of the Wynaad differ from the other two classes in having no headmen, observing a shorter period of pollution after a birth than any other Malabar tribe and none at all after a death, and in not worshipping any of the Malabar animistic deities.”The chief sub-divisions of the Kurumbas on the Nīlgiris, and in the Wynād, are said, in the Madras Census Report, 1891, to be “Mullu (thorn), Betta or Vetta (hill), Ūrāli (Ūr, a village), Tēn (honey), and Tac’chanādan Mūppan (carpenter headman). Of these, the first and last speak Malayālam, and wear a lock in front of their head in the Malabar fashion. The rest speak Canarese. Ūrāli Kurumbas work in metals.”The villages of the Kurumbas on the Nīlgiri hills are, Mr. Grigg writes,60called mottas. They consist generally of only four or five huts, made of mud and wattle, with thatched roofs. The front of the house is sometimes whitewashed, and ornamented with rude drawings of men and animals in red earth or charcoal. They store their grain in large oval baskets, and for bottles they use gourds. They clear a patch round about the village, and sow the ground with rāgi (Eleusine Coracana), tenne (Setaria italica), or kiri (Amarantus). They dig up roots (called gāsū) for food, and collect the jungle produce, honey, resin, gall-nuts, etc., which they barter with low-country traders, and they are clever in catching game in nets, and dispose of the flesh in a surprisingly short time. Kurumbas occasionally take work on coffee plantations, and some earn a livelihood by officiating as priests to the Badagas. They are also employed as musicians at wedding feasts and funerals of the other tribes, wherethey play on clarionets, drums, and tambourines, as well as the būguri. They make baskets of rattan and milk vessels out of a joint of bamboo, as well as nets of a thread called oilhatti. Their women confine themselves to the limited work of their households, fetching water, cooking, etc. The following extract embraces all that can be said of the religion of the Kurumbas. “Some profess to worship Siva, and occasionally women mark their foreheads with the Siva spot. Others, living near Barliar, worship Kuribattraya (lord of many sheep) and the wife of Siva under the name of Musni. They worship also a rough stone under the name of Hiriadēva, setting it up either in a cave, or in a circle of stones like the so-called Kurumba kōvil of the Badagas, which the latter would seem to have borrowed from the Kurumbas. To this they make pūja, and offer cooked rice at the sowing time. They also profess to sacrifice to Hiriadēva a goat, which they kill at their own houses, after sprinkling water, and eat, giving a portion of flesh to the pūjāri (priest). Others say that they have no pūjāri: among such a scattered tribe customs probably vary in each motta”—(Breeks). It is recorded by Dr. Rivers, in connection with the Toda legendary stories of Kwoten, that “one day Kwoten went with Erten of Keadr, who was spoken of as his servant to Poni, in the direction of Polkat (Calicut). At Poni there is a stream called Palpa, the commencement of which may be seen on the Kundahs. Kwoten and Erten went to drink water out of the stream at a place where a goddess (teu) named Terkosh had been bathing.... Finally, they came to Terkosh, who said to Kwoten, “Do not come near me, I am a teu.” Kwoten paid no heed to this, but said “You are a beautiful woman,” and went and lay with her. Then Terkosh went away to her hill at Poni, where she is now,and to this day the Kurumbas go there once a year and offer plantains to her, and light lamps in her honour.”It is further recorded by Dr. Rivers that “two ceremonial objects are obtained by the Todas from the Kurumbas. One is the tall pole called tadrsi or tadri, which is used in the dance at the second funeral ceremonies, and afterwards burnt. Poles of the proper length are said to grow only on the Malabar side of the Nīlgiris, and are probably most easily obtained from the Kurumbas. The other is the teiks, or funeral post at which the buffalo is killed.” Besides supplying the Badagas with the elephant-pole required at their funerals, the Kurumbas have to sow the first handful of grain for the Badagas every season. The ceremony is thus described by Harkness.61“A family of the Burghers (Badagas) had assembled, which was about to commence ploughing. With them were two or three Kurumbas, one of whom had set up a stone in the centre of the spot on which we were standing, and, decorating it with wild flowers, prostrated himself to it, offered incense, and sacrificed a goat, which had been brought there by the Burghers. He then took the guidance of the plough, and, having ploughed some ten or twelve paces, gave it over, possessed himself of the head of the sacrificed animal, and left the Burghers to prosecute their labours.... The Kurumba, sowing the first handful, leaves the Burgher to go on with the remainder, and, reaping the first sheaf, delivers it with the sickle to him, to accomplish the remainder of the task. At harvest time, or when the whole of the grain has been gathered in, the Kurumba receives his dues, or proportion of the produce.” The relations of the Kurumbas with theBadagas at the present day, and the share which the former take in the ceremonies of the latter, are dealt with in the account of the Badagas.Kurumba cave.Kurumba cave.I am informed that, among the Kurumbas of the Nīlgiris, it is the custom for several brothers to take one wife in common (adelphogamy), and that they do not object to their women being open to others also. There is said to be no marriage rite. A man and woman will mate together, and live as husband and wife. And, if it happens that, in a family, there has been a succession of such wives for one or two generations, it becomes an event, and is celebrated as such. The pair sit together, and pour water over each other from pots. They then put on new cloths, and a feast is partaken of. Among the Shōla Nāyakkars, a feature of the marriage ceremony is said to be for the bride to roll a cheroot of tobacco leaves, which both parties must smoke in turn.Writing concerning the Irulas and Kurumbas, Mr. Walhouse says62that “after every death among them, they bring a long water-worn stone (devva kotta kallu), and put it into one of the old cromlechs sprinkled over the Nīlgiri plateau. Some of the larger of these have been found piled up to the cap-stone with such pebbles, which must have been the work of generations. Occasionally, too, the tribes mentioned make small cromlechs for burial purposes, and place the long water-worn pebbles in them. Mr. Breeks reports that the Kurumbas in the neighbourhood of the Rangasvāmi peak and Barliar burn their dead, and place a bone and a small round stone in the sāvu-mane (death-house)—an old cromlech.” The conjecture is hazarded by Fergusson63that the Kurumbas are the remnant of a great and widelyspread race, who may have erected dolmens. As bearing on the connection between Kurumbas and Kurubas, it is worthy of note that the latter, in some places, erect dolmens as a resting-place for the dead. (SeeKuruba.)It is noted, in the Gazetteer of the Nīlgiris, that the Kurumbas “trade largely on the extraordinary dread of their supposed magical powers which possesses the Todas and the Badagas—the latter especially. Stories are told of how they can summon wild elephants at will, and reduce rocks to powder merely by scattering mystic herbs upon them.”“The Kurumbas,” Harkness writes, “have a knowledge of herbs and medicinal roots, and the Burghers (Badagas) say that they limit their knowledge thereof to those which are noxious only, and believe that, with the assistance of their magic, they are able to convey them into the stomachs of those to whom they have any dislike. The violent antipathy existing between the Burghers and the Kurumbas, and the dread and horror which the former entertain of the preternatural powers of the latter, are, perhaps, not easily accounted for; but neither sickness, death, nor misfortune of any kind, ever visit the former, without the latter having the credit of producing it. A few years before, a Burgher had been hanged by the sentence of the provincial court for the murder of a Kurumba. The act of the former was not without what was considered great provocation. Disease had attacked the inhabitants of the hamlet, a murrain their cattle. The former had carried off a great part of the family of the murderer, and he himself had but narrowly escaped its effects. No one in the neighbourhood doubted that the Kurumba in question had, by his necromancy, caused all this misfortune, and, after several fruitless attempts, a party of them succeeded in surroundinghim in open day, and effecting their purpose.” In 1835 no less than forty-eight Kurumbas were murdered, and a smaller number in 1875 and 1882. In 1900 a whole family of Kurumbas was murdered, of which the head, who had a reputation as a medicine-man, was believed to have brought disease and death into a Badaga village. The sympathies of the whole country-side were so strongly with the murderers that detection was made very difficult, and the persons charged were acquitted.64In this case several Todas were implicated. “It is,” Mr. Grigg writes, “a curious fact that neither Kota, Irula, or Badaga will slay a Kurumba until a Toda has struck the first blow, but, as soon as his sanctity has been violated by a blow, they hasten to complete the murderous work, which the sacred hand of the Toda has begun.” The Badaga’s dread of the Kurumba is said to be so great that a simple threat of vengeance has proved fatal. My Toda guide—a stalwart representative of his tribe—expressed fear of walking from Ootacamund to Kotagiri, a distance of eighteen miles along a highroad, lest he should come to grief at the hands of Kurumbas; but this was really a frivolous excuse to get out of accompanying me to a distance from his domestic hearth. In like manner, Dr. Rivers records that, when he went to Kotagiri, a Toda who was to accompany him made a stipulation that he should be provided with a companion, as the Kurambas were very numerous in that part. In connection with the Toda legend of Ön, who created the buffaloes and the Todas, Dr. Rivers writes that “when Ön saw that his son was in Amnodr (the world of the dead), he did not like to leave him there alone, and decided to go away to the same place. So he called together all thepeople, and the buffaloes and the trees, to come and bid him farewell. All the people came except a man of Kwodrdoni named Arsankutan. He and his family did not come. All the buffaloes came except the Arsaiir, the buffaloes of the Kwodroni ti (sacred dairy). Some trees also failed to come. Ön blessed all the people, buffaloes and trees present, but said that, because Arsankutan had not come, he and his people should die by sorcery at the hands of the Kurumbas, and that, because the Arsaiir had not come, they should be killed by tigers, and that the trees which had not come should bear bitter fruit. Since that time the Todas have feared the Kurumbas, and buffaloes have been killed by tigers.”On the Nīlgiri hills, honey-combs are collected by Jēn Kurumbas and Shōlagas. The supply of honey varies according to the nature of the season, and is said to be especially plentiful and of good quality whenStrobilanthesflowers.65The Kurumbas are said to have incredibly keen eye-sight, gained from constantly watching the bee to his hive. When they find a hive not quite ready to take, they place a couple of sticks in a certain position. This sign will prevent any other Kurumba from taking the honey, and no Badaga or other hillman would meddle with it on any account, for fear of being killed by sorcery.Fortified by a liberal allowance of alcohol and tobacco, the Kurumbas, armed with bamboo torches, will follow up at night the tracks of a wounded ‘bison’ (Bos gaurus), and bring back the head and meat to camp. A European sportsman recounts that he has often seen his Kurumba shikāri (tracker) stop, and, with the one word “honey,” point to the top of an adjacent tree. “How doyou know?” he asked, “Oh! I saw a bee” was the answer given with the greatest nonchalance. On one occasion he found himself close to a swarm of bees. The Kurumba, seeing him hesitate, thrust his stick clean through the swarm, and, with the bare remark “No honey,” marched on. The District Forest Officer, when out shooting, had an easy shot at a stag, and missed it. “There,” said the Kurumba, pointing to a distant tree, “is your bullet.” His trained sense of hearing no doubt enabled him to locate the sound of the bullet striking the tree, and his eyes, following the sound, instantly detected the slight blaze made by the bullet on the bark. The visual acuity of a number of tribes and castes inhabiting the mountains, jungles, and plains, has been determined by Dr. W. H. R. Rivers and myself, by means of the Cohn letter E method. And, though the jungle man, who has to search for his food and mark the tracks or traces of wild beasts, undoubtedly possesses a specially trained keenness of vision for the exigencies of his primitive life, our figures show that, as regards ordinary visual acuity, he has no advantage over the more highly civilised classes.“The Kurumbas of the Mysore forests,” Mr. Theobald writes, “make fire by friction. They follow the same method as the Todas, as described by Mr. Thurston, but never use the powdered charcoal in the cavity of the horizontal piece of wood which is held down by their feet, or by a companion. The fine brown powder, formed during the rotation of the longer vertical piece, gives sufficient tinder, which soon ignites, and is then placed on a small piece of cotton rag, rolled loosely, and gently blown until it is ignited. The vertical stick is held between the palms, and has a reciprocal motion, by the palms being moved in opposite directions, at the sametime using a strong downward pressure, which naturally brings the palms to the bottom, when they are at once raised to their original position, and the operation continued till the naturally formed tinder ignites.”In his report on Forest Administration in Coorg, 1902–1903, Mr. C. D’A. McCarthy writes as follows concerning the Kurumbas, who work for the Forest department. “We experienced in connection with the Kurumbas one of those apparent aberrations of sense and intellect, the occurrence of which amongst this peculiar race was foreshadowed in the last report. The Chief Commissioner is aware that, in the interests of the Kurubas themselves, we substitute for a single cash payment distributions to the same value of food-grains, clothes and cash, in equal proportions of each. Now, seventy years ago, before the annexation of Coorg, the Kurubas and similar castes were prædial slaves of the dominant Coorgs, receiving no other remuneration for service than food and clothing. In fact, this institution, nothing less than real slavery, was not entirely broken up until the great demand for local labour created by the opening up of the country for coffee cultivation so late as 1860–1870, so that the existing generation are still cognisant of the old state of affairs. Last year, during the distribution of rewards for the successful protection of the reserves that season from fire, it seems that the idea was put into the heads of these people that our system of remuneration, which includes the distribution of food and clothing, was an attempt to create again at their expense a system of, as it were, forest slavery; with the result that for a time nothing would induce many of them to accept any form of remuneration for the work already performed, much less to undertake the same duties for the approaching season. It was some time, and afterno little trouble, that the wherefore of this strange conduct was discovered, and the suspicions aroused put at rest.” In his report, 1904–1905, Mr. McCarthy states that “the local system of fire protection, consisting of the utilisation of the Kuruba jungle population for the clearing of fire lines and patrolling, and the payment of rewards according to results, may now be said to be completely established in Coorg. The Kurubas appear to have gained complete confidence in the working of the system, and, provided the superior officers personally see to the payment of the rewards, are evidently quite satisfied that the deductions for failures are just and fair.”The Kurumbas are said to have been very useful in the mining operations during the short life of the Wynād gold-mines. A few years ago, I received the skulls of two Kurumbas, who went after a porcupine into a deserted tunnel on the Glenrock Gold-mining Company’s land in the Wynād. The roof fell in on them, and they were buried alive.In a note on the ‘Ethnogénie des Dravidiens’,66Mr. Louis Lapicque writes as follows. “Les populations caractéristiques du Wainaad sont les Panyer, les négroides les plus accusés et les plus homogenes que j’ai vus, et probablement qui existent dans toute l’Inde. D’autre part, les tribus vivant de leur côté sur leurs propres cultures, fortement négroides encore, mais plus mélangées. Tels sont les Naiker et les Kouroumbas.”——Indice nasal.Indice céphalique.Taille.54 Panyer847415428 Kouroumbas817515712 Naiker8076.9157Concerning Nāyakas or Naikers and Kurumbas, Mr. F. W. F. Fletcher writes to me as follows from Nellakotta, Nīlgiris. “It may be that in some parts of Wynaad there are people known indifferently as Kurumbas and Shola Nāyakas; but I have no hesitation in saying that the Nāyakas in my employ are entirely distinct from the Kurumbas. The two classes do not intermarry; they do not live together; they will not eat together. Even their prejudices with regard to food are different, for a Kurumba will eat bison flesh, and a Nāyaka will not. The latter stoutly maintains that he is entirely distinct from, and far superior to, the Kurumba, and would be grievously offended if he were classed as a Kurumba. The religious ceremonies of the two tribes are also different. The Nāyakas have separate temples, and worship separate gods. The chief Kurumba temple in this part of the country is close to Pandalur, and here, especially at the Bishu feast, the Kurumbas gather in numbers. My Nāyakas do not recognise this temple, but have their place of worship in the heart of the jungle, where they make theirpūja(worship) under the direction of their own priest. The Nāyakas will not attend the funeral of a Kurumba; nor will they invite Kurumbas to the funeral of one of their own tribe. There is a marked variation in their modes of life. The Kurumba of this part lives in comparatively open country, in the belt of deciduous forest lying between the ghāts proper and the foot of the Nīlgiri plateau. Here he has been brought into contact with European Planters, and is, comparatively speaking, civilised. The Nāyaka has his habitat in the dense jungle of the ghāts, and is essentially a forest nomad, living on honey, jungle fruits, and the tuberous roots of certain jungle creepers. By constant association with myself, my Nāyaka men have lost thefear of the white man, which they entertained when I first came into the district; but even now, if I visit the village of a colony who reside in the primæval forest, the women and children will hide themselves in the jungle at sight of me. The superstitions of the two tribes are different. Some Nāyakas are credited with the power of changing themselves at will into a tiger, and of wreaking vengeance on their enemies in that guise. And the Kurumba holds the Nāyaka in as much awe as other castes hold the Kurumba. Lower down, on the flat below the ghāts I am opening a rubber estate, and here I have another Nāyaka colony, who differ in many respects from their congeners above, although the two colonies are within five miles as the crow flies. The low-country Nāyaka does his hair in a knot on one side of his head, Malayālam fashion, and his speech is a patois of Malayālam. The Nāyaka on the hills above has a mop of curly hair, and speaks a dialect of his own quite distinct from the Kurumba language, though both are derived from Kanarese. But that the low-country people are merely a sept of the Nāyaka tribe is evident from the fact that intermarriage is common amongst the two colonies, and that they meet at the same temple for their annual pūja. The priest of the hill colony is the pūjāri for both divisions of the Nāyakas, and the arbiter in all their disputes.”Kurumba (Shōla Naiker).Kurumba (Shōla Naiker).Kurumo.—The Kurumos are a caste of Oriya agriculturists, found mainly in the Russellkonda tāluk of Ganjam. They are called Kurumo by Oriyas, and Kudumo by Telugus. There is a tradition that their name is derived from Srikurmam in the Vizagapatam district, where they officiated as priests in the Siva temple, and whence they were driven northward. The Kurumos say that, at the present day, some membersof the caste are priests at Saivite temples in Ganjam, bear the title Rāvulo, and wear the sacred thread. It is noted in the Madras Census Report, 1901, that “some of them wear the sacred thread, and follow Chaitanya, and Oriya Brāhmans will accept drinking-water at their hands. They will eat in Brāhmans’ houses, and will accept drinking-water from Gaudos, Bhondāris, and Rāvulos.” Bhondāris wash the feet of Kurumos on ceremonial occasions, and, in return for their services, receive twice the number of cakes given to other guests at feasts.In addition to the Kurumos proper, there is a section called Kūji Kurumo, which is regarded as lower in the social status. The caste titles are Bissoyi, Bēhara, Dudi, Majhi, Nāyako, Podhāno, Rāvulo, Ravuto, Sēnāpati, and Udhdhandra. Those who bear the title Dudi are priests at the temples of the village deities. The title Udhdhandra was conferred by a zamindar, and is at present borne by a number of families, intermarriage among members of which is forbidden. Every village has a headman entitled Adhikari, who is under the control of a chief headman called Bēhara. Both these appointments are hereditary.Among other deities, the Kurumos worship various Tākurānis (village deities), such as Bōdo Rāvulo, Bāgha Dēvi, Kumbēswari, and Sathabhavuni. In some places, there are certain marriage restrictions based on the house-gods. For example, a family whose house-god is Bōdo Rāvulo may not intermarry with another family which worships the same deity. Every family of Kurumos apparently keeps the house-god within the house, and it is worshipped on all important occasions. The god is usually represented by five areca nuts, which are kept in a box. These nuts must be filled with pieces ofgold, silver, iron, copper, and lead, which are introduced through a hole drilled in the base of the nut, which is plugged with silver.Infant marriage is the rule, and, if a girl does not secure a husband before she reaches maturity, she has to go through the mock-marriage rite, called dharma bibha, with her grandfather or other elder. On the evening of the day previous to that of the real marriage, called gondo sona, the paternal aunt of the bridegroom goes to a tank (pond), carrying thither a brass vessel. This is placed on the tank bund (embankment), and worshipped. Some cowry (Cypræa arabica) shells are then thrown into the tank, and the vessel is filled with water, and taken to the house. At the entrance thereto, a Sullokhondia Gaudo stands, holding a vessel of water, from which a little water is poured into the vessel brought from the tank. The bride’s aunt then goes to three or five houses of members of her own caste, and receives water therefrom in her vessel, which is placed near the house-gods, and eventually kept on the marriage dais throughout the wedding ceremonies. Over the marriage dais (bēdi) at the bridegroom’s house, four brass vessels, and four clay lamps fed with ghī (clarified butter), are placed at the four corners. Round the four posts thereof seven turns of thread are made by a Brāhman purōhit. The bridegroom, wearing mokkuto (forehead chaplet) and sacred thread, after going seven times round the dais, breaks the thread, and takes his seat thereon. AfterZizyphus Jujubaleaves and rice have been thrown over him, he is taken in procession to a temple. On his return home, he is met by five or seven young girls and women at the entrance to the house, andZizyphusleaves are again thrown over him. A Bhondāri woman sprinkles water from mango leavesover him, and he proceeds in a palanquin to the home of the bride. At the marriage ceremony, the bride throws rice on the head of the bridegroom over a screen which is interposed between them. After their hands have been tied together, a grinding-stone and roller are placed between them, and they face each other while their fingers are linked together above the stone. On the seventh day, the newly married couple worship seven posts at the bride’s house. The various articles used in connection with the marriage ceremonies, except one pot, are thrown into a tank. On his return thence, the bridegroom breaks the pot, after he has been sprinkled with the water contained in it by a Bhondāri. At times of marriage, and on other auspicious occasions, the Kurumos, when they receive their guests, must take hold of their sticks or umbrellas, and it is regarded as an insult if this is not done.On the fifth and eighth days after the birth of a child, a new cloth is spread on the floor, on which the infant is placed, with a book (bāgavatham) close to its head, and an iron rod, such as is used by Oriya castes for branding the skin of the abdomen of newly-born babies, at its side. The relations and friends assemble to take part in the ceremonial, and a Brāhman purōhit reads a purānam. Betel leaves and areca nuts are then distributed. On the twenty-first day, the ceremonial is repeated, and the purōhit is asked to name the child. He ascertains the constellation under which it was born, and announces that a name commencing with a certain letter should be given to it.Like other Oriya castes, the Kurumos are particular with regard to the observation of various vratams (fasts). One, called sudasa vratam, is observed on a Thursday falling on the tenth day after new moon in the monthof Karthika (November-December). The most elderly matron of the house does pūja (worship), and a purānam is read. Seven cubits of a thread dyed with turmeric are measured on the forearm of a girl seven years old, and cut off. The deity is worshipped, and seven knots are made in the piece of thread, which is tied on to the left upper arm of the matron. This vratam is generally observed by Oriya castes.Kurup.—In a note on the artisan classes of Malabar, it is recorded67that “the Kolla-Kurups combine two professions which at first sight seem strangely incongruous, shampooing or massage, and the construction of the characteristic leather shields of Malabar. But the two arts are intimately connected with the system of combined physical training, as we should now call it, and exercise in arms, which formed the curriculum of the kalari (gymnasium), and the title kurup is proper to castes connected with that institution. A similar combination is found in the Vil-Kurups (bow-Kurups), whose traditional profession was to make bows and arrows, and train the youth to use them, and who now shampoo, make umbrellas, and provide bows and arrows for some Nāyar ceremonies. Other classes closely connected are the Kollans or Kurups distinguished by the prefixes Chāya (colour), Palissa (shield), and Tōl (leather), who are at present engaged in work in lacquer, wood, and leather.” Kurup also occurs as a title of Nāyars, in reference to the profession of arms, and many of the families bearing this title are said68to still maintain their kalari.Kuruvikkāran.—The Kuruvikkārans are a class of Marāthi-speaking bird-catchers and beggars, who huntjackals, make bags out of the skin, and eat the flesh thereof. By Telugu people they are called Nakkalavāndlu (jackal people), and by Tamilians Kuruvikkāran (bird-catchers). They are also called Jāngal Jāti and Kāttu Mahrāti. Among themselves they are known as Vagiri or Vagirivala. They are further known as Yeddu Marigē Vētagāndlu, or hunters who hide behind a bullock. In decoying birds, they conceal themselves behind a bullock, and imitate the cries of birds in a most perfect manner. They are said to be called in Hindustani Paradhi and Mīr Shikāri.As regards their origin, there is a legend that there were once upon a time three brothers, one of whom ran away to the mountains, and, mixing with Kanna Kuruvans, became degraded. His descendants are now represented by the Dommaras. The descendants of the second brother are the Lambādis, and those of the third Kuruvikkārans. The lowly position of these three classes is attributed to the fact that the three brothers, when wandering about, came across Sīta, the wife of Rāma, about whose personal charms they made remarks, and laughed. This made Sīta angry, and she uttered the following curse:—“Mālitho shikar, naitho bhikar,”i.e., if (birds) are found, huntsmen; if not, beggars. According to a variant of the legend,69many years ago in Rājputāna there lived two brothers, the elder of whom was dull, and the younger smart. One day they happened to be driving a bullock along a path by the side of a pool of water, when they surprised Sīta bathing. The younger brother hid behind his bullock, but the elder was too stupid to conceal himself, and so both were observed by the goddess, who was muchannoyed, and banished them to Southern India. The elder she ordered to live by carrying goods about the country on pack-bullocks, and the younger to catch birds by means of two snares, which she obligingly formed from hair plucked from under her arm. Consequently the Vagirivalas never shave that portion of the body.The Kuruvikkārans are nomadic, and keep pack-bullocks, which convey their huts and domestic utensils from place to place. Some earn their living by collecting firewood, and others by acting as watchmen in fields and gardens. Women and children go about the streets begging, and singing songs, which are very popular, and imitated by Hindu women. They further earn a livelihood by hawking needles and glass beads, which they may be seen in the evening purchasing from Kayalans (Muhammadan merchants) in the Madras bazar.One of the occupations of the Kuruvikkārans is the manufacture and sale of spurious jackal horns, known as narikompu. To catch the jackals, they make an enclosure of a net, inside which a man seats himself, armed with a big stick. He then proceeds to execute a perfect imitation of the jackal’s cry, on hearing which the jackals come running to see what is the matter, and are beaten down. A Kuruvikkāran, whom the Rev. E. Löventhal interviewed, howled like a jackal, to show his skill as a mimic. The cry was quite perfect, and no jackal would have doubted that he belonged to their class. Sometimes the entire jackal’s head is sold, skin and all. The process of manufacture of the horn is as follows. After the brain has been removed, the skin is stripped off a limited area of the skull, and the bone at the place of junction of the sagittal and lambdoid suturesabove the occipital foramen is filed away, so that only a point, like a bony outgrowth, is left. The skin is then brought back, and pressed over the little horn, which pierces it. The horn is also said to be made out of the molar tooth of a dog or jackal, introduced through a small hole in a piece of jackal’s skin, round which a little blood or turmeric paste is smeared, to make it look more natural. In most cases only the horn, with a small piece of skull and skin, is sold. Sometimes, instead of the skin from the part where the horn is made, a piece of skin is taken from the snout, where the long black hairs are. The horn then appears surrounded by long black bushy hairs. The Kuruvikkārans explain that, when they see a jackal with such long hairs on the top of its head, they know that it possesses a horn. A horn-vendor, whom I interviewed, assured me that the possessor of a horn is a small jackal, which comes out of its hiding-place on full-moon nights to drink the dew. According to another version, the horn is only possessed by the leader of a pack of jackals. The Sinhalese and Tamils alike regard the horn “as a talisman, and believe that its fortunate possessor can command the realisation of every wish. Those who have jewels to conceal rest in perfect security if, along with them, they can deposit a narricomboo.”70The ayah (nurse) of a friend who possessed such a talisman remarked “Master going into any law-court, sure to win the case.” This, as has been pointed out, does not show much faith in the British administration of justice, if a so-called jackal’s horn can turn the scale. Two spurious horns, which I possessed, were promptly stolen from my study table, to bring luck to some Tamil member of my establishment.Some Kuruvikkārans carry suspended from their turban or body-cloth a small whistle, with which they imitate the song of birds, and attract them. Young boys often have with them a bundle of small sticks strung together, and with a horse-hair noose attached to them. The sticks are driven into the ground, and grain is strewn around to entice birds, which get caught in the noose.The women wear a petticoat and an ill-fitting bodice. Among other classes “Wearing the bodice like a Kuruvikkāran woman” is used as a taunt. The petticoat may never be taken off till it is tattered and torn, and replaced by a new one; and, when a woman bathes, she has to do so with the garment on. Anything which has come in contact with the petticoat, or rice husked with a woman’s feet, is polluted, and may not be used by men. Women adorn themselves with necklaces of beads and cowry shells, or sometimes, like the Lambādis, wear shell bracelets. Both men and women stain their teeth with a preparation of myrabolams,Acacia arabicapods, and sulphates of copper and iron. Females may not blacken their teeth, or wear a necklace of black beads before marriage.A young married woman, wherever she may be during the daytime, must rejoin her husband at night. If she fails to do so, she has to go through the ordeal of grasping a red-hot iron bar or sickle, and carrying it sixteen paces without dropping it. Another form of ordeal is dipping the hands in a pot containing boiling cowdung water, and picking out therefrom a quarter-anna piece. If the woman is innocent, she is able to husk a small quantity of paddy (rice) by rubbing it between her hands immediately after the immersion in the liquid. If a man has to submit to trial by ordeal, seven arka (Calotropis gigantea) leaves are tied to his palm, and a piece of red-hotiron placed thereon. His innocence is established if he is able to carry it while he takes seven long strides.The Kuruvikkārans have exogamous septs, of which Rānaratōd seems to be an important one, taking a high place in the social scale. Males usually add the title Sing as a suffix to their names.Marriage is always between adults, and the celebration, including the betrothal ceremony, extends over five days, during which meat is avoided, and the bride keeps her face concealed by throwing her cloth over it. Sometimes she continues to thus veil herself for a short time after marriage. On the first day, after the exchange of betel, the father of the bride says “Are you ready to receive my daughter as your daughter-in-law into your house? I am giving her to your son. Take care of her. Do not beat her when she is ill. If she cannot carry water, you should help her. If you beat her, or ill-treat her in any way, she will come back to us.” The future father-in-law having promised that the girl will be kindly treated, the bridegroom says “I am true, and have not touched any other woman. I have not smiled at any girl whom I have seen. Your daughter should not smile at any man whom she sees. If she does so, I shall drive her back to your house.” In the course of the marriage ceremonies, the bride is taken to the home of her mother-in-law, to whom she makes a present of a new cloth. The Nyavya (headman) hands a string of black beads to the mother-in-law, who ties it round the bride’s neck, while the assembled women sing. At a marriage of the first daughter of a member of the Rānaratōd sept, a Brāhman purōhit is invited to be present, and give his blessing, as it is believed that a Gujarāti Brāhman was originally employed for the marriage celebration.The principal tribal deity of the Kuruvikkārans is Kāli or Durga, and each sept possesses a small plate with a figure of the goddess engraved on it, which is usually kept in the custody of the headman. It is, however, frequently pledged, and money-lenders give considerable sums on the security of the idol, as the Kuruvikkārans would on no account fail to redeem it. When the time for the annual festival of the goddess draws nigh, the headman or an elder piles upVigna Catiangseeds in five small heaps. He then decides in his mind whether there is an odd or even number of seeds in the majority of heaps. If, when the seeds are counted, the result agrees with his forecast, it is taken as a sign of the approval of the goddess, and arrangements are made for the festival. Otherwise it is abandoned for the year. On the day of the festival, nine goats and a buffalo are sacrificed. While some cakes are being cooked in oil, a member of the tribe prays that the goddess will descend on him, and, taking some of the cakes out of the boiling liquid, with his palm rubs the oil on his head. He is then questioned by those assembled, to whom he gives oracular replies, after sucking the blood from the cut throat of a goat. It is noted in the North Arcot Manual that the Vagirivalas assemble two or three times in the year at Varadāreddipalli for worship. The objects of this are three saktis called Mahan Kāli, Chāmundi, and Mahammāyi, represented by small silver figures, which are mortgaged to a Reddi of the village, and lent by him during the few days of the festival.Kūsa.—A sub-division of Holeyas in South Canara, who also call themselves Uppāra. Some of them say that they are the same as Uppāras of Mysore, whose hereditary occupation was the manufacture of saltfrom salt-earth (ku, earth). Kūsa further occurs as a synonym of the Otattu, or tile-making section of the Nāyars, and Kūsa Mārān as a class of potters in Travancore. Kūsa is also an exogamous sept of the Bōyas.Kusavan.—The Kusavans are the Tamil potters. “The name,” Mr. H. A. Stuart writes,71“is said to be derived from the Sanskrit word ku signifying earth, the material in which they work, and avan, a personal termination. They wear the sacred thread, and profess both Saivism and Vaishnavism. Their ceremonials are somewhat like those of the Vellālas. The eating of flesh is permitted, but not widow marriage. Some have priests of their own caste, while others employ Brāhmans. Kusavans sometimes officiate as pūjaris in Pidāri temples. Their titles are Udayan and Vēlān. Their stupidity and ignorance are proverbial.” At times of census, Kulālan has been returned as a synonym of Kusavan, and Kusavan as an occupational division of Paraiyans. The Kusavans are divided into the territorial sections Chōla, Chēra, and Pāndya, and say that “these are descended from the three sons of their original ancestor Kulālan, who was the son of Brahma. He prayed to Brahma to be allowed, like him, to create and destroy things daily; so Brahma made him a potter.”72In ancient days, the potters made the large pyriform sepulchral urns, which have, in recent times, been excavated in Tinnevelly, Madura, Malabar, and elsewhere. Dr. G. U. Pope shows73that these urns are mentioned in connection with the burial of heroes and kings as late as the eighth century A.D., andrenders one of the Tamil songs bearing on the subject as follows:—

Kurumba.Kurumba.Mysore Census Report, 1891—Kādu Kuruba or Kurumba.—“The tribal name of Kuruba has been traced to the primeval occupation of the race, viz., the tending of sheep, perhaps when pre-historic man rose to the pastoral stage. The Uru or civilised Kurubas, who are genuine tillers of the soil, and who are dotted over the country in populous and thriving communities, and many of whom have, under the present ‘Pax Britannica,’ further developed into enterprising tradesmen and withal lettered Government officials, are the very antipodes of the Kādu or wild Kurubas or Kurumbas. The latter, like the Iruligās and Sōligās, are the denizens of the backwoods of the country, and have been correctly classed under the aboriginal population. The Tamilised name of Kurumba is applied to certain clans dwelling on the heights of the Nīlgiris, who are doubtless the offshoots of the aboriginal Kādu Kuruba stock found in Mysore.”W. R. King. Aboriginal Tribes of the Nilgiri Hills—”Kurumbas.—This tribe is of another race from the shepherd Kurumbas. The Nīlgiri tribe have neither cattle nor sheep, and in language, dress, and customs, have no affinity whatever with their namesakes.”G. Oppert. Original Inhabitants of India—”Kurubas or Kurumbas.—However separated from each other, and scattered among the Dravidian clans with whom they have dwelt, and however distant from one another they still live, there is hardly a province in the whole of Bharatavarasha which cannot produce, if not some living remnants of this race, at least some remains of past times which prove their presence. Indeed, the Kurumbas must be regarded as very old inhabitants of this land, who can contest with their Dravidian kinsmen the priority of occupation of the Indian soil. The terms Kuruba and Kurumba are originally identical, though the one form is, in different places, employed for the other, and has thus occasionally assumed a special local meaning. Mr. H. B. Grigg appears to contradict himself when, while speaking of the Kurumbas, he says that ‘in the low country they are called Kurubas or Cūrubāru, and are divided into such families as Ānē or elephant, Nāya or dog, Māle or hill Kurumbas.’56Such a distinction between mountain Kurumbas and plain Kurumbas cannot be established. The Rev. G. Richter will find it difficult to prove that the Kurubas of Mysore are only called so as shepherds, and that no connection exists between these Kurubas and the Kurumbas. Mr. Lewis Rice calls the wild tribes as well as the shepherds Kurubas, but seems to overlook the fact that both terms are identical, and refer to only the ethnological distinction.”The above extracts will suffice for the purpose of showing that the distinction between the jungle Kurumbas and the more civilised Kurubas, and their relationship towards each other, call for a ‘permanent settlement.’ And I may briefly place on record the results of anthropometric observations on the jungle Kurumbas of the Nīlgiris, and the domesticated Kurubas of Mysore and the Bellary district, whose stature and nasal index (two factors of primary importance) are compared with those of the jungle Paniyans of Malabar and Kādirs of the Ānaimalai mountains—Stature.Nasal index.Average.Average.Maximum.cm.Kurubas, Bellary162.774.992Kurubas, Mysore163.973.286Kurumbas, Nilgiris157.588.8111Paniyans157.495.1108Kādirs151.789115A glance at the above table at once shows that there is a closer affinity between the three dark-skinned, short, platyrhine jungle tribes, than between the jungle Kurumbas and the lighter-skinned, taller, and more leptorhine Kurubas.The domesticated Kurubas are dealt with separately, and, in the remarks which follow, I am dealing solely with the jungle Kurumbas.The Kādu, or wild Kurumbas of Mysore are divided into “(a) Betta or hill Kurumbas, with sub-divisions called Ānē (elephant), Bevina (nīm tree:Melia Azadirachta), and Kolli (fire-brand)—a small and active race, capable of great fatigue, who are expert woodmen; (b) Jēnu or honey Kurumbas, said to be a darker andinferior race, who employ themselves in collecting honey and bees-wax.”57For the following note on the Kādu Kurumbas I am indebted to the Mysore Census Report, 1891. “There are two clans among them, viz., Bettada and Jēnu. The former worship the forest deities Nārāli and Māstamma; eat flesh and “drink liquor, a favourite beverage being prepared from rāgi (Eleusine Coracana) flour. Some of their habits and customs are worth mentioning, as indicating their plane of civilization. They have two forms of marriage. One is similar to the elaborate ceremony among the Vakkaligas, while the other is the simple one of a formal exchange of betel leaves and areca nuts, which concludes the nuptials. The Kādu Kurubas can only eat meals prepared by members of the higher castes. During their periodical illnesses, the females live outside the limits of the Hādi (group of rude huts) for three days. And, in cases of childbirth, none but the wet nurse or other attendant enters the room of the confined woman for ten days. In cases of sickness, no medical treatment is resorted to; on the other hand, exorcisms, charms, incantations, and animal sacrifices are more generally in vogue. The male’s dress consists of either a bit of cloth to cover their nudity, or a piece of coarse cloth tied round the waist, and reaching to the knees. They wear ornaments of gold, silver, or brass. They are their own barbers, and use broken glass for razors. The females wear coarse cloth four yards long, and have their foreheads tattooed in dots of two or three horizontal lines, and wear ear-rings, glass bangles, and necklaces of black beads. Strangers are not allowed to enter their hādis or hamlets with shoes or slippers on.In case of death, children are buried, whilst adults are burned. On the occurrence of any untoward event, the whole site is abandoned, and a new hādi set up in the vicinity. The Kādu Kurubas are very active, and capable of enduring great fatigue. It is said that they are revengeful, but, if treated kindly, they will do willing service. The Jēnu Kurubas live in small detached huts in the interior of thick jungles, far away from inhabited places. Their habits are no less wild. The male dress consists of either a woollen kambli or coarse cloth, and a skull cap. The female’s sādi is white coarse cloth, their wonted ornaments being a pair of brass ear-rings, strings of black beads tied round the neck, and glass bangles on the wrist. These people do not allow to outcasts and Musalmans access to their premises, or permit shoes being brought into their houses or streets. They eat flesh, and take meals from Vakkaligas, Lingāyats, and other superior castes. They subsist on wild bamboo seed, edible roots, etc., found in the jungle, often mixed with honey. They are said not unfrequently to make a dessert out of bees in preference to milk, ghī (clarified butter), etc. They are engaged chiefly in felling timber in the forests, and other similar rude pursuits, but they never own or cultivate land for themselves, or keep live-stock of their own. They are very expert in tracking wild animals, and very skilfully elude accidental pursuits thereby. Their children, more than two years old, move about freely in the jungle. They are said to be hospitable to travellers visiting their place at any unusual hour. They are Saivites, and Jangams are their gurus. The ceremonial pollution on account of death lasts for ten days, as with the Brāhmans. Children are buried, while adults, male or female, are cremated. A curious trait of this primitiverace is that the unmarried females of the village or hādi generally sleep in a hut or chāvadi set apart for them, whilst the adult bachelors and children have a separate building, both under the eye of the head tribesman. The hut for the latter is called pundugār chāvadi, meaning literally the abode of vagabonds.” The Jēnu Kurumbas are said to eat, and the Betta Kurumbas to abstain from eating the flesh of the ‘bison’ (Bos gaurus).Kurumbas.Kurumbas.In a note on the Jēnu and Betta Kurumbas of Mysore, Mr. M. Venkatanarnappa writes as follows. “The Betta are better clothed and fed than the Jēn Kurumbas. Their occupation is kumri (burning and shifting) cultivation. Their women are clever at basket-making. They can be distinguished by the method of dress which their women have adopted, and the way in which the men wear their hair. A Betta woman covers her body below the shoulders by tying a long cloth round the arm-pits, leaving shoulders and arms bare, whereas a Jēn woman in good circumstances dresses up like the village females, and, if poor, ties a piece of cloth round her loins, and wears another to partially conceal the upper part of her body. Among males, a Betta Kurumba leaves his hair uncut, and gathers it from fore and aft into a knot tied on the crown of the head. A Jēn Kurumba shaves like the ryots, leaving a tuft behind, or clips or crops it, with a curly or bushy growth to protect the head from heat and cold. The Betta and Jēn Kurumbas never intermarry.” The Betta Kurumbas are, I am told, excellent elephant mahauts (drivers), and very useful at keddah (elephant-catching) operations.Of the Kādu and Betta Kurumbas, as they were at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the followingaccount is given by Buchanan.58“The Cad Curubaru are a rude tribe, who are exceedingly poor and wretched. In the fields near the villages, they build miserable low huts, have a few rags only for clothing, and the hair of both sexes stands out matted like a mop, and swarms with vermin. Some of them hire themselves out as labouring servants to the farmers, and receive monthly wages. Others, in crop seasons, watch the fields at night, to keep off elephants and wild hogs. In the intervals between crops, they work as daily labourers, or go into the woods, and collect the roots of wild yams (Dioscorea), part of which they eat, and part exchange with the farmers for grain. Their manner of driving away the elephant is by running against him with a burning torch made of bamboos. The animal sometimes turns, waits till the Curubaru comes close up; but these poor people, taught by experience, push boldly on, dash their torches against the elephant’s head, who never fails to take to immediate flight. Should their courage fail, and should they attempt to run away, the elephant would immediately pursue, and put them to death. The Curubaru have no means of killing so large an animal, and, on meeting with one in the day-time, are as much alarmed as any other of the inhabitants. During the Sultan’s reign they caught a few in pitfalls. [I have heard of a clever Kurumba, who caught an elephant by growing pumpkins and vegetable marrow, for which elephants have a partiality, over a pit on the outskirts of his field.—E.T.] The wild hogs are driven out of the fields by slings, but they are too fierce for the Curubaru to kill. These people frequently suffer from tigers, against which their wretched huts are a poor defence;and, when this wild beast is urged by hunger, he is regardless of their burning torches. These Curubaru have dogs, with which they catch deer, antelopes, and hares; and they have the art of taking in snares, peacocks, and other esculent birds. They believe that good men, after death, will become benevolent Dēvas, and bad men destructive Dēvas. They are of such known honesty that on all occasions they are entrusted with provisions by the farmers, who are persuaded that the Curubaru would rather starve than take one grain of what was given to them in charge. The spirits of the dead are believed to appear in dreams to their old people, and to direct them to make offerings to a female deity named Bettada Chicama, that is, the mother of the hill. Unless these offerings are made, this goddess occasions sickness. In cases of adultery, the husband flogs his wife severely, and, if he is able, beats her paramour. If he be not able, he applies to the gaudo (headman), who does it for him.” The Betta Curubaru, Buchanan continues, “live in poor huts near the villages, and the chief employment of the men is the cutting of timber, and making of baskets. With a sharp stick they also dig up spots of ground in the skirts of the forest, and sow them with rāgi (Eleusine Coracana). The men watch at night the fields of the farmers, but they are not so dexterous at this as the Cad Curubaru. In this class, the Cutigas are women that prefer another man to their husband, or widows, who do not wish to relinquish carnal enjoyment. Their children are not considered as illegitimate.”Kurumba.Kurumba.Of the casual system of clearing the jungle in vogue among the Kurumbas, I may quote the following description.59“In their search for food, this wild tribenaturally prefers a forest cleared of all undergrowth, in which to move about, and the ingenuity with which they attain this end, and outwit the vigilant forest subordinates, is worthy of a better object. I have heard of a Kurumba walking miles from his hādi or hamlet, with a ball of dry smouldering elephant dung concealed in his waist-cloth. This he carried to the heart of the forest reserve, and, selecting a suitable spot, he placed the smouldering dung, with a plentiful supply of dry inflammable grass over it, in such a position as to allow the wind to play upon it, and fan it into a flame with the pleasing certainty that the smoke from the fire would not be detected by the watchers on the distant fire-lines until the forest was well alight, the flames beyond all control, and the Kurumba himself safe at home in his hādi, awaiting the arrival of the forest subordinate to summon the settlement to assist in the hopeless task of extinguishing the fire.”Kurumba village.Kurumba village.Of the Kurumbas who are found in the Wynād, Calicut, and Ernād tāluks of Malabar, the following account is given in the Gazetteer of that district. “They are sub-divided into Mullu (bamboo) Kurumbans, Jēn or Tēn (honey) Kurumbans, also called Kādu or Shōla Nāyakkans (or Jēnu Koyyo Shōla Nāyakas,i.e., honey-cutting lords of the woods), and Ūrali or Bēt Kurumbans; of which the first-named class, who consider themselves superior to the others, are cultivators and hunters; the second wood-cutters and collectors of honey; and the third make baskets and implements of agriculture. The Mullu and Tēn Kurumbans have headmen with titles of Mūppan and Mudali respectively conferred by their janmis (landlords). The Kurumbans, like many of the other hill-tribes, use bows and arrows, with which they are expert. The caste deity of the Tēn Kurumbans is called Masti. It is perhaps worthremarking that the Ūrali Kurumbans of the Wynaad differ from the other two classes in having no headmen, observing a shorter period of pollution after a birth than any other Malabar tribe and none at all after a death, and in not worshipping any of the Malabar animistic deities.”The chief sub-divisions of the Kurumbas on the Nīlgiris, and in the Wynād, are said, in the Madras Census Report, 1891, to be “Mullu (thorn), Betta or Vetta (hill), Ūrāli (Ūr, a village), Tēn (honey), and Tac’chanādan Mūppan (carpenter headman). Of these, the first and last speak Malayālam, and wear a lock in front of their head in the Malabar fashion. The rest speak Canarese. Ūrāli Kurumbas work in metals.”The villages of the Kurumbas on the Nīlgiri hills are, Mr. Grigg writes,60called mottas. They consist generally of only four or five huts, made of mud and wattle, with thatched roofs. The front of the house is sometimes whitewashed, and ornamented with rude drawings of men and animals in red earth or charcoal. They store their grain in large oval baskets, and for bottles they use gourds. They clear a patch round about the village, and sow the ground with rāgi (Eleusine Coracana), tenne (Setaria italica), or kiri (Amarantus). They dig up roots (called gāsū) for food, and collect the jungle produce, honey, resin, gall-nuts, etc., which they barter with low-country traders, and they are clever in catching game in nets, and dispose of the flesh in a surprisingly short time. Kurumbas occasionally take work on coffee plantations, and some earn a livelihood by officiating as priests to the Badagas. They are also employed as musicians at wedding feasts and funerals of the other tribes, wherethey play on clarionets, drums, and tambourines, as well as the būguri. They make baskets of rattan and milk vessels out of a joint of bamboo, as well as nets of a thread called oilhatti. Their women confine themselves to the limited work of their households, fetching water, cooking, etc. The following extract embraces all that can be said of the religion of the Kurumbas. “Some profess to worship Siva, and occasionally women mark their foreheads with the Siva spot. Others, living near Barliar, worship Kuribattraya (lord of many sheep) and the wife of Siva under the name of Musni. They worship also a rough stone under the name of Hiriadēva, setting it up either in a cave, or in a circle of stones like the so-called Kurumba kōvil of the Badagas, which the latter would seem to have borrowed from the Kurumbas. To this they make pūja, and offer cooked rice at the sowing time. They also profess to sacrifice to Hiriadēva a goat, which they kill at their own houses, after sprinkling water, and eat, giving a portion of flesh to the pūjāri (priest). Others say that they have no pūjāri: among such a scattered tribe customs probably vary in each motta”—(Breeks). It is recorded by Dr. Rivers, in connection with the Toda legendary stories of Kwoten, that “one day Kwoten went with Erten of Keadr, who was spoken of as his servant to Poni, in the direction of Polkat (Calicut). At Poni there is a stream called Palpa, the commencement of which may be seen on the Kundahs. Kwoten and Erten went to drink water out of the stream at a place where a goddess (teu) named Terkosh had been bathing.... Finally, they came to Terkosh, who said to Kwoten, “Do not come near me, I am a teu.” Kwoten paid no heed to this, but said “You are a beautiful woman,” and went and lay with her. Then Terkosh went away to her hill at Poni, where she is now,and to this day the Kurumbas go there once a year and offer plantains to her, and light lamps in her honour.”It is further recorded by Dr. Rivers that “two ceremonial objects are obtained by the Todas from the Kurumbas. One is the tall pole called tadrsi or tadri, which is used in the dance at the second funeral ceremonies, and afterwards burnt. Poles of the proper length are said to grow only on the Malabar side of the Nīlgiris, and are probably most easily obtained from the Kurumbas. The other is the teiks, or funeral post at which the buffalo is killed.” Besides supplying the Badagas with the elephant-pole required at their funerals, the Kurumbas have to sow the first handful of grain for the Badagas every season. The ceremony is thus described by Harkness.61“A family of the Burghers (Badagas) had assembled, which was about to commence ploughing. With them were two or three Kurumbas, one of whom had set up a stone in the centre of the spot on which we were standing, and, decorating it with wild flowers, prostrated himself to it, offered incense, and sacrificed a goat, which had been brought there by the Burghers. He then took the guidance of the plough, and, having ploughed some ten or twelve paces, gave it over, possessed himself of the head of the sacrificed animal, and left the Burghers to prosecute their labours.... The Kurumba, sowing the first handful, leaves the Burgher to go on with the remainder, and, reaping the first sheaf, delivers it with the sickle to him, to accomplish the remainder of the task. At harvest time, or when the whole of the grain has been gathered in, the Kurumba receives his dues, or proportion of the produce.” The relations of the Kurumbas with theBadagas at the present day, and the share which the former take in the ceremonies of the latter, are dealt with in the account of the Badagas.Kurumba cave.Kurumba cave.I am informed that, among the Kurumbas of the Nīlgiris, it is the custom for several brothers to take one wife in common (adelphogamy), and that they do not object to their women being open to others also. There is said to be no marriage rite. A man and woman will mate together, and live as husband and wife. And, if it happens that, in a family, there has been a succession of such wives for one or two generations, it becomes an event, and is celebrated as such. The pair sit together, and pour water over each other from pots. They then put on new cloths, and a feast is partaken of. Among the Shōla Nāyakkars, a feature of the marriage ceremony is said to be for the bride to roll a cheroot of tobacco leaves, which both parties must smoke in turn.Writing concerning the Irulas and Kurumbas, Mr. Walhouse says62that “after every death among them, they bring a long water-worn stone (devva kotta kallu), and put it into one of the old cromlechs sprinkled over the Nīlgiri plateau. Some of the larger of these have been found piled up to the cap-stone with such pebbles, which must have been the work of generations. Occasionally, too, the tribes mentioned make small cromlechs for burial purposes, and place the long water-worn pebbles in them. Mr. Breeks reports that the Kurumbas in the neighbourhood of the Rangasvāmi peak and Barliar burn their dead, and place a bone and a small round stone in the sāvu-mane (death-house)—an old cromlech.” The conjecture is hazarded by Fergusson63that the Kurumbas are the remnant of a great and widelyspread race, who may have erected dolmens. As bearing on the connection between Kurumbas and Kurubas, it is worthy of note that the latter, in some places, erect dolmens as a resting-place for the dead. (SeeKuruba.)It is noted, in the Gazetteer of the Nīlgiris, that the Kurumbas “trade largely on the extraordinary dread of their supposed magical powers which possesses the Todas and the Badagas—the latter especially. Stories are told of how they can summon wild elephants at will, and reduce rocks to powder merely by scattering mystic herbs upon them.”“The Kurumbas,” Harkness writes, “have a knowledge of herbs and medicinal roots, and the Burghers (Badagas) say that they limit their knowledge thereof to those which are noxious only, and believe that, with the assistance of their magic, they are able to convey them into the stomachs of those to whom they have any dislike. The violent antipathy existing between the Burghers and the Kurumbas, and the dread and horror which the former entertain of the preternatural powers of the latter, are, perhaps, not easily accounted for; but neither sickness, death, nor misfortune of any kind, ever visit the former, without the latter having the credit of producing it. A few years before, a Burgher had been hanged by the sentence of the provincial court for the murder of a Kurumba. The act of the former was not without what was considered great provocation. Disease had attacked the inhabitants of the hamlet, a murrain their cattle. The former had carried off a great part of the family of the murderer, and he himself had but narrowly escaped its effects. No one in the neighbourhood doubted that the Kurumba in question had, by his necromancy, caused all this misfortune, and, after several fruitless attempts, a party of them succeeded in surroundinghim in open day, and effecting their purpose.” In 1835 no less than forty-eight Kurumbas were murdered, and a smaller number in 1875 and 1882. In 1900 a whole family of Kurumbas was murdered, of which the head, who had a reputation as a medicine-man, was believed to have brought disease and death into a Badaga village. The sympathies of the whole country-side were so strongly with the murderers that detection was made very difficult, and the persons charged were acquitted.64In this case several Todas were implicated. “It is,” Mr. Grigg writes, “a curious fact that neither Kota, Irula, or Badaga will slay a Kurumba until a Toda has struck the first blow, but, as soon as his sanctity has been violated by a blow, they hasten to complete the murderous work, which the sacred hand of the Toda has begun.” The Badaga’s dread of the Kurumba is said to be so great that a simple threat of vengeance has proved fatal. My Toda guide—a stalwart representative of his tribe—expressed fear of walking from Ootacamund to Kotagiri, a distance of eighteen miles along a highroad, lest he should come to grief at the hands of Kurumbas; but this was really a frivolous excuse to get out of accompanying me to a distance from his domestic hearth. In like manner, Dr. Rivers records that, when he went to Kotagiri, a Toda who was to accompany him made a stipulation that he should be provided with a companion, as the Kurambas were very numerous in that part. In connection with the Toda legend of Ön, who created the buffaloes and the Todas, Dr. Rivers writes that “when Ön saw that his son was in Amnodr (the world of the dead), he did not like to leave him there alone, and decided to go away to the same place. So he called together all thepeople, and the buffaloes and the trees, to come and bid him farewell. All the people came except a man of Kwodrdoni named Arsankutan. He and his family did not come. All the buffaloes came except the Arsaiir, the buffaloes of the Kwodroni ti (sacred dairy). Some trees also failed to come. Ön blessed all the people, buffaloes and trees present, but said that, because Arsankutan had not come, he and his people should die by sorcery at the hands of the Kurumbas, and that, because the Arsaiir had not come, they should be killed by tigers, and that the trees which had not come should bear bitter fruit. Since that time the Todas have feared the Kurumbas, and buffaloes have been killed by tigers.”On the Nīlgiri hills, honey-combs are collected by Jēn Kurumbas and Shōlagas. The supply of honey varies according to the nature of the season, and is said to be especially plentiful and of good quality whenStrobilanthesflowers.65The Kurumbas are said to have incredibly keen eye-sight, gained from constantly watching the bee to his hive. When they find a hive not quite ready to take, they place a couple of sticks in a certain position. This sign will prevent any other Kurumba from taking the honey, and no Badaga or other hillman would meddle with it on any account, for fear of being killed by sorcery.Fortified by a liberal allowance of alcohol and tobacco, the Kurumbas, armed with bamboo torches, will follow up at night the tracks of a wounded ‘bison’ (Bos gaurus), and bring back the head and meat to camp. A European sportsman recounts that he has often seen his Kurumba shikāri (tracker) stop, and, with the one word “honey,” point to the top of an adjacent tree. “How doyou know?” he asked, “Oh! I saw a bee” was the answer given with the greatest nonchalance. On one occasion he found himself close to a swarm of bees. The Kurumba, seeing him hesitate, thrust his stick clean through the swarm, and, with the bare remark “No honey,” marched on. The District Forest Officer, when out shooting, had an easy shot at a stag, and missed it. “There,” said the Kurumba, pointing to a distant tree, “is your bullet.” His trained sense of hearing no doubt enabled him to locate the sound of the bullet striking the tree, and his eyes, following the sound, instantly detected the slight blaze made by the bullet on the bark. The visual acuity of a number of tribes and castes inhabiting the mountains, jungles, and plains, has been determined by Dr. W. H. R. Rivers and myself, by means of the Cohn letter E method. And, though the jungle man, who has to search for his food and mark the tracks or traces of wild beasts, undoubtedly possesses a specially trained keenness of vision for the exigencies of his primitive life, our figures show that, as regards ordinary visual acuity, he has no advantage over the more highly civilised classes.“The Kurumbas of the Mysore forests,” Mr. Theobald writes, “make fire by friction. They follow the same method as the Todas, as described by Mr. Thurston, but never use the powdered charcoal in the cavity of the horizontal piece of wood which is held down by their feet, or by a companion. The fine brown powder, formed during the rotation of the longer vertical piece, gives sufficient tinder, which soon ignites, and is then placed on a small piece of cotton rag, rolled loosely, and gently blown until it is ignited. The vertical stick is held between the palms, and has a reciprocal motion, by the palms being moved in opposite directions, at the sametime using a strong downward pressure, which naturally brings the palms to the bottom, when they are at once raised to their original position, and the operation continued till the naturally formed tinder ignites.”In his report on Forest Administration in Coorg, 1902–1903, Mr. C. D’A. McCarthy writes as follows concerning the Kurumbas, who work for the Forest department. “We experienced in connection with the Kurumbas one of those apparent aberrations of sense and intellect, the occurrence of which amongst this peculiar race was foreshadowed in the last report. The Chief Commissioner is aware that, in the interests of the Kurubas themselves, we substitute for a single cash payment distributions to the same value of food-grains, clothes and cash, in equal proportions of each. Now, seventy years ago, before the annexation of Coorg, the Kurubas and similar castes were prædial slaves of the dominant Coorgs, receiving no other remuneration for service than food and clothing. In fact, this institution, nothing less than real slavery, was not entirely broken up until the great demand for local labour created by the opening up of the country for coffee cultivation so late as 1860–1870, so that the existing generation are still cognisant of the old state of affairs. Last year, during the distribution of rewards for the successful protection of the reserves that season from fire, it seems that the idea was put into the heads of these people that our system of remuneration, which includes the distribution of food and clothing, was an attempt to create again at their expense a system of, as it were, forest slavery; with the result that for a time nothing would induce many of them to accept any form of remuneration for the work already performed, much less to undertake the same duties for the approaching season. It was some time, and afterno little trouble, that the wherefore of this strange conduct was discovered, and the suspicions aroused put at rest.” In his report, 1904–1905, Mr. McCarthy states that “the local system of fire protection, consisting of the utilisation of the Kuruba jungle population for the clearing of fire lines and patrolling, and the payment of rewards according to results, may now be said to be completely established in Coorg. The Kurubas appear to have gained complete confidence in the working of the system, and, provided the superior officers personally see to the payment of the rewards, are evidently quite satisfied that the deductions for failures are just and fair.”The Kurumbas are said to have been very useful in the mining operations during the short life of the Wynād gold-mines. A few years ago, I received the skulls of two Kurumbas, who went after a porcupine into a deserted tunnel on the Glenrock Gold-mining Company’s land in the Wynād. The roof fell in on them, and they were buried alive.In a note on the ‘Ethnogénie des Dravidiens’,66Mr. Louis Lapicque writes as follows. “Les populations caractéristiques du Wainaad sont les Panyer, les négroides les plus accusés et les plus homogenes que j’ai vus, et probablement qui existent dans toute l’Inde. D’autre part, les tribus vivant de leur côté sur leurs propres cultures, fortement négroides encore, mais plus mélangées. Tels sont les Naiker et les Kouroumbas.”——Indice nasal.Indice céphalique.Taille.54 Panyer847415428 Kouroumbas817515712 Naiker8076.9157Concerning Nāyakas or Naikers and Kurumbas, Mr. F. W. F. Fletcher writes to me as follows from Nellakotta, Nīlgiris. “It may be that in some parts of Wynaad there are people known indifferently as Kurumbas and Shola Nāyakas; but I have no hesitation in saying that the Nāyakas in my employ are entirely distinct from the Kurumbas. The two classes do not intermarry; they do not live together; they will not eat together. Even their prejudices with regard to food are different, for a Kurumba will eat bison flesh, and a Nāyaka will not. The latter stoutly maintains that he is entirely distinct from, and far superior to, the Kurumba, and would be grievously offended if he were classed as a Kurumba. The religious ceremonies of the two tribes are also different. The Nāyakas have separate temples, and worship separate gods. The chief Kurumba temple in this part of the country is close to Pandalur, and here, especially at the Bishu feast, the Kurumbas gather in numbers. My Nāyakas do not recognise this temple, but have their place of worship in the heart of the jungle, where they make theirpūja(worship) under the direction of their own priest. The Nāyakas will not attend the funeral of a Kurumba; nor will they invite Kurumbas to the funeral of one of their own tribe. There is a marked variation in their modes of life. The Kurumba of this part lives in comparatively open country, in the belt of deciduous forest lying between the ghāts proper and the foot of the Nīlgiri plateau. Here he has been brought into contact with European Planters, and is, comparatively speaking, civilised. The Nāyaka has his habitat in the dense jungle of the ghāts, and is essentially a forest nomad, living on honey, jungle fruits, and the tuberous roots of certain jungle creepers. By constant association with myself, my Nāyaka men have lost thefear of the white man, which they entertained when I first came into the district; but even now, if I visit the village of a colony who reside in the primæval forest, the women and children will hide themselves in the jungle at sight of me. The superstitions of the two tribes are different. Some Nāyakas are credited with the power of changing themselves at will into a tiger, and of wreaking vengeance on their enemies in that guise. And the Kurumba holds the Nāyaka in as much awe as other castes hold the Kurumba. Lower down, on the flat below the ghāts I am opening a rubber estate, and here I have another Nāyaka colony, who differ in many respects from their congeners above, although the two colonies are within five miles as the crow flies. The low-country Nāyaka does his hair in a knot on one side of his head, Malayālam fashion, and his speech is a patois of Malayālam. The Nāyaka on the hills above has a mop of curly hair, and speaks a dialect of his own quite distinct from the Kurumba language, though both are derived from Kanarese. But that the low-country people are merely a sept of the Nāyaka tribe is evident from the fact that intermarriage is common amongst the two colonies, and that they meet at the same temple for their annual pūja. The priest of the hill colony is the pūjāri for both divisions of the Nāyakas, and the arbiter in all their disputes.”Kurumba (Shōla Naiker).Kurumba (Shōla Naiker).Kurumo.—The Kurumos are a caste of Oriya agriculturists, found mainly in the Russellkonda tāluk of Ganjam. They are called Kurumo by Oriyas, and Kudumo by Telugus. There is a tradition that their name is derived from Srikurmam in the Vizagapatam district, where they officiated as priests in the Siva temple, and whence they were driven northward. The Kurumos say that, at the present day, some membersof the caste are priests at Saivite temples in Ganjam, bear the title Rāvulo, and wear the sacred thread. It is noted in the Madras Census Report, 1901, that “some of them wear the sacred thread, and follow Chaitanya, and Oriya Brāhmans will accept drinking-water at their hands. They will eat in Brāhmans’ houses, and will accept drinking-water from Gaudos, Bhondāris, and Rāvulos.” Bhondāris wash the feet of Kurumos on ceremonial occasions, and, in return for their services, receive twice the number of cakes given to other guests at feasts.In addition to the Kurumos proper, there is a section called Kūji Kurumo, which is regarded as lower in the social status. The caste titles are Bissoyi, Bēhara, Dudi, Majhi, Nāyako, Podhāno, Rāvulo, Ravuto, Sēnāpati, and Udhdhandra. Those who bear the title Dudi are priests at the temples of the village deities. The title Udhdhandra was conferred by a zamindar, and is at present borne by a number of families, intermarriage among members of which is forbidden. Every village has a headman entitled Adhikari, who is under the control of a chief headman called Bēhara. Both these appointments are hereditary.Among other deities, the Kurumos worship various Tākurānis (village deities), such as Bōdo Rāvulo, Bāgha Dēvi, Kumbēswari, and Sathabhavuni. In some places, there are certain marriage restrictions based on the house-gods. For example, a family whose house-god is Bōdo Rāvulo may not intermarry with another family which worships the same deity. Every family of Kurumos apparently keeps the house-god within the house, and it is worshipped on all important occasions. The god is usually represented by five areca nuts, which are kept in a box. These nuts must be filled with pieces ofgold, silver, iron, copper, and lead, which are introduced through a hole drilled in the base of the nut, which is plugged with silver.Infant marriage is the rule, and, if a girl does not secure a husband before she reaches maturity, she has to go through the mock-marriage rite, called dharma bibha, with her grandfather or other elder. On the evening of the day previous to that of the real marriage, called gondo sona, the paternal aunt of the bridegroom goes to a tank (pond), carrying thither a brass vessel. This is placed on the tank bund (embankment), and worshipped. Some cowry (Cypræa arabica) shells are then thrown into the tank, and the vessel is filled with water, and taken to the house. At the entrance thereto, a Sullokhondia Gaudo stands, holding a vessel of water, from which a little water is poured into the vessel brought from the tank. The bride’s aunt then goes to three or five houses of members of her own caste, and receives water therefrom in her vessel, which is placed near the house-gods, and eventually kept on the marriage dais throughout the wedding ceremonies. Over the marriage dais (bēdi) at the bridegroom’s house, four brass vessels, and four clay lamps fed with ghī (clarified butter), are placed at the four corners. Round the four posts thereof seven turns of thread are made by a Brāhman purōhit. The bridegroom, wearing mokkuto (forehead chaplet) and sacred thread, after going seven times round the dais, breaks the thread, and takes his seat thereon. AfterZizyphus Jujubaleaves and rice have been thrown over him, he is taken in procession to a temple. On his return home, he is met by five or seven young girls and women at the entrance to the house, andZizyphusleaves are again thrown over him. A Bhondāri woman sprinkles water from mango leavesover him, and he proceeds in a palanquin to the home of the bride. At the marriage ceremony, the bride throws rice on the head of the bridegroom over a screen which is interposed between them. After their hands have been tied together, a grinding-stone and roller are placed between them, and they face each other while their fingers are linked together above the stone. On the seventh day, the newly married couple worship seven posts at the bride’s house. The various articles used in connection with the marriage ceremonies, except one pot, are thrown into a tank. On his return thence, the bridegroom breaks the pot, after he has been sprinkled with the water contained in it by a Bhondāri. At times of marriage, and on other auspicious occasions, the Kurumos, when they receive their guests, must take hold of their sticks or umbrellas, and it is regarded as an insult if this is not done.On the fifth and eighth days after the birth of a child, a new cloth is spread on the floor, on which the infant is placed, with a book (bāgavatham) close to its head, and an iron rod, such as is used by Oriya castes for branding the skin of the abdomen of newly-born babies, at its side. The relations and friends assemble to take part in the ceremonial, and a Brāhman purōhit reads a purānam. Betel leaves and areca nuts are then distributed. On the twenty-first day, the ceremonial is repeated, and the purōhit is asked to name the child. He ascertains the constellation under which it was born, and announces that a name commencing with a certain letter should be given to it.Like other Oriya castes, the Kurumos are particular with regard to the observation of various vratams (fasts). One, called sudasa vratam, is observed on a Thursday falling on the tenth day after new moon in the monthof Karthika (November-December). The most elderly matron of the house does pūja (worship), and a purānam is read. Seven cubits of a thread dyed with turmeric are measured on the forearm of a girl seven years old, and cut off. The deity is worshipped, and seven knots are made in the piece of thread, which is tied on to the left upper arm of the matron. This vratam is generally observed by Oriya castes.Kurup.—In a note on the artisan classes of Malabar, it is recorded67that “the Kolla-Kurups combine two professions which at first sight seem strangely incongruous, shampooing or massage, and the construction of the characteristic leather shields of Malabar. But the two arts are intimately connected with the system of combined physical training, as we should now call it, and exercise in arms, which formed the curriculum of the kalari (gymnasium), and the title kurup is proper to castes connected with that institution. A similar combination is found in the Vil-Kurups (bow-Kurups), whose traditional profession was to make bows and arrows, and train the youth to use them, and who now shampoo, make umbrellas, and provide bows and arrows for some Nāyar ceremonies. Other classes closely connected are the Kollans or Kurups distinguished by the prefixes Chāya (colour), Palissa (shield), and Tōl (leather), who are at present engaged in work in lacquer, wood, and leather.” Kurup also occurs as a title of Nāyars, in reference to the profession of arms, and many of the families bearing this title are said68to still maintain their kalari.Kuruvikkāran.—The Kuruvikkārans are a class of Marāthi-speaking bird-catchers and beggars, who huntjackals, make bags out of the skin, and eat the flesh thereof. By Telugu people they are called Nakkalavāndlu (jackal people), and by Tamilians Kuruvikkāran (bird-catchers). They are also called Jāngal Jāti and Kāttu Mahrāti. Among themselves they are known as Vagiri or Vagirivala. They are further known as Yeddu Marigē Vētagāndlu, or hunters who hide behind a bullock. In decoying birds, they conceal themselves behind a bullock, and imitate the cries of birds in a most perfect manner. They are said to be called in Hindustani Paradhi and Mīr Shikāri.As regards their origin, there is a legend that there were once upon a time three brothers, one of whom ran away to the mountains, and, mixing with Kanna Kuruvans, became degraded. His descendants are now represented by the Dommaras. The descendants of the second brother are the Lambādis, and those of the third Kuruvikkārans. The lowly position of these three classes is attributed to the fact that the three brothers, when wandering about, came across Sīta, the wife of Rāma, about whose personal charms they made remarks, and laughed. This made Sīta angry, and she uttered the following curse:—“Mālitho shikar, naitho bhikar,”i.e., if (birds) are found, huntsmen; if not, beggars. According to a variant of the legend,69many years ago in Rājputāna there lived two brothers, the elder of whom was dull, and the younger smart. One day they happened to be driving a bullock along a path by the side of a pool of water, when they surprised Sīta bathing. The younger brother hid behind his bullock, but the elder was too stupid to conceal himself, and so both were observed by the goddess, who was muchannoyed, and banished them to Southern India. The elder she ordered to live by carrying goods about the country on pack-bullocks, and the younger to catch birds by means of two snares, which she obligingly formed from hair plucked from under her arm. Consequently the Vagirivalas never shave that portion of the body.The Kuruvikkārans are nomadic, and keep pack-bullocks, which convey their huts and domestic utensils from place to place. Some earn their living by collecting firewood, and others by acting as watchmen in fields and gardens. Women and children go about the streets begging, and singing songs, which are very popular, and imitated by Hindu women. They further earn a livelihood by hawking needles and glass beads, which they may be seen in the evening purchasing from Kayalans (Muhammadan merchants) in the Madras bazar.One of the occupations of the Kuruvikkārans is the manufacture and sale of spurious jackal horns, known as narikompu. To catch the jackals, they make an enclosure of a net, inside which a man seats himself, armed with a big stick. He then proceeds to execute a perfect imitation of the jackal’s cry, on hearing which the jackals come running to see what is the matter, and are beaten down. A Kuruvikkāran, whom the Rev. E. Löventhal interviewed, howled like a jackal, to show his skill as a mimic. The cry was quite perfect, and no jackal would have doubted that he belonged to their class. Sometimes the entire jackal’s head is sold, skin and all. The process of manufacture of the horn is as follows. After the brain has been removed, the skin is stripped off a limited area of the skull, and the bone at the place of junction of the sagittal and lambdoid suturesabove the occipital foramen is filed away, so that only a point, like a bony outgrowth, is left. The skin is then brought back, and pressed over the little horn, which pierces it. The horn is also said to be made out of the molar tooth of a dog or jackal, introduced through a small hole in a piece of jackal’s skin, round which a little blood or turmeric paste is smeared, to make it look more natural. In most cases only the horn, with a small piece of skull and skin, is sold. Sometimes, instead of the skin from the part where the horn is made, a piece of skin is taken from the snout, where the long black hairs are. The horn then appears surrounded by long black bushy hairs. The Kuruvikkārans explain that, when they see a jackal with such long hairs on the top of its head, they know that it possesses a horn. A horn-vendor, whom I interviewed, assured me that the possessor of a horn is a small jackal, which comes out of its hiding-place on full-moon nights to drink the dew. According to another version, the horn is only possessed by the leader of a pack of jackals. The Sinhalese and Tamils alike regard the horn “as a talisman, and believe that its fortunate possessor can command the realisation of every wish. Those who have jewels to conceal rest in perfect security if, along with them, they can deposit a narricomboo.”70The ayah (nurse) of a friend who possessed such a talisman remarked “Master going into any law-court, sure to win the case.” This, as has been pointed out, does not show much faith in the British administration of justice, if a so-called jackal’s horn can turn the scale. Two spurious horns, which I possessed, were promptly stolen from my study table, to bring luck to some Tamil member of my establishment.Some Kuruvikkārans carry suspended from their turban or body-cloth a small whistle, with which they imitate the song of birds, and attract them. Young boys often have with them a bundle of small sticks strung together, and with a horse-hair noose attached to them. The sticks are driven into the ground, and grain is strewn around to entice birds, which get caught in the noose.The women wear a petticoat and an ill-fitting bodice. Among other classes “Wearing the bodice like a Kuruvikkāran woman” is used as a taunt. The petticoat may never be taken off till it is tattered and torn, and replaced by a new one; and, when a woman bathes, she has to do so with the garment on. Anything which has come in contact with the petticoat, or rice husked with a woman’s feet, is polluted, and may not be used by men. Women adorn themselves with necklaces of beads and cowry shells, or sometimes, like the Lambādis, wear shell bracelets. Both men and women stain their teeth with a preparation of myrabolams,Acacia arabicapods, and sulphates of copper and iron. Females may not blacken their teeth, or wear a necklace of black beads before marriage.A young married woman, wherever she may be during the daytime, must rejoin her husband at night. If she fails to do so, she has to go through the ordeal of grasping a red-hot iron bar or sickle, and carrying it sixteen paces without dropping it. Another form of ordeal is dipping the hands in a pot containing boiling cowdung water, and picking out therefrom a quarter-anna piece. If the woman is innocent, she is able to husk a small quantity of paddy (rice) by rubbing it between her hands immediately after the immersion in the liquid. If a man has to submit to trial by ordeal, seven arka (Calotropis gigantea) leaves are tied to his palm, and a piece of red-hotiron placed thereon. His innocence is established if he is able to carry it while he takes seven long strides.The Kuruvikkārans have exogamous septs, of which Rānaratōd seems to be an important one, taking a high place in the social scale. Males usually add the title Sing as a suffix to their names.Marriage is always between adults, and the celebration, including the betrothal ceremony, extends over five days, during which meat is avoided, and the bride keeps her face concealed by throwing her cloth over it. Sometimes she continues to thus veil herself for a short time after marriage. On the first day, after the exchange of betel, the father of the bride says “Are you ready to receive my daughter as your daughter-in-law into your house? I am giving her to your son. Take care of her. Do not beat her when she is ill. If she cannot carry water, you should help her. If you beat her, or ill-treat her in any way, she will come back to us.” The future father-in-law having promised that the girl will be kindly treated, the bridegroom says “I am true, and have not touched any other woman. I have not smiled at any girl whom I have seen. Your daughter should not smile at any man whom she sees. If she does so, I shall drive her back to your house.” In the course of the marriage ceremonies, the bride is taken to the home of her mother-in-law, to whom she makes a present of a new cloth. The Nyavya (headman) hands a string of black beads to the mother-in-law, who ties it round the bride’s neck, while the assembled women sing. At a marriage of the first daughter of a member of the Rānaratōd sept, a Brāhman purōhit is invited to be present, and give his blessing, as it is believed that a Gujarāti Brāhman was originally employed for the marriage celebration.The principal tribal deity of the Kuruvikkārans is Kāli or Durga, and each sept possesses a small plate with a figure of the goddess engraved on it, which is usually kept in the custody of the headman. It is, however, frequently pledged, and money-lenders give considerable sums on the security of the idol, as the Kuruvikkārans would on no account fail to redeem it. When the time for the annual festival of the goddess draws nigh, the headman or an elder piles upVigna Catiangseeds in five small heaps. He then decides in his mind whether there is an odd or even number of seeds in the majority of heaps. If, when the seeds are counted, the result agrees with his forecast, it is taken as a sign of the approval of the goddess, and arrangements are made for the festival. Otherwise it is abandoned for the year. On the day of the festival, nine goats and a buffalo are sacrificed. While some cakes are being cooked in oil, a member of the tribe prays that the goddess will descend on him, and, taking some of the cakes out of the boiling liquid, with his palm rubs the oil on his head. He is then questioned by those assembled, to whom he gives oracular replies, after sucking the blood from the cut throat of a goat. It is noted in the North Arcot Manual that the Vagirivalas assemble two or three times in the year at Varadāreddipalli for worship. The objects of this are three saktis called Mahan Kāli, Chāmundi, and Mahammāyi, represented by small silver figures, which are mortgaged to a Reddi of the village, and lent by him during the few days of the festival.Kūsa.—A sub-division of Holeyas in South Canara, who also call themselves Uppāra. Some of them say that they are the same as Uppāras of Mysore, whose hereditary occupation was the manufacture of saltfrom salt-earth (ku, earth). Kūsa further occurs as a synonym of the Otattu, or tile-making section of the Nāyars, and Kūsa Mārān as a class of potters in Travancore. Kūsa is also an exogamous sept of the Bōyas.Kusavan.—The Kusavans are the Tamil potters. “The name,” Mr. H. A. Stuart writes,71“is said to be derived from the Sanskrit word ku signifying earth, the material in which they work, and avan, a personal termination. They wear the sacred thread, and profess both Saivism and Vaishnavism. Their ceremonials are somewhat like those of the Vellālas. The eating of flesh is permitted, but not widow marriage. Some have priests of their own caste, while others employ Brāhmans. Kusavans sometimes officiate as pūjaris in Pidāri temples. Their titles are Udayan and Vēlān. Their stupidity and ignorance are proverbial.” At times of census, Kulālan has been returned as a synonym of Kusavan, and Kusavan as an occupational division of Paraiyans. The Kusavans are divided into the territorial sections Chōla, Chēra, and Pāndya, and say that “these are descended from the three sons of their original ancestor Kulālan, who was the son of Brahma. He prayed to Brahma to be allowed, like him, to create and destroy things daily; so Brahma made him a potter.”72In ancient days, the potters made the large pyriform sepulchral urns, which have, in recent times, been excavated in Tinnevelly, Madura, Malabar, and elsewhere. Dr. G. U. Pope shows73that these urns are mentioned in connection with the burial of heroes and kings as late as the eighth century A.D., andrenders one of the Tamil songs bearing on the subject as follows:—

Kurumba.Kurumba.Mysore Census Report, 1891—Kādu Kuruba or Kurumba.—“The tribal name of Kuruba has been traced to the primeval occupation of the race, viz., the tending of sheep, perhaps when pre-historic man rose to the pastoral stage. The Uru or civilised Kurubas, who are genuine tillers of the soil, and who are dotted over the country in populous and thriving communities, and many of whom have, under the present ‘Pax Britannica,’ further developed into enterprising tradesmen and withal lettered Government officials, are the very antipodes of the Kādu or wild Kurubas or Kurumbas. The latter, like the Iruligās and Sōligās, are the denizens of the backwoods of the country, and have been correctly classed under the aboriginal population. The Tamilised name of Kurumba is applied to certain clans dwelling on the heights of the Nīlgiris, who are doubtless the offshoots of the aboriginal Kādu Kuruba stock found in Mysore.”W. R. King. Aboriginal Tribes of the Nilgiri Hills—”Kurumbas.—This tribe is of another race from the shepherd Kurumbas. The Nīlgiri tribe have neither cattle nor sheep, and in language, dress, and customs, have no affinity whatever with their namesakes.”G. Oppert. Original Inhabitants of India—”Kurubas or Kurumbas.—However separated from each other, and scattered among the Dravidian clans with whom they have dwelt, and however distant from one another they still live, there is hardly a province in the whole of Bharatavarasha which cannot produce, if not some living remnants of this race, at least some remains of past times which prove their presence. Indeed, the Kurumbas must be regarded as very old inhabitants of this land, who can contest with their Dravidian kinsmen the priority of occupation of the Indian soil. The terms Kuruba and Kurumba are originally identical, though the one form is, in different places, employed for the other, and has thus occasionally assumed a special local meaning. Mr. H. B. Grigg appears to contradict himself when, while speaking of the Kurumbas, he says that ‘in the low country they are called Kurubas or Cūrubāru, and are divided into such families as Ānē or elephant, Nāya or dog, Māle or hill Kurumbas.’56Such a distinction between mountain Kurumbas and plain Kurumbas cannot be established. The Rev. G. Richter will find it difficult to prove that the Kurubas of Mysore are only called so as shepherds, and that no connection exists between these Kurubas and the Kurumbas. Mr. Lewis Rice calls the wild tribes as well as the shepherds Kurubas, but seems to overlook the fact that both terms are identical, and refer to only the ethnological distinction.”The above extracts will suffice for the purpose of showing that the distinction between the jungle Kurumbas and the more civilised Kurubas, and their relationship towards each other, call for a ‘permanent settlement.’ And I may briefly place on record the results of anthropometric observations on the jungle Kurumbas of the Nīlgiris, and the domesticated Kurubas of Mysore and the Bellary district, whose stature and nasal index (two factors of primary importance) are compared with those of the jungle Paniyans of Malabar and Kādirs of the Ānaimalai mountains—Stature.Nasal index.Average.Average.Maximum.cm.Kurubas, Bellary162.774.992Kurubas, Mysore163.973.286Kurumbas, Nilgiris157.588.8111Paniyans157.495.1108Kādirs151.789115A glance at the above table at once shows that there is a closer affinity between the three dark-skinned, short, platyrhine jungle tribes, than between the jungle Kurumbas and the lighter-skinned, taller, and more leptorhine Kurubas.The domesticated Kurubas are dealt with separately, and, in the remarks which follow, I am dealing solely with the jungle Kurumbas.The Kādu, or wild Kurumbas of Mysore are divided into “(a) Betta or hill Kurumbas, with sub-divisions called Ānē (elephant), Bevina (nīm tree:Melia Azadirachta), and Kolli (fire-brand)—a small and active race, capable of great fatigue, who are expert woodmen; (b) Jēnu or honey Kurumbas, said to be a darker andinferior race, who employ themselves in collecting honey and bees-wax.”57For the following note on the Kādu Kurumbas I am indebted to the Mysore Census Report, 1891. “There are two clans among them, viz., Bettada and Jēnu. The former worship the forest deities Nārāli and Māstamma; eat flesh and “drink liquor, a favourite beverage being prepared from rāgi (Eleusine Coracana) flour. Some of their habits and customs are worth mentioning, as indicating their plane of civilization. They have two forms of marriage. One is similar to the elaborate ceremony among the Vakkaligas, while the other is the simple one of a formal exchange of betel leaves and areca nuts, which concludes the nuptials. The Kādu Kurubas can only eat meals prepared by members of the higher castes. During their periodical illnesses, the females live outside the limits of the Hādi (group of rude huts) for three days. And, in cases of childbirth, none but the wet nurse or other attendant enters the room of the confined woman for ten days. In cases of sickness, no medical treatment is resorted to; on the other hand, exorcisms, charms, incantations, and animal sacrifices are more generally in vogue. The male’s dress consists of either a bit of cloth to cover their nudity, or a piece of coarse cloth tied round the waist, and reaching to the knees. They wear ornaments of gold, silver, or brass. They are their own barbers, and use broken glass for razors. The females wear coarse cloth four yards long, and have their foreheads tattooed in dots of two or three horizontal lines, and wear ear-rings, glass bangles, and necklaces of black beads. Strangers are not allowed to enter their hādis or hamlets with shoes or slippers on.In case of death, children are buried, whilst adults are burned. On the occurrence of any untoward event, the whole site is abandoned, and a new hādi set up in the vicinity. The Kādu Kurubas are very active, and capable of enduring great fatigue. It is said that they are revengeful, but, if treated kindly, they will do willing service. The Jēnu Kurubas live in small detached huts in the interior of thick jungles, far away from inhabited places. Their habits are no less wild. The male dress consists of either a woollen kambli or coarse cloth, and a skull cap. The female’s sādi is white coarse cloth, their wonted ornaments being a pair of brass ear-rings, strings of black beads tied round the neck, and glass bangles on the wrist. These people do not allow to outcasts and Musalmans access to their premises, or permit shoes being brought into their houses or streets. They eat flesh, and take meals from Vakkaligas, Lingāyats, and other superior castes. They subsist on wild bamboo seed, edible roots, etc., found in the jungle, often mixed with honey. They are said not unfrequently to make a dessert out of bees in preference to milk, ghī (clarified butter), etc. They are engaged chiefly in felling timber in the forests, and other similar rude pursuits, but they never own or cultivate land for themselves, or keep live-stock of their own. They are very expert in tracking wild animals, and very skilfully elude accidental pursuits thereby. Their children, more than two years old, move about freely in the jungle. They are said to be hospitable to travellers visiting their place at any unusual hour. They are Saivites, and Jangams are their gurus. The ceremonial pollution on account of death lasts for ten days, as with the Brāhmans. Children are buried, while adults, male or female, are cremated. A curious trait of this primitiverace is that the unmarried females of the village or hādi generally sleep in a hut or chāvadi set apart for them, whilst the adult bachelors and children have a separate building, both under the eye of the head tribesman. The hut for the latter is called pundugār chāvadi, meaning literally the abode of vagabonds.” The Jēnu Kurumbas are said to eat, and the Betta Kurumbas to abstain from eating the flesh of the ‘bison’ (Bos gaurus).Kurumbas.Kurumbas.In a note on the Jēnu and Betta Kurumbas of Mysore, Mr. M. Venkatanarnappa writes as follows. “The Betta are better clothed and fed than the Jēn Kurumbas. Their occupation is kumri (burning and shifting) cultivation. Their women are clever at basket-making. They can be distinguished by the method of dress which their women have adopted, and the way in which the men wear their hair. A Betta woman covers her body below the shoulders by tying a long cloth round the arm-pits, leaving shoulders and arms bare, whereas a Jēn woman in good circumstances dresses up like the village females, and, if poor, ties a piece of cloth round her loins, and wears another to partially conceal the upper part of her body. Among males, a Betta Kurumba leaves his hair uncut, and gathers it from fore and aft into a knot tied on the crown of the head. A Jēn Kurumba shaves like the ryots, leaving a tuft behind, or clips or crops it, with a curly or bushy growth to protect the head from heat and cold. The Betta and Jēn Kurumbas never intermarry.” The Betta Kurumbas are, I am told, excellent elephant mahauts (drivers), and very useful at keddah (elephant-catching) operations.Of the Kādu and Betta Kurumbas, as they were at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the followingaccount is given by Buchanan.58“The Cad Curubaru are a rude tribe, who are exceedingly poor and wretched. In the fields near the villages, they build miserable low huts, have a few rags only for clothing, and the hair of both sexes stands out matted like a mop, and swarms with vermin. Some of them hire themselves out as labouring servants to the farmers, and receive monthly wages. Others, in crop seasons, watch the fields at night, to keep off elephants and wild hogs. In the intervals between crops, they work as daily labourers, or go into the woods, and collect the roots of wild yams (Dioscorea), part of which they eat, and part exchange with the farmers for grain. Their manner of driving away the elephant is by running against him with a burning torch made of bamboos. The animal sometimes turns, waits till the Curubaru comes close up; but these poor people, taught by experience, push boldly on, dash their torches against the elephant’s head, who never fails to take to immediate flight. Should their courage fail, and should they attempt to run away, the elephant would immediately pursue, and put them to death. The Curubaru have no means of killing so large an animal, and, on meeting with one in the day-time, are as much alarmed as any other of the inhabitants. During the Sultan’s reign they caught a few in pitfalls. [I have heard of a clever Kurumba, who caught an elephant by growing pumpkins and vegetable marrow, for which elephants have a partiality, over a pit on the outskirts of his field.—E.T.] The wild hogs are driven out of the fields by slings, but they are too fierce for the Curubaru to kill. These people frequently suffer from tigers, against which their wretched huts are a poor defence;and, when this wild beast is urged by hunger, he is regardless of their burning torches. These Curubaru have dogs, with which they catch deer, antelopes, and hares; and they have the art of taking in snares, peacocks, and other esculent birds. They believe that good men, after death, will become benevolent Dēvas, and bad men destructive Dēvas. They are of such known honesty that on all occasions they are entrusted with provisions by the farmers, who are persuaded that the Curubaru would rather starve than take one grain of what was given to them in charge. The spirits of the dead are believed to appear in dreams to their old people, and to direct them to make offerings to a female deity named Bettada Chicama, that is, the mother of the hill. Unless these offerings are made, this goddess occasions sickness. In cases of adultery, the husband flogs his wife severely, and, if he is able, beats her paramour. If he be not able, he applies to the gaudo (headman), who does it for him.” The Betta Curubaru, Buchanan continues, “live in poor huts near the villages, and the chief employment of the men is the cutting of timber, and making of baskets. With a sharp stick they also dig up spots of ground in the skirts of the forest, and sow them with rāgi (Eleusine Coracana). The men watch at night the fields of the farmers, but they are not so dexterous at this as the Cad Curubaru. In this class, the Cutigas are women that prefer another man to their husband, or widows, who do not wish to relinquish carnal enjoyment. Their children are not considered as illegitimate.”Kurumba.Kurumba.Of the casual system of clearing the jungle in vogue among the Kurumbas, I may quote the following description.59“In their search for food, this wild tribenaturally prefers a forest cleared of all undergrowth, in which to move about, and the ingenuity with which they attain this end, and outwit the vigilant forest subordinates, is worthy of a better object. I have heard of a Kurumba walking miles from his hādi or hamlet, with a ball of dry smouldering elephant dung concealed in his waist-cloth. This he carried to the heart of the forest reserve, and, selecting a suitable spot, he placed the smouldering dung, with a plentiful supply of dry inflammable grass over it, in such a position as to allow the wind to play upon it, and fan it into a flame with the pleasing certainty that the smoke from the fire would not be detected by the watchers on the distant fire-lines until the forest was well alight, the flames beyond all control, and the Kurumba himself safe at home in his hādi, awaiting the arrival of the forest subordinate to summon the settlement to assist in the hopeless task of extinguishing the fire.”Kurumba village.Kurumba village.Of the Kurumbas who are found in the Wynād, Calicut, and Ernād tāluks of Malabar, the following account is given in the Gazetteer of that district. “They are sub-divided into Mullu (bamboo) Kurumbans, Jēn or Tēn (honey) Kurumbans, also called Kādu or Shōla Nāyakkans (or Jēnu Koyyo Shōla Nāyakas,i.e., honey-cutting lords of the woods), and Ūrali or Bēt Kurumbans; of which the first-named class, who consider themselves superior to the others, are cultivators and hunters; the second wood-cutters and collectors of honey; and the third make baskets and implements of agriculture. The Mullu and Tēn Kurumbans have headmen with titles of Mūppan and Mudali respectively conferred by their janmis (landlords). The Kurumbans, like many of the other hill-tribes, use bows and arrows, with which they are expert. The caste deity of the Tēn Kurumbans is called Masti. It is perhaps worthremarking that the Ūrali Kurumbans of the Wynaad differ from the other two classes in having no headmen, observing a shorter period of pollution after a birth than any other Malabar tribe and none at all after a death, and in not worshipping any of the Malabar animistic deities.”The chief sub-divisions of the Kurumbas on the Nīlgiris, and in the Wynād, are said, in the Madras Census Report, 1891, to be “Mullu (thorn), Betta or Vetta (hill), Ūrāli (Ūr, a village), Tēn (honey), and Tac’chanādan Mūppan (carpenter headman). Of these, the first and last speak Malayālam, and wear a lock in front of their head in the Malabar fashion. The rest speak Canarese. Ūrāli Kurumbas work in metals.”The villages of the Kurumbas on the Nīlgiri hills are, Mr. Grigg writes,60called mottas. They consist generally of only four or five huts, made of mud and wattle, with thatched roofs. The front of the house is sometimes whitewashed, and ornamented with rude drawings of men and animals in red earth or charcoal. They store their grain in large oval baskets, and for bottles they use gourds. They clear a patch round about the village, and sow the ground with rāgi (Eleusine Coracana), tenne (Setaria italica), or kiri (Amarantus). They dig up roots (called gāsū) for food, and collect the jungle produce, honey, resin, gall-nuts, etc., which they barter with low-country traders, and they are clever in catching game in nets, and dispose of the flesh in a surprisingly short time. Kurumbas occasionally take work on coffee plantations, and some earn a livelihood by officiating as priests to the Badagas. They are also employed as musicians at wedding feasts and funerals of the other tribes, wherethey play on clarionets, drums, and tambourines, as well as the būguri. They make baskets of rattan and milk vessels out of a joint of bamboo, as well as nets of a thread called oilhatti. Their women confine themselves to the limited work of their households, fetching water, cooking, etc. The following extract embraces all that can be said of the religion of the Kurumbas. “Some profess to worship Siva, and occasionally women mark their foreheads with the Siva spot. Others, living near Barliar, worship Kuribattraya (lord of many sheep) and the wife of Siva under the name of Musni. They worship also a rough stone under the name of Hiriadēva, setting it up either in a cave, or in a circle of stones like the so-called Kurumba kōvil of the Badagas, which the latter would seem to have borrowed from the Kurumbas. To this they make pūja, and offer cooked rice at the sowing time. They also profess to sacrifice to Hiriadēva a goat, which they kill at their own houses, after sprinkling water, and eat, giving a portion of flesh to the pūjāri (priest). Others say that they have no pūjāri: among such a scattered tribe customs probably vary in each motta”—(Breeks). It is recorded by Dr. Rivers, in connection with the Toda legendary stories of Kwoten, that “one day Kwoten went with Erten of Keadr, who was spoken of as his servant to Poni, in the direction of Polkat (Calicut). At Poni there is a stream called Palpa, the commencement of which may be seen on the Kundahs. Kwoten and Erten went to drink water out of the stream at a place where a goddess (teu) named Terkosh had been bathing.... Finally, they came to Terkosh, who said to Kwoten, “Do not come near me, I am a teu.” Kwoten paid no heed to this, but said “You are a beautiful woman,” and went and lay with her. Then Terkosh went away to her hill at Poni, where she is now,and to this day the Kurumbas go there once a year and offer plantains to her, and light lamps in her honour.”It is further recorded by Dr. Rivers that “two ceremonial objects are obtained by the Todas from the Kurumbas. One is the tall pole called tadrsi or tadri, which is used in the dance at the second funeral ceremonies, and afterwards burnt. Poles of the proper length are said to grow only on the Malabar side of the Nīlgiris, and are probably most easily obtained from the Kurumbas. The other is the teiks, or funeral post at which the buffalo is killed.” Besides supplying the Badagas with the elephant-pole required at their funerals, the Kurumbas have to sow the first handful of grain for the Badagas every season. The ceremony is thus described by Harkness.61“A family of the Burghers (Badagas) had assembled, which was about to commence ploughing. With them were two or three Kurumbas, one of whom had set up a stone in the centre of the spot on which we were standing, and, decorating it with wild flowers, prostrated himself to it, offered incense, and sacrificed a goat, which had been brought there by the Burghers. He then took the guidance of the plough, and, having ploughed some ten or twelve paces, gave it over, possessed himself of the head of the sacrificed animal, and left the Burghers to prosecute their labours.... The Kurumba, sowing the first handful, leaves the Burgher to go on with the remainder, and, reaping the first sheaf, delivers it with the sickle to him, to accomplish the remainder of the task. At harvest time, or when the whole of the grain has been gathered in, the Kurumba receives his dues, or proportion of the produce.” The relations of the Kurumbas with theBadagas at the present day, and the share which the former take in the ceremonies of the latter, are dealt with in the account of the Badagas.Kurumba cave.Kurumba cave.I am informed that, among the Kurumbas of the Nīlgiris, it is the custom for several brothers to take one wife in common (adelphogamy), and that they do not object to their women being open to others also. There is said to be no marriage rite. A man and woman will mate together, and live as husband and wife. And, if it happens that, in a family, there has been a succession of such wives for one or two generations, it becomes an event, and is celebrated as such. The pair sit together, and pour water over each other from pots. They then put on new cloths, and a feast is partaken of. Among the Shōla Nāyakkars, a feature of the marriage ceremony is said to be for the bride to roll a cheroot of tobacco leaves, which both parties must smoke in turn.Writing concerning the Irulas and Kurumbas, Mr. Walhouse says62that “after every death among them, they bring a long water-worn stone (devva kotta kallu), and put it into one of the old cromlechs sprinkled over the Nīlgiri plateau. Some of the larger of these have been found piled up to the cap-stone with such pebbles, which must have been the work of generations. Occasionally, too, the tribes mentioned make small cromlechs for burial purposes, and place the long water-worn pebbles in them. Mr. Breeks reports that the Kurumbas in the neighbourhood of the Rangasvāmi peak and Barliar burn their dead, and place a bone and a small round stone in the sāvu-mane (death-house)—an old cromlech.” The conjecture is hazarded by Fergusson63that the Kurumbas are the remnant of a great and widelyspread race, who may have erected dolmens. As bearing on the connection between Kurumbas and Kurubas, it is worthy of note that the latter, in some places, erect dolmens as a resting-place for the dead. (SeeKuruba.)It is noted, in the Gazetteer of the Nīlgiris, that the Kurumbas “trade largely on the extraordinary dread of their supposed magical powers which possesses the Todas and the Badagas—the latter especially. Stories are told of how they can summon wild elephants at will, and reduce rocks to powder merely by scattering mystic herbs upon them.”“The Kurumbas,” Harkness writes, “have a knowledge of herbs and medicinal roots, and the Burghers (Badagas) say that they limit their knowledge thereof to those which are noxious only, and believe that, with the assistance of their magic, they are able to convey them into the stomachs of those to whom they have any dislike. The violent antipathy existing between the Burghers and the Kurumbas, and the dread and horror which the former entertain of the preternatural powers of the latter, are, perhaps, not easily accounted for; but neither sickness, death, nor misfortune of any kind, ever visit the former, without the latter having the credit of producing it. A few years before, a Burgher had been hanged by the sentence of the provincial court for the murder of a Kurumba. The act of the former was not without what was considered great provocation. Disease had attacked the inhabitants of the hamlet, a murrain their cattle. The former had carried off a great part of the family of the murderer, and he himself had but narrowly escaped its effects. No one in the neighbourhood doubted that the Kurumba in question had, by his necromancy, caused all this misfortune, and, after several fruitless attempts, a party of them succeeded in surroundinghim in open day, and effecting their purpose.” In 1835 no less than forty-eight Kurumbas were murdered, and a smaller number in 1875 and 1882. In 1900 a whole family of Kurumbas was murdered, of which the head, who had a reputation as a medicine-man, was believed to have brought disease and death into a Badaga village. The sympathies of the whole country-side were so strongly with the murderers that detection was made very difficult, and the persons charged were acquitted.64In this case several Todas were implicated. “It is,” Mr. Grigg writes, “a curious fact that neither Kota, Irula, or Badaga will slay a Kurumba until a Toda has struck the first blow, but, as soon as his sanctity has been violated by a blow, they hasten to complete the murderous work, which the sacred hand of the Toda has begun.” The Badaga’s dread of the Kurumba is said to be so great that a simple threat of vengeance has proved fatal. My Toda guide—a stalwart representative of his tribe—expressed fear of walking from Ootacamund to Kotagiri, a distance of eighteen miles along a highroad, lest he should come to grief at the hands of Kurumbas; but this was really a frivolous excuse to get out of accompanying me to a distance from his domestic hearth. In like manner, Dr. Rivers records that, when he went to Kotagiri, a Toda who was to accompany him made a stipulation that he should be provided with a companion, as the Kurambas were very numerous in that part. In connection with the Toda legend of Ön, who created the buffaloes and the Todas, Dr. Rivers writes that “when Ön saw that his son was in Amnodr (the world of the dead), he did not like to leave him there alone, and decided to go away to the same place. So he called together all thepeople, and the buffaloes and the trees, to come and bid him farewell. All the people came except a man of Kwodrdoni named Arsankutan. He and his family did not come. All the buffaloes came except the Arsaiir, the buffaloes of the Kwodroni ti (sacred dairy). Some trees also failed to come. Ön blessed all the people, buffaloes and trees present, but said that, because Arsankutan had not come, he and his people should die by sorcery at the hands of the Kurumbas, and that, because the Arsaiir had not come, they should be killed by tigers, and that the trees which had not come should bear bitter fruit. Since that time the Todas have feared the Kurumbas, and buffaloes have been killed by tigers.”On the Nīlgiri hills, honey-combs are collected by Jēn Kurumbas and Shōlagas. The supply of honey varies according to the nature of the season, and is said to be especially plentiful and of good quality whenStrobilanthesflowers.65The Kurumbas are said to have incredibly keen eye-sight, gained from constantly watching the bee to his hive. When they find a hive not quite ready to take, they place a couple of sticks in a certain position. This sign will prevent any other Kurumba from taking the honey, and no Badaga or other hillman would meddle with it on any account, for fear of being killed by sorcery.Fortified by a liberal allowance of alcohol and tobacco, the Kurumbas, armed with bamboo torches, will follow up at night the tracks of a wounded ‘bison’ (Bos gaurus), and bring back the head and meat to camp. A European sportsman recounts that he has often seen his Kurumba shikāri (tracker) stop, and, with the one word “honey,” point to the top of an adjacent tree. “How doyou know?” he asked, “Oh! I saw a bee” was the answer given with the greatest nonchalance. On one occasion he found himself close to a swarm of bees. The Kurumba, seeing him hesitate, thrust his stick clean through the swarm, and, with the bare remark “No honey,” marched on. The District Forest Officer, when out shooting, had an easy shot at a stag, and missed it. “There,” said the Kurumba, pointing to a distant tree, “is your bullet.” His trained sense of hearing no doubt enabled him to locate the sound of the bullet striking the tree, and his eyes, following the sound, instantly detected the slight blaze made by the bullet on the bark. The visual acuity of a number of tribes and castes inhabiting the mountains, jungles, and plains, has been determined by Dr. W. H. R. Rivers and myself, by means of the Cohn letter E method. And, though the jungle man, who has to search for his food and mark the tracks or traces of wild beasts, undoubtedly possesses a specially trained keenness of vision for the exigencies of his primitive life, our figures show that, as regards ordinary visual acuity, he has no advantage over the more highly civilised classes.“The Kurumbas of the Mysore forests,” Mr. Theobald writes, “make fire by friction. They follow the same method as the Todas, as described by Mr. Thurston, but never use the powdered charcoal in the cavity of the horizontal piece of wood which is held down by their feet, or by a companion. The fine brown powder, formed during the rotation of the longer vertical piece, gives sufficient tinder, which soon ignites, and is then placed on a small piece of cotton rag, rolled loosely, and gently blown until it is ignited. The vertical stick is held between the palms, and has a reciprocal motion, by the palms being moved in opposite directions, at the sametime using a strong downward pressure, which naturally brings the palms to the bottom, when they are at once raised to their original position, and the operation continued till the naturally formed tinder ignites.”In his report on Forest Administration in Coorg, 1902–1903, Mr. C. D’A. McCarthy writes as follows concerning the Kurumbas, who work for the Forest department. “We experienced in connection with the Kurumbas one of those apparent aberrations of sense and intellect, the occurrence of which amongst this peculiar race was foreshadowed in the last report. The Chief Commissioner is aware that, in the interests of the Kurubas themselves, we substitute for a single cash payment distributions to the same value of food-grains, clothes and cash, in equal proportions of each. Now, seventy years ago, before the annexation of Coorg, the Kurubas and similar castes were prædial slaves of the dominant Coorgs, receiving no other remuneration for service than food and clothing. In fact, this institution, nothing less than real slavery, was not entirely broken up until the great demand for local labour created by the opening up of the country for coffee cultivation so late as 1860–1870, so that the existing generation are still cognisant of the old state of affairs. Last year, during the distribution of rewards for the successful protection of the reserves that season from fire, it seems that the idea was put into the heads of these people that our system of remuneration, which includes the distribution of food and clothing, was an attempt to create again at their expense a system of, as it were, forest slavery; with the result that for a time nothing would induce many of them to accept any form of remuneration for the work already performed, much less to undertake the same duties for the approaching season. It was some time, and afterno little trouble, that the wherefore of this strange conduct was discovered, and the suspicions aroused put at rest.” In his report, 1904–1905, Mr. McCarthy states that “the local system of fire protection, consisting of the utilisation of the Kuruba jungle population for the clearing of fire lines and patrolling, and the payment of rewards according to results, may now be said to be completely established in Coorg. The Kurubas appear to have gained complete confidence in the working of the system, and, provided the superior officers personally see to the payment of the rewards, are evidently quite satisfied that the deductions for failures are just and fair.”The Kurumbas are said to have been very useful in the mining operations during the short life of the Wynād gold-mines. A few years ago, I received the skulls of two Kurumbas, who went after a porcupine into a deserted tunnel on the Glenrock Gold-mining Company’s land in the Wynād. The roof fell in on them, and they were buried alive.In a note on the ‘Ethnogénie des Dravidiens’,66Mr. Louis Lapicque writes as follows. “Les populations caractéristiques du Wainaad sont les Panyer, les négroides les plus accusés et les plus homogenes que j’ai vus, et probablement qui existent dans toute l’Inde. D’autre part, les tribus vivant de leur côté sur leurs propres cultures, fortement négroides encore, mais plus mélangées. Tels sont les Naiker et les Kouroumbas.”——Indice nasal.Indice céphalique.Taille.54 Panyer847415428 Kouroumbas817515712 Naiker8076.9157Concerning Nāyakas or Naikers and Kurumbas, Mr. F. W. F. Fletcher writes to me as follows from Nellakotta, Nīlgiris. “It may be that in some parts of Wynaad there are people known indifferently as Kurumbas and Shola Nāyakas; but I have no hesitation in saying that the Nāyakas in my employ are entirely distinct from the Kurumbas. The two classes do not intermarry; they do not live together; they will not eat together. Even their prejudices with regard to food are different, for a Kurumba will eat bison flesh, and a Nāyaka will not. The latter stoutly maintains that he is entirely distinct from, and far superior to, the Kurumba, and would be grievously offended if he were classed as a Kurumba. The religious ceremonies of the two tribes are also different. The Nāyakas have separate temples, and worship separate gods. The chief Kurumba temple in this part of the country is close to Pandalur, and here, especially at the Bishu feast, the Kurumbas gather in numbers. My Nāyakas do not recognise this temple, but have their place of worship in the heart of the jungle, where they make theirpūja(worship) under the direction of their own priest. The Nāyakas will not attend the funeral of a Kurumba; nor will they invite Kurumbas to the funeral of one of their own tribe. There is a marked variation in their modes of life. The Kurumba of this part lives in comparatively open country, in the belt of deciduous forest lying between the ghāts proper and the foot of the Nīlgiri plateau. Here he has been brought into contact with European Planters, and is, comparatively speaking, civilised. The Nāyaka has his habitat in the dense jungle of the ghāts, and is essentially a forest nomad, living on honey, jungle fruits, and the tuberous roots of certain jungle creepers. By constant association with myself, my Nāyaka men have lost thefear of the white man, which they entertained when I first came into the district; but even now, if I visit the village of a colony who reside in the primæval forest, the women and children will hide themselves in the jungle at sight of me. The superstitions of the two tribes are different. Some Nāyakas are credited with the power of changing themselves at will into a tiger, and of wreaking vengeance on their enemies in that guise. And the Kurumba holds the Nāyaka in as much awe as other castes hold the Kurumba. Lower down, on the flat below the ghāts I am opening a rubber estate, and here I have another Nāyaka colony, who differ in many respects from their congeners above, although the two colonies are within five miles as the crow flies. The low-country Nāyaka does his hair in a knot on one side of his head, Malayālam fashion, and his speech is a patois of Malayālam. The Nāyaka on the hills above has a mop of curly hair, and speaks a dialect of his own quite distinct from the Kurumba language, though both are derived from Kanarese. But that the low-country people are merely a sept of the Nāyaka tribe is evident from the fact that intermarriage is common amongst the two colonies, and that they meet at the same temple for their annual pūja. The priest of the hill colony is the pūjāri for both divisions of the Nāyakas, and the arbiter in all their disputes.”Kurumba (Shōla Naiker).Kurumba (Shōla Naiker).Kurumo.—The Kurumos are a caste of Oriya agriculturists, found mainly in the Russellkonda tāluk of Ganjam. They are called Kurumo by Oriyas, and Kudumo by Telugus. There is a tradition that their name is derived from Srikurmam in the Vizagapatam district, where they officiated as priests in the Siva temple, and whence they were driven northward. The Kurumos say that, at the present day, some membersof the caste are priests at Saivite temples in Ganjam, bear the title Rāvulo, and wear the sacred thread. It is noted in the Madras Census Report, 1901, that “some of them wear the sacred thread, and follow Chaitanya, and Oriya Brāhmans will accept drinking-water at their hands. They will eat in Brāhmans’ houses, and will accept drinking-water from Gaudos, Bhondāris, and Rāvulos.” Bhondāris wash the feet of Kurumos on ceremonial occasions, and, in return for their services, receive twice the number of cakes given to other guests at feasts.In addition to the Kurumos proper, there is a section called Kūji Kurumo, which is regarded as lower in the social status. The caste titles are Bissoyi, Bēhara, Dudi, Majhi, Nāyako, Podhāno, Rāvulo, Ravuto, Sēnāpati, and Udhdhandra. Those who bear the title Dudi are priests at the temples of the village deities. The title Udhdhandra was conferred by a zamindar, and is at present borne by a number of families, intermarriage among members of which is forbidden. Every village has a headman entitled Adhikari, who is under the control of a chief headman called Bēhara. Both these appointments are hereditary.Among other deities, the Kurumos worship various Tākurānis (village deities), such as Bōdo Rāvulo, Bāgha Dēvi, Kumbēswari, and Sathabhavuni. In some places, there are certain marriage restrictions based on the house-gods. For example, a family whose house-god is Bōdo Rāvulo may not intermarry with another family which worships the same deity. Every family of Kurumos apparently keeps the house-god within the house, and it is worshipped on all important occasions. The god is usually represented by five areca nuts, which are kept in a box. These nuts must be filled with pieces ofgold, silver, iron, copper, and lead, which are introduced through a hole drilled in the base of the nut, which is plugged with silver.Infant marriage is the rule, and, if a girl does not secure a husband before she reaches maturity, she has to go through the mock-marriage rite, called dharma bibha, with her grandfather or other elder. On the evening of the day previous to that of the real marriage, called gondo sona, the paternal aunt of the bridegroom goes to a tank (pond), carrying thither a brass vessel. This is placed on the tank bund (embankment), and worshipped. Some cowry (Cypræa arabica) shells are then thrown into the tank, and the vessel is filled with water, and taken to the house. At the entrance thereto, a Sullokhondia Gaudo stands, holding a vessel of water, from which a little water is poured into the vessel brought from the tank. The bride’s aunt then goes to three or five houses of members of her own caste, and receives water therefrom in her vessel, which is placed near the house-gods, and eventually kept on the marriage dais throughout the wedding ceremonies. Over the marriage dais (bēdi) at the bridegroom’s house, four brass vessels, and four clay lamps fed with ghī (clarified butter), are placed at the four corners. Round the four posts thereof seven turns of thread are made by a Brāhman purōhit. The bridegroom, wearing mokkuto (forehead chaplet) and sacred thread, after going seven times round the dais, breaks the thread, and takes his seat thereon. AfterZizyphus Jujubaleaves and rice have been thrown over him, he is taken in procession to a temple. On his return home, he is met by five or seven young girls and women at the entrance to the house, andZizyphusleaves are again thrown over him. A Bhondāri woman sprinkles water from mango leavesover him, and he proceeds in a palanquin to the home of the bride. At the marriage ceremony, the bride throws rice on the head of the bridegroom over a screen which is interposed between them. After their hands have been tied together, a grinding-stone and roller are placed between them, and they face each other while their fingers are linked together above the stone. On the seventh day, the newly married couple worship seven posts at the bride’s house. The various articles used in connection with the marriage ceremonies, except one pot, are thrown into a tank. On his return thence, the bridegroom breaks the pot, after he has been sprinkled with the water contained in it by a Bhondāri. At times of marriage, and on other auspicious occasions, the Kurumos, when they receive their guests, must take hold of their sticks or umbrellas, and it is regarded as an insult if this is not done.On the fifth and eighth days after the birth of a child, a new cloth is spread on the floor, on which the infant is placed, with a book (bāgavatham) close to its head, and an iron rod, such as is used by Oriya castes for branding the skin of the abdomen of newly-born babies, at its side. The relations and friends assemble to take part in the ceremonial, and a Brāhman purōhit reads a purānam. Betel leaves and areca nuts are then distributed. On the twenty-first day, the ceremonial is repeated, and the purōhit is asked to name the child. He ascertains the constellation under which it was born, and announces that a name commencing with a certain letter should be given to it.Like other Oriya castes, the Kurumos are particular with regard to the observation of various vratams (fasts). One, called sudasa vratam, is observed on a Thursday falling on the tenth day after new moon in the monthof Karthika (November-December). The most elderly matron of the house does pūja (worship), and a purānam is read. Seven cubits of a thread dyed with turmeric are measured on the forearm of a girl seven years old, and cut off. The deity is worshipped, and seven knots are made in the piece of thread, which is tied on to the left upper arm of the matron. This vratam is generally observed by Oriya castes.Kurup.—In a note on the artisan classes of Malabar, it is recorded67that “the Kolla-Kurups combine two professions which at first sight seem strangely incongruous, shampooing or massage, and the construction of the characteristic leather shields of Malabar. But the two arts are intimately connected with the system of combined physical training, as we should now call it, and exercise in arms, which formed the curriculum of the kalari (gymnasium), and the title kurup is proper to castes connected with that institution. A similar combination is found in the Vil-Kurups (bow-Kurups), whose traditional profession was to make bows and arrows, and train the youth to use them, and who now shampoo, make umbrellas, and provide bows and arrows for some Nāyar ceremonies. Other classes closely connected are the Kollans or Kurups distinguished by the prefixes Chāya (colour), Palissa (shield), and Tōl (leather), who are at present engaged in work in lacquer, wood, and leather.” Kurup also occurs as a title of Nāyars, in reference to the profession of arms, and many of the families bearing this title are said68to still maintain their kalari.Kuruvikkāran.—The Kuruvikkārans are a class of Marāthi-speaking bird-catchers and beggars, who huntjackals, make bags out of the skin, and eat the flesh thereof. By Telugu people they are called Nakkalavāndlu (jackal people), and by Tamilians Kuruvikkāran (bird-catchers). They are also called Jāngal Jāti and Kāttu Mahrāti. Among themselves they are known as Vagiri or Vagirivala. They are further known as Yeddu Marigē Vētagāndlu, or hunters who hide behind a bullock. In decoying birds, they conceal themselves behind a bullock, and imitate the cries of birds in a most perfect manner. They are said to be called in Hindustani Paradhi and Mīr Shikāri.As regards their origin, there is a legend that there were once upon a time three brothers, one of whom ran away to the mountains, and, mixing with Kanna Kuruvans, became degraded. His descendants are now represented by the Dommaras. The descendants of the second brother are the Lambādis, and those of the third Kuruvikkārans. The lowly position of these three classes is attributed to the fact that the three brothers, when wandering about, came across Sīta, the wife of Rāma, about whose personal charms they made remarks, and laughed. This made Sīta angry, and she uttered the following curse:—“Mālitho shikar, naitho bhikar,”i.e., if (birds) are found, huntsmen; if not, beggars. According to a variant of the legend,69many years ago in Rājputāna there lived two brothers, the elder of whom was dull, and the younger smart. One day they happened to be driving a bullock along a path by the side of a pool of water, when they surprised Sīta bathing. The younger brother hid behind his bullock, but the elder was too stupid to conceal himself, and so both were observed by the goddess, who was muchannoyed, and banished them to Southern India. The elder she ordered to live by carrying goods about the country on pack-bullocks, and the younger to catch birds by means of two snares, which she obligingly formed from hair plucked from under her arm. Consequently the Vagirivalas never shave that portion of the body.The Kuruvikkārans are nomadic, and keep pack-bullocks, which convey their huts and domestic utensils from place to place. Some earn their living by collecting firewood, and others by acting as watchmen in fields and gardens. Women and children go about the streets begging, and singing songs, which are very popular, and imitated by Hindu women. They further earn a livelihood by hawking needles and glass beads, which they may be seen in the evening purchasing from Kayalans (Muhammadan merchants) in the Madras bazar.One of the occupations of the Kuruvikkārans is the manufacture and sale of spurious jackal horns, known as narikompu. To catch the jackals, they make an enclosure of a net, inside which a man seats himself, armed with a big stick. He then proceeds to execute a perfect imitation of the jackal’s cry, on hearing which the jackals come running to see what is the matter, and are beaten down. A Kuruvikkāran, whom the Rev. E. Löventhal interviewed, howled like a jackal, to show his skill as a mimic. The cry was quite perfect, and no jackal would have doubted that he belonged to their class. Sometimes the entire jackal’s head is sold, skin and all. The process of manufacture of the horn is as follows. After the brain has been removed, the skin is stripped off a limited area of the skull, and the bone at the place of junction of the sagittal and lambdoid suturesabove the occipital foramen is filed away, so that only a point, like a bony outgrowth, is left. The skin is then brought back, and pressed over the little horn, which pierces it. The horn is also said to be made out of the molar tooth of a dog or jackal, introduced through a small hole in a piece of jackal’s skin, round which a little blood or turmeric paste is smeared, to make it look more natural. In most cases only the horn, with a small piece of skull and skin, is sold. Sometimes, instead of the skin from the part where the horn is made, a piece of skin is taken from the snout, where the long black hairs are. The horn then appears surrounded by long black bushy hairs. The Kuruvikkārans explain that, when they see a jackal with such long hairs on the top of its head, they know that it possesses a horn. A horn-vendor, whom I interviewed, assured me that the possessor of a horn is a small jackal, which comes out of its hiding-place on full-moon nights to drink the dew. According to another version, the horn is only possessed by the leader of a pack of jackals. The Sinhalese and Tamils alike regard the horn “as a talisman, and believe that its fortunate possessor can command the realisation of every wish. Those who have jewels to conceal rest in perfect security if, along with them, they can deposit a narricomboo.”70The ayah (nurse) of a friend who possessed such a talisman remarked “Master going into any law-court, sure to win the case.” This, as has been pointed out, does not show much faith in the British administration of justice, if a so-called jackal’s horn can turn the scale. Two spurious horns, which I possessed, were promptly stolen from my study table, to bring luck to some Tamil member of my establishment.Some Kuruvikkārans carry suspended from their turban or body-cloth a small whistle, with which they imitate the song of birds, and attract them. Young boys often have with them a bundle of small sticks strung together, and with a horse-hair noose attached to them. The sticks are driven into the ground, and grain is strewn around to entice birds, which get caught in the noose.The women wear a petticoat and an ill-fitting bodice. Among other classes “Wearing the bodice like a Kuruvikkāran woman” is used as a taunt. The petticoat may never be taken off till it is tattered and torn, and replaced by a new one; and, when a woman bathes, she has to do so with the garment on. Anything which has come in contact with the petticoat, or rice husked with a woman’s feet, is polluted, and may not be used by men. Women adorn themselves with necklaces of beads and cowry shells, or sometimes, like the Lambādis, wear shell bracelets. Both men and women stain their teeth with a preparation of myrabolams,Acacia arabicapods, and sulphates of copper and iron. Females may not blacken their teeth, or wear a necklace of black beads before marriage.A young married woman, wherever she may be during the daytime, must rejoin her husband at night. If she fails to do so, she has to go through the ordeal of grasping a red-hot iron bar or sickle, and carrying it sixteen paces without dropping it. Another form of ordeal is dipping the hands in a pot containing boiling cowdung water, and picking out therefrom a quarter-anna piece. If the woman is innocent, she is able to husk a small quantity of paddy (rice) by rubbing it between her hands immediately after the immersion in the liquid. If a man has to submit to trial by ordeal, seven arka (Calotropis gigantea) leaves are tied to his palm, and a piece of red-hotiron placed thereon. His innocence is established if he is able to carry it while he takes seven long strides.The Kuruvikkārans have exogamous septs, of which Rānaratōd seems to be an important one, taking a high place in the social scale. Males usually add the title Sing as a suffix to their names.Marriage is always between adults, and the celebration, including the betrothal ceremony, extends over five days, during which meat is avoided, and the bride keeps her face concealed by throwing her cloth over it. Sometimes she continues to thus veil herself for a short time after marriage. On the first day, after the exchange of betel, the father of the bride says “Are you ready to receive my daughter as your daughter-in-law into your house? I am giving her to your son. Take care of her. Do not beat her when she is ill. If she cannot carry water, you should help her. If you beat her, or ill-treat her in any way, she will come back to us.” The future father-in-law having promised that the girl will be kindly treated, the bridegroom says “I am true, and have not touched any other woman. I have not smiled at any girl whom I have seen. Your daughter should not smile at any man whom she sees. If she does so, I shall drive her back to your house.” In the course of the marriage ceremonies, the bride is taken to the home of her mother-in-law, to whom she makes a present of a new cloth. The Nyavya (headman) hands a string of black beads to the mother-in-law, who ties it round the bride’s neck, while the assembled women sing. At a marriage of the first daughter of a member of the Rānaratōd sept, a Brāhman purōhit is invited to be present, and give his blessing, as it is believed that a Gujarāti Brāhman was originally employed for the marriage celebration.The principal tribal deity of the Kuruvikkārans is Kāli or Durga, and each sept possesses a small plate with a figure of the goddess engraved on it, which is usually kept in the custody of the headman. It is, however, frequently pledged, and money-lenders give considerable sums on the security of the idol, as the Kuruvikkārans would on no account fail to redeem it. When the time for the annual festival of the goddess draws nigh, the headman or an elder piles upVigna Catiangseeds in five small heaps. He then decides in his mind whether there is an odd or even number of seeds in the majority of heaps. If, when the seeds are counted, the result agrees with his forecast, it is taken as a sign of the approval of the goddess, and arrangements are made for the festival. Otherwise it is abandoned for the year. On the day of the festival, nine goats and a buffalo are sacrificed. While some cakes are being cooked in oil, a member of the tribe prays that the goddess will descend on him, and, taking some of the cakes out of the boiling liquid, with his palm rubs the oil on his head. He is then questioned by those assembled, to whom he gives oracular replies, after sucking the blood from the cut throat of a goat. It is noted in the North Arcot Manual that the Vagirivalas assemble two or three times in the year at Varadāreddipalli for worship. The objects of this are three saktis called Mahan Kāli, Chāmundi, and Mahammāyi, represented by small silver figures, which are mortgaged to a Reddi of the village, and lent by him during the few days of the festival.Kūsa.—A sub-division of Holeyas in South Canara, who also call themselves Uppāra. Some of them say that they are the same as Uppāras of Mysore, whose hereditary occupation was the manufacture of saltfrom salt-earth (ku, earth). Kūsa further occurs as a synonym of the Otattu, or tile-making section of the Nāyars, and Kūsa Mārān as a class of potters in Travancore. Kūsa is also an exogamous sept of the Bōyas.Kusavan.—The Kusavans are the Tamil potters. “The name,” Mr. H. A. Stuart writes,71“is said to be derived from the Sanskrit word ku signifying earth, the material in which they work, and avan, a personal termination. They wear the sacred thread, and profess both Saivism and Vaishnavism. Their ceremonials are somewhat like those of the Vellālas. The eating of flesh is permitted, but not widow marriage. Some have priests of their own caste, while others employ Brāhmans. Kusavans sometimes officiate as pūjaris in Pidāri temples. Their titles are Udayan and Vēlān. Their stupidity and ignorance are proverbial.” At times of census, Kulālan has been returned as a synonym of Kusavan, and Kusavan as an occupational division of Paraiyans. The Kusavans are divided into the territorial sections Chōla, Chēra, and Pāndya, and say that “these are descended from the three sons of their original ancestor Kulālan, who was the son of Brahma. He prayed to Brahma to be allowed, like him, to create and destroy things daily; so Brahma made him a potter.”72In ancient days, the potters made the large pyriform sepulchral urns, which have, in recent times, been excavated in Tinnevelly, Madura, Malabar, and elsewhere. Dr. G. U. Pope shows73that these urns are mentioned in connection with the burial of heroes and kings as late as the eighth century A.D., andrenders one of the Tamil songs bearing on the subject as follows:—

Kurumba.Kurumba.

Kurumba.

Mysore Census Report, 1891—Kādu Kuruba or Kurumba.—“The tribal name of Kuruba has been traced to the primeval occupation of the race, viz., the tending of sheep, perhaps when pre-historic man rose to the pastoral stage. The Uru or civilised Kurubas, who are genuine tillers of the soil, and who are dotted over the country in populous and thriving communities, and many of whom have, under the present ‘Pax Britannica,’ further developed into enterprising tradesmen and withal lettered Government officials, are the very antipodes of the Kādu or wild Kurubas or Kurumbas. The latter, like the Iruligās and Sōligās, are the denizens of the backwoods of the country, and have been correctly classed under the aboriginal population. The Tamilised name of Kurumba is applied to certain clans dwelling on the heights of the Nīlgiris, who are doubtless the offshoots of the aboriginal Kādu Kuruba stock found in Mysore.”

W. R. King. Aboriginal Tribes of the Nilgiri Hills—”Kurumbas.—This tribe is of another race from the shepherd Kurumbas. The Nīlgiri tribe have neither cattle nor sheep, and in language, dress, and customs, have no affinity whatever with their namesakes.”

G. Oppert. Original Inhabitants of India—”Kurubas or Kurumbas.—However separated from each other, and scattered among the Dravidian clans with whom they have dwelt, and however distant from one another they still live, there is hardly a province in the whole of Bharatavarasha which cannot produce, if not some living remnants of this race, at least some remains of past times which prove their presence. Indeed, the Kurumbas must be regarded as very old inhabitants of this land, who can contest with their Dravidian kinsmen the priority of occupation of the Indian soil. The terms Kuruba and Kurumba are originally identical, though the one form is, in different places, employed for the other, and has thus occasionally assumed a special local meaning. Mr. H. B. Grigg appears to contradict himself when, while speaking of the Kurumbas, he says that ‘in the low country they are called Kurubas or Cūrubāru, and are divided into such families as Ānē or elephant, Nāya or dog, Māle or hill Kurumbas.’56Such a distinction between mountain Kurumbas and plain Kurumbas cannot be established. The Rev. G. Richter will find it difficult to prove that the Kurubas of Mysore are only called so as shepherds, and that no connection exists between these Kurubas and the Kurumbas. Mr. Lewis Rice calls the wild tribes as well as the shepherds Kurubas, but seems to overlook the fact that both terms are identical, and refer to only the ethnological distinction.”

The above extracts will suffice for the purpose of showing that the distinction between the jungle Kurumbas and the more civilised Kurubas, and their relationship towards each other, call for a ‘permanent settlement.’ And I may briefly place on record the results of anthropometric observations on the jungle Kurumbas of the Nīlgiris, and the domesticated Kurubas of Mysore and the Bellary district, whose stature and nasal index (two factors of primary importance) are compared with those of the jungle Paniyans of Malabar and Kādirs of the Ānaimalai mountains—

Stature.Nasal index.Average.Average.Maximum.cm.Kurubas, Bellary162.774.992Kurubas, Mysore163.973.286Kurumbas, Nilgiris157.588.8111Paniyans157.495.1108Kādirs151.789115

A glance at the above table at once shows that there is a closer affinity between the three dark-skinned, short, platyrhine jungle tribes, than between the jungle Kurumbas and the lighter-skinned, taller, and more leptorhine Kurubas.

The domesticated Kurubas are dealt with separately, and, in the remarks which follow, I am dealing solely with the jungle Kurumbas.

The Kādu, or wild Kurumbas of Mysore are divided into “(a) Betta or hill Kurumbas, with sub-divisions called Ānē (elephant), Bevina (nīm tree:Melia Azadirachta), and Kolli (fire-brand)—a small and active race, capable of great fatigue, who are expert woodmen; (b) Jēnu or honey Kurumbas, said to be a darker andinferior race, who employ themselves in collecting honey and bees-wax.”57

For the following note on the Kādu Kurumbas I am indebted to the Mysore Census Report, 1891. “There are two clans among them, viz., Bettada and Jēnu. The former worship the forest deities Nārāli and Māstamma; eat flesh and “drink liquor, a favourite beverage being prepared from rāgi (Eleusine Coracana) flour. Some of their habits and customs are worth mentioning, as indicating their plane of civilization. They have two forms of marriage. One is similar to the elaborate ceremony among the Vakkaligas, while the other is the simple one of a formal exchange of betel leaves and areca nuts, which concludes the nuptials. The Kādu Kurubas can only eat meals prepared by members of the higher castes. During their periodical illnesses, the females live outside the limits of the Hādi (group of rude huts) for three days. And, in cases of childbirth, none but the wet nurse or other attendant enters the room of the confined woman for ten days. In cases of sickness, no medical treatment is resorted to; on the other hand, exorcisms, charms, incantations, and animal sacrifices are more generally in vogue. The male’s dress consists of either a bit of cloth to cover their nudity, or a piece of coarse cloth tied round the waist, and reaching to the knees. They wear ornaments of gold, silver, or brass. They are their own barbers, and use broken glass for razors. The females wear coarse cloth four yards long, and have their foreheads tattooed in dots of two or three horizontal lines, and wear ear-rings, glass bangles, and necklaces of black beads. Strangers are not allowed to enter their hādis or hamlets with shoes or slippers on.In case of death, children are buried, whilst adults are burned. On the occurrence of any untoward event, the whole site is abandoned, and a new hādi set up in the vicinity. The Kādu Kurubas are very active, and capable of enduring great fatigue. It is said that they are revengeful, but, if treated kindly, they will do willing service. The Jēnu Kurubas live in small detached huts in the interior of thick jungles, far away from inhabited places. Their habits are no less wild. The male dress consists of either a woollen kambli or coarse cloth, and a skull cap. The female’s sādi is white coarse cloth, their wonted ornaments being a pair of brass ear-rings, strings of black beads tied round the neck, and glass bangles on the wrist. These people do not allow to outcasts and Musalmans access to their premises, or permit shoes being brought into their houses or streets. They eat flesh, and take meals from Vakkaligas, Lingāyats, and other superior castes. They subsist on wild bamboo seed, edible roots, etc., found in the jungle, often mixed with honey. They are said not unfrequently to make a dessert out of bees in preference to milk, ghī (clarified butter), etc. They are engaged chiefly in felling timber in the forests, and other similar rude pursuits, but they never own or cultivate land for themselves, or keep live-stock of their own. They are very expert in tracking wild animals, and very skilfully elude accidental pursuits thereby. Their children, more than two years old, move about freely in the jungle. They are said to be hospitable to travellers visiting their place at any unusual hour. They are Saivites, and Jangams are their gurus. The ceremonial pollution on account of death lasts for ten days, as with the Brāhmans. Children are buried, while adults, male or female, are cremated. A curious trait of this primitiverace is that the unmarried females of the village or hādi generally sleep in a hut or chāvadi set apart for them, whilst the adult bachelors and children have a separate building, both under the eye of the head tribesman. The hut for the latter is called pundugār chāvadi, meaning literally the abode of vagabonds.” The Jēnu Kurumbas are said to eat, and the Betta Kurumbas to abstain from eating the flesh of the ‘bison’ (Bos gaurus).

Kurumbas.Kurumbas.

Kurumbas.

In a note on the Jēnu and Betta Kurumbas of Mysore, Mr. M. Venkatanarnappa writes as follows. “The Betta are better clothed and fed than the Jēn Kurumbas. Their occupation is kumri (burning and shifting) cultivation. Their women are clever at basket-making. They can be distinguished by the method of dress which their women have adopted, and the way in which the men wear their hair. A Betta woman covers her body below the shoulders by tying a long cloth round the arm-pits, leaving shoulders and arms bare, whereas a Jēn woman in good circumstances dresses up like the village females, and, if poor, ties a piece of cloth round her loins, and wears another to partially conceal the upper part of her body. Among males, a Betta Kurumba leaves his hair uncut, and gathers it from fore and aft into a knot tied on the crown of the head. A Jēn Kurumba shaves like the ryots, leaving a tuft behind, or clips or crops it, with a curly or bushy growth to protect the head from heat and cold. The Betta and Jēn Kurumbas never intermarry.” The Betta Kurumbas are, I am told, excellent elephant mahauts (drivers), and very useful at keddah (elephant-catching) operations.

Of the Kādu and Betta Kurumbas, as they were at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the followingaccount is given by Buchanan.58“The Cad Curubaru are a rude tribe, who are exceedingly poor and wretched. In the fields near the villages, they build miserable low huts, have a few rags only for clothing, and the hair of both sexes stands out matted like a mop, and swarms with vermin. Some of them hire themselves out as labouring servants to the farmers, and receive monthly wages. Others, in crop seasons, watch the fields at night, to keep off elephants and wild hogs. In the intervals between crops, they work as daily labourers, or go into the woods, and collect the roots of wild yams (Dioscorea), part of which they eat, and part exchange with the farmers for grain. Their manner of driving away the elephant is by running against him with a burning torch made of bamboos. The animal sometimes turns, waits till the Curubaru comes close up; but these poor people, taught by experience, push boldly on, dash their torches against the elephant’s head, who never fails to take to immediate flight. Should their courage fail, and should they attempt to run away, the elephant would immediately pursue, and put them to death. The Curubaru have no means of killing so large an animal, and, on meeting with one in the day-time, are as much alarmed as any other of the inhabitants. During the Sultan’s reign they caught a few in pitfalls. [I have heard of a clever Kurumba, who caught an elephant by growing pumpkins and vegetable marrow, for which elephants have a partiality, over a pit on the outskirts of his field.—E.T.] The wild hogs are driven out of the fields by slings, but they are too fierce for the Curubaru to kill. These people frequently suffer from tigers, against which their wretched huts are a poor defence;and, when this wild beast is urged by hunger, he is regardless of their burning torches. These Curubaru have dogs, with which they catch deer, antelopes, and hares; and they have the art of taking in snares, peacocks, and other esculent birds. They believe that good men, after death, will become benevolent Dēvas, and bad men destructive Dēvas. They are of such known honesty that on all occasions they are entrusted with provisions by the farmers, who are persuaded that the Curubaru would rather starve than take one grain of what was given to them in charge. The spirits of the dead are believed to appear in dreams to their old people, and to direct them to make offerings to a female deity named Bettada Chicama, that is, the mother of the hill. Unless these offerings are made, this goddess occasions sickness. In cases of adultery, the husband flogs his wife severely, and, if he is able, beats her paramour. If he be not able, he applies to the gaudo (headman), who does it for him.” The Betta Curubaru, Buchanan continues, “live in poor huts near the villages, and the chief employment of the men is the cutting of timber, and making of baskets. With a sharp stick they also dig up spots of ground in the skirts of the forest, and sow them with rāgi (Eleusine Coracana). The men watch at night the fields of the farmers, but they are not so dexterous at this as the Cad Curubaru. In this class, the Cutigas are women that prefer another man to their husband, or widows, who do not wish to relinquish carnal enjoyment. Their children are not considered as illegitimate.”

Kurumba.Kurumba.

Kurumba.

Of the casual system of clearing the jungle in vogue among the Kurumbas, I may quote the following description.59“In their search for food, this wild tribenaturally prefers a forest cleared of all undergrowth, in which to move about, and the ingenuity with which they attain this end, and outwit the vigilant forest subordinates, is worthy of a better object. I have heard of a Kurumba walking miles from his hādi or hamlet, with a ball of dry smouldering elephant dung concealed in his waist-cloth. This he carried to the heart of the forest reserve, and, selecting a suitable spot, he placed the smouldering dung, with a plentiful supply of dry inflammable grass over it, in such a position as to allow the wind to play upon it, and fan it into a flame with the pleasing certainty that the smoke from the fire would not be detected by the watchers on the distant fire-lines until the forest was well alight, the flames beyond all control, and the Kurumba himself safe at home in his hādi, awaiting the arrival of the forest subordinate to summon the settlement to assist in the hopeless task of extinguishing the fire.”

Kurumba village.Kurumba village.

Kurumba village.

Of the Kurumbas who are found in the Wynād, Calicut, and Ernād tāluks of Malabar, the following account is given in the Gazetteer of that district. “They are sub-divided into Mullu (bamboo) Kurumbans, Jēn or Tēn (honey) Kurumbans, also called Kādu or Shōla Nāyakkans (or Jēnu Koyyo Shōla Nāyakas,i.e., honey-cutting lords of the woods), and Ūrali or Bēt Kurumbans; of which the first-named class, who consider themselves superior to the others, are cultivators and hunters; the second wood-cutters and collectors of honey; and the third make baskets and implements of agriculture. The Mullu and Tēn Kurumbans have headmen with titles of Mūppan and Mudali respectively conferred by their janmis (landlords). The Kurumbans, like many of the other hill-tribes, use bows and arrows, with which they are expert. The caste deity of the Tēn Kurumbans is called Masti. It is perhaps worthremarking that the Ūrali Kurumbans of the Wynaad differ from the other two classes in having no headmen, observing a shorter period of pollution after a birth than any other Malabar tribe and none at all after a death, and in not worshipping any of the Malabar animistic deities.”

The chief sub-divisions of the Kurumbas on the Nīlgiris, and in the Wynād, are said, in the Madras Census Report, 1891, to be “Mullu (thorn), Betta or Vetta (hill), Ūrāli (Ūr, a village), Tēn (honey), and Tac’chanādan Mūppan (carpenter headman). Of these, the first and last speak Malayālam, and wear a lock in front of their head in the Malabar fashion. The rest speak Canarese. Ūrāli Kurumbas work in metals.”

The villages of the Kurumbas on the Nīlgiri hills are, Mr. Grigg writes,60called mottas. They consist generally of only four or five huts, made of mud and wattle, with thatched roofs. The front of the house is sometimes whitewashed, and ornamented with rude drawings of men and animals in red earth or charcoal. They store their grain in large oval baskets, and for bottles they use gourds. They clear a patch round about the village, and sow the ground with rāgi (Eleusine Coracana), tenne (Setaria italica), or kiri (Amarantus). They dig up roots (called gāsū) for food, and collect the jungle produce, honey, resin, gall-nuts, etc., which they barter with low-country traders, and they are clever in catching game in nets, and dispose of the flesh in a surprisingly short time. Kurumbas occasionally take work on coffee plantations, and some earn a livelihood by officiating as priests to the Badagas. They are also employed as musicians at wedding feasts and funerals of the other tribes, wherethey play on clarionets, drums, and tambourines, as well as the būguri. They make baskets of rattan and milk vessels out of a joint of bamboo, as well as nets of a thread called oilhatti. Their women confine themselves to the limited work of their households, fetching water, cooking, etc. The following extract embraces all that can be said of the religion of the Kurumbas. “Some profess to worship Siva, and occasionally women mark their foreheads with the Siva spot. Others, living near Barliar, worship Kuribattraya (lord of many sheep) and the wife of Siva under the name of Musni. They worship also a rough stone under the name of Hiriadēva, setting it up either in a cave, or in a circle of stones like the so-called Kurumba kōvil of the Badagas, which the latter would seem to have borrowed from the Kurumbas. To this they make pūja, and offer cooked rice at the sowing time. They also profess to sacrifice to Hiriadēva a goat, which they kill at their own houses, after sprinkling water, and eat, giving a portion of flesh to the pūjāri (priest). Others say that they have no pūjāri: among such a scattered tribe customs probably vary in each motta”—(Breeks). It is recorded by Dr. Rivers, in connection with the Toda legendary stories of Kwoten, that “one day Kwoten went with Erten of Keadr, who was spoken of as his servant to Poni, in the direction of Polkat (Calicut). At Poni there is a stream called Palpa, the commencement of which may be seen on the Kundahs. Kwoten and Erten went to drink water out of the stream at a place where a goddess (teu) named Terkosh had been bathing.... Finally, they came to Terkosh, who said to Kwoten, “Do not come near me, I am a teu.” Kwoten paid no heed to this, but said “You are a beautiful woman,” and went and lay with her. Then Terkosh went away to her hill at Poni, where she is now,and to this day the Kurumbas go there once a year and offer plantains to her, and light lamps in her honour.”

It is further recorded by Dr. Rivers that “two ceremonial objects are obtained by the Todas from the Kurumbas. One is the tall pole called tadrsi or tadri, which is used in the dance at the second funeral ceremonies, and afterwards burnt. Poles of the proper length are said to grow only on the Malabar side of the Nīlgiris, and are probably most easily obtained from the Kurumbas. The other is the teiks, or funeral post at which the buffalo is killed.” Besides supplying the Badagas with the elephant-pole required at their funerals, the Kurumbas have to sow the first handful of grain for the Badagas every season. The ceremony is thus described by Harkness.61“A family of the Burghers (Badagas) had assembled, which was about to commence ploughing. With them were two or three Kurumbas, one of whom had set up a stone in the centre of the spot on which we were standing, and, decorating it with wild flowers, prostrated himself to it, offered incense, and sacrificed a goat, which had been brought there by the Burghers. He then took the guidance of the plough, and, having ploughed some ten or twelve paces, gave it over, possessed himself of the head of the sacrificed animal, and left the Burghers to prosecute their labours.... The Kurumba, sowing the first handful, leaves the Burgher to go on with the remainder, and, reaping the first sheaf, delivers it with the sickle to him, to accomplish the remainder of the task. At harvest time, or when the whole of the grain has been gathered in, the Kurumba receives his dues, or proportion of the produce.” The relations of the Kurumbas with theBadagas at the present day, and the share which the former take in the ceremonies of the latter, are dealt with in the account of the Badagas.

Kurumba cave.Kurumba cave.

Kurumba cave.

I am informed that, among the Kurumbas of the Nīlgiris, it is the custom for several brothers to take one wife in common (adelphogamy), and that they do not object to their women being open to others also. There is said to be no marriage rite. A man and woman will mate together, and live as husband and wife. And, if it happens that, in a family, there has been a succession of such wives for one or two generations, it becomes an event, and is celebrated as such. The pair sit together, and pour water over each other from pots. They then put on new cloths, and a feast is partaken of. Among the Shōla Nāyakkars, a feature of the marriage ceremony is said to be for the bride to roll a cheroot of tobacco leaves, which both parties must smoke in turn.

Writing concerning the Irulas and Kurumbas, Mr. Walhouse says62that “after every death among them, they bring a long water-worn stone (devva kotta kallu), and put it into one of the old cromlechs sprinkled over the Nīlgiri plateau. Some of the larger of these have been found piled up to the cap-stone with such pebbles, which must have been the work of generations. Occasionally, too, the tribes mentioned make small cromlechs for burial purposes, and place the long water-worn pebbles in them. Mr. Breeks reports that the Kurumbas in the neighbourhood of the Rangasvāmi peak and Barliar burn their dead, and place a bone and a small round stone in the sāvu-mane (death-house)—an old cromlech.” The conjecture is hazarded by Fergusson63that the Kurumbas are the remnant of a great and widelyspread race, who may have erected dolmens. As bearing on the connection between Kurumbas and Kurubas, it is worthy of note that the latter, in some places, erect dolmens as a resting-place for the dead. (SeeKuruba.)

It is noted, in the Gazetteer of the Nīlgiris, that the Kurumbas “trade largely on the extraordinary dread of their supposed magical powers which possesses the Todas and the Badagas—the latter especially. Stories are told of how they can summon wild elephants at will, and reduce rocks to powder merely by scattering mystic herbs upon them.”

“The Kurumbas,” Harkness writes, “have a knowledge of herbs and medicinal roots, and the Burghers (Badagas) say that they limit their knowledge thereof to those which are noxious only, and believe that, with the assistance of their magic, they are able to convey them into the stomachs of those to whom they have any dislike. The violent antipathy existing between the Burghers and the Kurumbas, and the dread and horror which the former entertain of the preternatural powers of the latter, are, perhaps, not easily accounted for; but neither sickness, death, nor misfortune of any kind, ever visit the former, without the latter having the credit of producing it. A few years before, a Burgher had been hanged by the sentence of the provincial court for the murder of a Kurumba. The act of the former was not without what was considered great provocation. Disease had attacked the inhabitants of the hamlet, a murrain their cattle. The former had carried off a great part of the family of the murderer, and he himself had but narrowly escaped its effects. No one in the neighbourhood doubted that the Kurumba in question had, by his necromancy, caused all this misfortune, and, after several fruitless attempts, a party of them succeeded in surroundinghim in open day, and effecting their purpose.” In 1835 no less than forty-eight Kurumbas were murdered, and a smaller number in 1875 and 1882. In 1900 a whole family of Kurumbas was murdered, of which the head, who had a reputation as a medicine-man, was believed to have brought disease and death into a Badaga village. The sympathies of the whole country-side were so strongly with the murderers that detection was made very difficult, and the persons charged were acquitted.64In this case several Todas were implicated. “It is,” Mr. Grigg writes, “a curious fact that neither Kota, Irula, or Badaga will slay a Kurumba until a Toda has struck the first blow, but, as soon as his sanctity has been violated by a blow, they hasten to complete the murderous work, which the sacred hand of the Toda has begun.” The Badaga’s dread of the Kurumba is said to be so great that a simple threat of vengeance has proved fatal. My Toda guide—a stalwart representative of his tribe—expressed fear of walking from Ootacamund to Kotagiri, a distance of eighteen miles along a highroad, lest he should come to grief at the hands of Kurumbas; but this was really a frivolous excuse to get out of accompanying me to a distance from his domestic hearth. In like manner, Dr. Rivers records that, when he went to Kotagiri, a Toda who was to accompany him made a stipulation that he should be provided with a companion, as the Kurambas were very numerous in that part. In connection with the Toda legend of Ön, who created the buffaloes and the Todas, Dr. Rivers writes that “when Ön saw that his son was in Amnodr (the world of the dead), he did not like to leave him there alone, and decided to go away to the same place. So he called together all thepeople, and the buffaloes and the trees, to come and bid him farewell. All the people came except a man of Kwodrdoni named Arsankutan. He and his family did not come. All the buffaloes came except the Arsaiir, the buffaloes of the Kwodroni ti (sacred dairy). Some trees also failed to come. Ön blessed all the people, buffaloes and trees present, but said that, because Arsankutan had not come, he and his people should die by sorcery at the hands of the Kurumbas, and that, because the Arsaiir had not come, they should be killed by tigers, and that the trees which had not come should bear bitter fruit. Since that time the Todas have feared the Kurumbas, and buffaloes have been killed by tigers.”

On the Nīlgiri hills, honey-combs are collected by Jēn Kurumbas and Shōlagas. The supply of honey varies according to the nature of the season, and is said to be especially plentiful and of good quality whenStrobilanthesflowers.65The Kurumbas are said to have incredibly keen eye-sight, gained from constantly watching the bee to his hive. When they find a hive not quite ready to take, they place a couple of sticks in a certain position. This sign will prevent any other Kurumba from taking the honey, and no Badaga or other hillman would meddle with it on any account, for fear of being killed by sorcery.

Fortified by a liberal allowance of alcohol and tobacco, the Kurumbas, armed with bamboo torches, will follow up at night the tracks of a wounded ‘bison’ (Bos gaurus), and bring back the head and meat to camp. A European sportsman recounts that he has often seen his Kurumba shikāri (tracker) stop, and, with the one word “honey,” point to the top of an adjacent tree. “How doyou know?” he asked, “Oh! I saw a bee” was the answer given with the greatest nonchalance. On one occasion he found himself close to a swarm of bees. The Kurumba, seeing him hesitate, thrust his stick clean through the swarm, and, with the bare remark “No honey,” marched on. The District Forest Officer, when out shooting, had an easy shot at a stag, and missed it. “There,” said the Kurumba, pointing to a distant tree, “is your bullet.” His trained sense of hearing no doubt enabled him to locate the sound of the bullet striking the tree, and his eyes, following the sound, instantly detected the slight blaze made by the bullet on the bark. The visual acuity of a number of tribes and castes inhabiting the mountains, jungles, and plains, has been determined by Dr. W. H. R. Rivers and myself, by means of the Cohn letter E method. And, though the jungle man, who has to search for his food and mark the tracks or traces of wild beasts, undoubtedly possesses a specially trained keenness of vision for the exigencies of his primitive life, our figures show that, as regards ordinary visual acuity, he has no advantage over the more highly civilised classes.

“The Kurumbas of the Mysore forests,” Mr. Theobald writes, “make fire by friction. They follow the same method as the Todas, as described by Mr. Thurston, but never use the powdered charcoal in the cavity of the horizontal piece of wood which is held down by their feet, or by a companion. The fine brown powder, formed during the rotation of the longer vertical piece, gives sufficient tinder, which soon ignites, and is then placed on a small piece of cotton rag, rolled loosely, and gently blown until it is ignited. The vertical stick is held between the palms, and has a reciprocal motion, by the palms being moved in opposite directions, at the sametime using a strong downward pressure, which naturally brings the palms to the bottom, when they are at once raised to their original position, and the operation continued till the naturally formed tinder ignites.”

In his report on Forest Administration in Coorg, 1902–1903, Mr. C. D’A. McCarthy writes as follows concerning the Kurumbas, who work for the Forest department. “We experienced in connection with the Kurumbas one of those apparent aberrations of sense and intellect, the occurrence of which amongst this peculiar race was foreshadowed in the last report. The Chief Commissioner is aware that, in the interests of the Kurubas themselves, we substitute for a single cash payment distributions to the same value of food-grains, clothes and cash, in equal proportions of each. Now, seventy years ago, before the annexation of Coorg, the Kurubas and similar castes were prædial slaves of the dominant Coorgs, receiving no other remuneration for service than food and clothing. In fact, this institution, nothing less than real slavery, was not entirely broken up until the great demand for local labour created by the opening up of the country for coffee cultivation so late as 1860–1870, so that the existing generation are still cognisant of the old state of affairs. Last year, during the distribution of rewards for the successful protection of the reserves that season from fire, it seems that the idea was put into the heads of these people that our system of remuneration, which includes the distribution of food and clothing, was an attempt to create again at their expense a system of, as it were, forest slavery; with the result that for a time nothing would induce many of them to accept any form of remuneration for the work already performed, much less to undertake the same duties for the approaching season. It was some time, and afterno little trouble, that the wherefore of this strange conduct was discovered, and the suspicions aroused put at rest.” In his report, 1904–1905, Mr. McCarthy states that “the local system of fire protection, consisting of the utilisation of the Kuruba jungle population for the clearing of fire lines and patrolling, and the payment of rewards according to results, may now be said to be completely established in Coorg. The Kurubas appear to have gained complete confidence in the working of the system, and, provided the superior officers personally see to the payment of the rewards, are evidently quite satisfied that the deductions for failures are just and fair.”

The Kurumbas are said to have been very useful in the mining operations during the short life of the Wynād gold-mines. A few years ago, I received the skulls of two Kurumbas, who went after a porcupine into a deserted tunnel on the Glenrock Gold-mining Company’s land in the Wynād. The roof fell in on them, and they were buried alive.

In a note on the ‘Ethnogénie des Dravidiens’,66Mr. Louis Lapicque writes as follows. “Les populations caractéristiques du Wainaad sont les Panyer, les négroides les plus accusés et les plus homogenes que j’ai vus, et probablement qui existent dans toute l’Inde. D’autre part, les tribus vivant de leur côté sur leurs propres cultures, fortement négroides encore, mais plus mélangées. Tels sont les Naiker et les Kouroumbas.”

——Indice nasal.Indice céphalique.Taille.54 Panyer847415428 Kouroumbas817515712 Naiker8076.9157

Concerning Nāyakas or Naikers and Kurumbas, Mr. F. W. F. Fletcher writes to me as follows from Nellakotta, Nīlgiris. “It may be that in some parts of Wynaad there are people known indifferently as Kurumbas and Shola Nāyakas; but I have no hesitation in saying that the Nāyakas in my employ are entirely distinct from the Kurumbas. The two classes do not intermarry; they do not live together; they will not eat together. Even their prejudices with regard to food are different, for a Kurumba will eat bison flesh, and a Nāyaka will not. The latter stoutly maintains that he is entirely distinct from, and far superior to, the Kurumba, and would be grievously offended if he were classed as a Kurumba. The religious ceremonies of the two tribes are also different. The Nāyakas have separate temples, and worship separate gods. The chief Kurumba temple in this part of the country is close to Pandalur, and here, especially at the Bishu feast, the Kurumbas gather in numbers. My Nāyakas do not recognise this temple, but have their place of worship in the heart of the jungle, where they make theirpūja(worship) under the direction of their own priest. The Nāyakas will not attend the funeral of a Kurumba; nor will they invite Kurumbas to the funeral of one of their own tribe. There is a marked variation in their modes of life. The Kurumba of this part lives in comparatively open country, in the belt of deciduous forest lying between the ghāts proper and the foot of the Nīlgiri plateau. Here he has been brought into contact with European Planters, and is, comparatively speaking, civilised. The Nāyaka has his habitat in the dense jungle of the ghāts, and is essentially a forest nomad, living on honey, jungle fruits, and the tuberous roots of certain jungle creepers. By constant association with myself, my Nāyaka men have lost thefear of the white man, which they entertained when I first came into the district; but even now, if I visit the village of a colony who reside in the primæval forest, the women and children will hide themselves in the jungle at sight of me. The superstitions of the two tribes are different. Some Nāyakas are credited with the power of changing themselves at will into a tiger, and of wreaking vengeance on their enemies in that guise. And the Kurumba holds the Nāyaka in as much awe as other castes hold the Kurumba. Lower down, on the flat below the ghāts I am opening a rubber estate, and here I have another Nāyaka colony, who differ in many respects from their congeners above, although the two colonies are within five miles as the crow flies. The low-country Nāyaka does his hair in a knot on one side of his head, Malayālam fashion, and his speech is a patois of Malayālam. The Nāyaka on the hills above has a mop of curly hair, and speaks a dialect of his own quite distinct from the Kurumba language, though both are derived from Kanarese. But that the low-country people are merely a sept of the Nāyaka tribe is evident from the fact that intermarriage is common amongst the two colonies, and that they meet at the same temple for their annual pūja. The priest of the hill colony is the pūjāri for both divisions of the Nāyakas, and the arbiter in all their disputes.”

Kurumba (Shōla Naiker).Kurumba (Shōla Naiker).

Kurumba (Shōla Naiker).

Kurumo.—The Kurumos are a caste of Oriya agriculturists, found mainly in the Russellkonda tāluk of Ganjam. They are called Kurumo by Oriyas, and Kudumo by Telugus. There is a tradition that their name is derived from Srikurmam in the Vizagapatam district, where they officiated as priests in the Siva temple, and whence they were driven northward. The Kurumos say that, at the present day, some membersof the caste are priests at Saivite temples in Ganjam, bear the title Rāvulo, and wear the sacred thread. It is noted in the Madras Census Report, 1901, that “some of them wear the sacred thread, and follow Chaitanya, and Oriya Brāhmans will accept drinking-water at their hands. They will eat in Brāhmans’ houses, and will accept drinking-water from Gaudos, Bhondāris, and Rāvulos.” Bhondāris wash the feet of Kurumos on ceremonial occasions, and, in return for their services, receive twice the number of cakes given to other guests at feasts.

In addition to the Kurumos proper, there is a section called Kūji Kurumo, which is regarded as lower in the social status. The caste titles are Bissoyi, Bēhara, Dudi, Majhi, Nāyako, Podhāno, Rāvulo, Ravuto, Sēnāpati, and Udhdhandra. Those who bear the title Dudi are priests at the temples of the village deities. The title Udhdhandra was conferred by a zamindar, and is at present borne by a number of families, intermarriage among members of which is forbidden. Every village has a headman entitled Adhikari, who is under the control of a chief headman called Bēhara. Both these appointments are hereditary.

Among other deities, the Kurumos worship various Tākurānis (village deities), such as Bōdo Rāvulo, Bāgha Dēvi, Kumbēswari, and Sathabhavuni. In some places, there are certain marriage restrictions based on the house-gods. For example, a family whose house-god is Bōdo Rāvulo may not intermarry with another family which worships the same deity. Every family of Kurumos apparently keeps the house-god within the house, and it is worshipped on all important occasions. The god is usually represented by five areca nuts, which are kept in a box. These nuts must be filled with pieces ofgold, silver, iron, copper, and lead, which are introduced through a hole drilled in the base of the nut, which is plugged with silver.

Infant marriage is the rule, and, if a girl does not secure a husband before she reaches maturity, she has to go through the mock-marriage rite, called dharma bibha, with her grandfather or other elder. On the evening of the day previous to that of the real marriage, called gondo sona, the paternal aunt of the bridegroom goes to a tank (pond), carrying thither a brass vessel. This is placed on the tank bund (embankment), and worshipped. Some cowry (Cypræa arabica) shells are then thrown into the tank, and the vessel is filled with water, and taken to the house. At the entrance thereto, a Sullokhondia Gaudo stands, holding a vessel of water, from which a little water is poured into the vessel brought from the tank. The bride’s aunt then goes to three or five houses of members of her own caste, and receives water therefrom in her vessel, which is placed near the house-gods, and eventually kept on the marriage dais throughout the wedding ceremonies. Over the marriage dais (bēdi) at the bridegroom’s house, four brass vessels, and four clay lamps fed with ghī (clarified butter), are placed at the four corners. Round the four posts thereof seven turns of thread are made by a Brāhman purōhit. The bridegroom, wearing mokkuto (forehead chaplet) and sacred thread, after going seven times round the dais, breaks the thread, and takes his seat thereon. AfterZizyphus Jujubaleaves and rice have been thrown over him, he is taken in procession to a temple. On his return home, he is met by five or seven young girls and women at the entrance to the house, andZizyphusleaves are again thrown over him. A Bhondāri woman sprinkles water from mango leavesover him, and he proceeds in a palanquin to the home of the bride. At the marriage ceremony, the bride throws rice on the head of the bridegroom over a screen which is interposed between them. After their hands have been tied together, a grinding-stone and roller are placed between them, and they face each other while their fingers are linked together above the stone. On the seventh day, the newly married couple worship seven posts at the bride’s house. The various articles used in connection with the marriage ceremonies, except one pot, are thrown into a tank. On his return thence, the bridegroom breaks the pot, after he has been sprinkled with the water contained in it by a Bhondāri. At times of marriage, and on other auspicious occasions, the Kurumos, when they receive their guests, must take hold of their sticks or umbrellas, and it is regarded as an insult if this is not done.

On the fifth and eighth days after the birth of a child, a new cloth is spread on the floor, on which the infant is placed, with a book (bāgavatham) close to its head, and an iron rod, such as is used by Oriya castes for branding the skin of the abdomen of newly-born babies, at its side. The relations and friends assemble to take part in the ceremonial, and a Brāhman purōhit reads a purānam. Betel leaves and areca nuts are then distributed. On the twenty-first day, the ceremonial is repeated, and the purōhit is asked to name the child. He ascertains the constellation under which it was born, and announces that a name commencing with a certain letter should be given to it.

Like other Oriya castes, the Kurumos are particular with regard to the observation of various vratams (fasts). One, called sudasa vratam, is observed on a Thursday falling on the tenth day after new moon in the monthof Karthika (November-December). The most elderly matron of the house does pūja (worship), and a purānam is read. Seven cubits of a thread dyed with turmeric are measured on the forearm of a girl seven years old, and cut off. The deity is worshipped, and seven knots are made in the piece of thread, which is tied on to the left upper arm of the matron. This vratam is generally observed by Oriya castes.

Kurup.—In a note on the artisan classes of Malabar, it is recorded67that “the Kolla-Kurups combine two professions which at first sight seem strangely incongruous, shampooing or massage, and the construction of the characteristic leather shields of Malabar. But the two arts are intimately connected with the system of combined physical training, as we should now call it, and exercise in arms, which formed the curriculum of the kalari (gymnasium), and the title kurup is proper to castes connected with that institution. A similar combination is found in the Vil-Kurups (bow-Kurups), whose traditional profession was to make bows and arrows, and train the youth to use them, and who now shampoo, make umbrellas, and provide bows and arrows for some Nāyar ceremonies. Other classes closely connected are the Kollans or Kurups distinguished by the prefixes Chāya (colour), Palissa (shield), and Tōl (leather), who are at present engaged in work in lacquer, wood, and leather.” Kurup also occurs as a title of Nāyars, in reference to the profession of arms, and many of the families bearing this title are said68to still maintain their kalari.

Kuruvikkāran.—The Kuruvikkārans are a class of Marāthi-speaking bird-catchers and beggars, who huntjackals, make bags out of the skin, and eat the flesh thereof. By Telugu people they are called Nakkalavāndlu (jackal people), and by Tamilians Kuruvikkāran (bird-catchers). They are also called Jāngal Jāti and Kāttu Mahrāti. Among themselves they are known as Vagiri or Vagirivala. They are further known as Yeddu Marigē Vētagāndlu, or hunters who hide behind a bullock. In decoying birds, they conceal themselves behind a bullock, and imitate the cries of birds in a most perfect manner. They are said to be called in Hindustani Paradhi and Mīr Shikāri.

As regards their origin, there is a legend that there were once upon a time three brothers, one of whom ran away to the mountains, and, mixing with Kanna Kuruvans, became degraded. His descendants are now represented by the Dommaras. The descendants of the second brother are the Lambādis, and those of the third Kuruvikkārans. The lowly position of these three classes is attributed to the fact that the three brothers, when wandering about, came across Sīta, the wife of Rāma, about whose personal charms they made remarks, and laughed. This made Sīta angry, and she uttered the following curse:—“Mālitho shikar, naitho bhikar,”i.e., if (birds) are found, huntsmen; if not, beggars. According to a variant of the legend,69many years ago in Rājputāna there lived two brothers, the elder of whom was dull, and the younger smart. One day they happened to be driving a bullock along a path by the side of a pool of water, when they surprised Sīta bathing. The younger brother hid behind his bullock, but the elder was too stupid to conceal himself, and so both were observed by the goddess, who was muchannoyed, and banished them to Southern India. The elder she ordered to live by carrying goods about the country on pack-bullocks, and the younger to catch birds by means of two snares, which she obligingly formed from hair plucked from under her arm. Consequently the Vagirivalas never shave that portion of the body.

The Kuruvikkārans are nomadic, and keep pack-bullocks, which convey their huts and domestic utensils from place to place. Some earn their living by collecting firewood, and others by acting as watchmen in fields and gardens. Women and children go about the streets begging, and singing songs, which are very popular, and imitated by Hindu women. They further earn a livelihood by hawking needles and glass beads, which they may be seen in the evening purchasing from Kayalans (Muhammadan merchants) in the Madras bazar.

One of the occupations of the Kuruvikkārans is the manufacture and sale of spurious jackal horns, known as narikompu. To catch the jackals, they make an enclosure of a net, inside which a man seats himself, armed with a big stick. He then proceeds to execute a perfect imitation of the jackal’s cry, on hearing which the jackals come running to see what is the matter, and are beaten down. A Kuruvikkāran, whom the Rev. E. Löventhal interviewed, howled like a jackal, to show his skill as a mimic. The cry was quite perfect, and no jackal would have doubted that he belonged to their class. Sometimes the entire jackal’s head is sold, skin and all. The process of manufacture of the horn is as follows. After the brain has been removed, the skin is stripped off a limited area of the skull, and the bone at the place of junction of the sagittal and lambdoid suturesabove the occipital foramen is filed away, so that only a point, like a bony outgrowth, is left. The skin is then brought back, and pressed over the little horn, which pierces it. The horn is also said to be made out of the molar tooth of a dog or jackal, introduced through a small hole in a piece of jackal’s skin, round which a little blood or turmeric paste is smeared, to make it look more natural. In most cases only the horn, with a small piece of skull and skin, is sold. Sometimes, instead of the skin from the part where the horn is made, a piece of skin is taken from the snout, where the long black hairs are. The horn then appears surrounded by long black bushy hairs. The Kuruvikkārans explain that, when they see a jackal with such long hairs on the top of its head, they know that it possesses a horn. A horn-vendor, whom I interviewed, assured me that the possessor of a horn is a small jackal, which comes out of its hiding-place on full-moon nights to drink the dew. According to another version, the horn is only possessed by the leader of a pack of jackals. The Sinhalese and Tamils alike regard the horn “as a talisman, and believe that its fortunate possessor can command the realisation of every wish. Those who have jewels to conceal rest in perfect security if, along with them, they can deposit a narricomboo.”70The ayah (nurse) of a friend who possessed such a talisman remarked “Master going into any law-court, sure to win the case.” This, as has been pointed out, does not show much faith in the British administration of justice, if a so-called jackal’s horn can turn the scale. Two spurious horns, which I possessed, were promptly stolen from my study table, to bring luck to some Tamil member of my establishment.

Some Kuruvikkārans carry suspended from their turban or body-cloth a small whistle, with which they imitate the song of birds, and attract them. Young boys often have with them a bundle of small sticks strung together, and with a horse-hair noose attached to them. The sticks are driven into the ground, and grain is strewn around to entice birds, which get caught in the noose.

The women wear a petticoat and an ill-fitting bodice. Among other classes “Wearing the bodice like a Kuruvikkāran woman” is used as a taunt. The petticoat may never be taken off till it is tattered and torn, and replaced by a new one; and, when a woman bathes, she has to do so with the garment on. Anything which has come in contact with the petticoat, or rice husked with a woman’s feet, is polluted, and may not be used by men. Women adorn themselves with necklaces of beads and cowry shells, or sometimes, like the Lambādis, wear shell bracelets. Both men and women stain their teeth with a preparation of myrabolams,Acacia arabicapods, and sulphates of copper and iron. Females may not blacken their teeth, or wear a necklace of black beads before marriage.

A young married woman, wherever she may be during the daytime, must rejoin her husband at night. If she fails to do so, she has to go through the ordeal of grasping a red-hot iron bar or sickle, and carrying it sixteen paces without dropping it. Another form of ordeal is dipping the hands in a pot containing boiling cowdung water, and picking out therefrom a quarter-anna piece. If the woman is innocent, she is able to husk a small quantity of paddy (rice) by rubbing it between her hands immediately after the immersion in the liquid. If a man has to submit to trial by ordeal, seven arka (Calotropis gigantea) leaves are tied to his palm, and a piece of red-hotiron placed thereon. His innocence is established if he is able to carry it while he takes seven long strides.

The Kuruvikkārans have exogamous septs, of which Rānaratōd seems to be an important one, taking a high place in the social scale. Males usually add the title Sing as a suffix to their names.

Marriage is always between adults, and the celebration, including the betrothal ceremony, extends over five days, during which meat is avoided, and the bride keeps her face concealed by throwing her cloth over it. Sometimes she continues to thus veil herself for a short time after marriage. On the first day, after the exchange of betel, the father of the bride says “Are you ready to receive my daughter as your daughter-in-law into your house? I am giving her to your son. Take care of her. Do not beat her when she is ill. If she cannot carry water, you should help her. If you beat her, or ill-treat her in any way, she will come back to us.” The future father-in-law having promised that the girl will be kindly treated, the bridegroom says “I am true, and have not touched any other woman. I have not smiled at any girl whom I have seen. Your daughter should not smile at any man whom she sees. If she does so, I shall drive her back to your house.” In the course of the marriage ceremonies, the bride is taken to the home of her mother-in-law, to whom she makes a present of a new cloth. The Nyavya (headman) hands a string of black beads to the mother-in-law, who ties it round the bride’s neck, while the assembled women sing. At a marriage of the first daughter of a member of the Rānaratōd sept, a Brāhman purōhit is invited to be present, and give his blessing, as it is believed that a Gujarāti Brāhman was originally employed for the marriage celebration.

The principal tribal deity of the Kuruvikkārans is Kāli or Durga, and each sept possesses a small plate with a figure of the goddess engraved on it, which is usually kept in the custody of the headman. It is, however, frequently pledged, and money-lenders give considerable sums on the security of the idol, as the Kuruvikkārans would on no account fail to redeem it. When the time for the annual festival of the goddess draws nigh, the headman or an elder piles upVigna Catiangseeds in five small heaps. He then decides in his mind whether there is an odd or even number of seeds in the majority of heaps. If, when the seeds are counted, the result agrees with his forecast, it is taken as a sign of the approval of the goddess, and arrangements are made for the festival. Otherwise it is abandoned for the year. On the day of the festival, nine goats and a buffalo are sacrificed. While some cakes are being cooked in oil, a member of the tribe prays that the goddess will descend on him, and, taking some of the cakes out of the boiling liquid, with his palm rubs the oil on his head. He is then questioned by those assembled, to whom he gives oracular replies, after sucking the blood from the cut throat of a goat. It is noted in the North Arcot Manual that the Vagirivalas assemble two or three times in the year at Varadāreddipalli for worship. The objects of this are three saktis called Mahan Kāli, Chāmundi, and Mahammāyi, represented by small silver figures, which are mortgaged to a Reddi of the village, and lent by him during the few days of the festival.

Kūsa.—A sub-division of Holeyas in South Canara, who also call themselves Uppāra. Some of them say that they are the same as Uppāras of Mysore, whose hereditary occupation was the manufacture of saltfrom salt-earth (ku, earth). Kūsa further occurs as a synonym of the Otattu, or tile-making section of the Nāyars, and Kūsa Mārān as a class of potters in Travancore. Kūsa is also an exogamous sept of the Bōyas.

Kusavan.—The Kusavans are the Tamil potters. “The name,” Mr. H. A. Stuart writes,71“is said to be derived from the Sanskrit word ku signifying earth, the material in which they work, and avan, a personal termination. They wear the sacred thread, and profess both Saivism and Vaishnavism. Their ceremonials are somewhat like those of the Vellālas. The eating of flesh is permitted, but not widow marriage. Some have priests of their own caste, while others employ Brāhmans. Kusavans sometimes officiate as pūjaris in Pidāri temples. Their titles are Udayan and Vēlān. Their stupidity and ignorance are proverbial.” At times of census, Kulālan has been returned as a synonym of Kusavan, and Kusavan as an occupational division of Paraiyans. The Kusavans are divided into the territorial sections Chōla, Chēra, and Pāndya, and say that “these are descended from the three sons of their original ancestor Kulālan, who was the son of Brahma. He prayed to Brahma to be allowed, like him, to create and destroy things daily; so Brahma made him a potter.”72

In ancient days, the potters made the large pyriform sepulchral urns, which have, in recent times, been excavated in Tinnevelly, Madura, Malabar, and elsewhere. Dr. G. U. Pope shows73that these urns are mentioned in connection with the burial of heroes and kings as late as the eighth century A.D., andrenders one of the Tamil songs bearing on the subject as follows:—

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