Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 2.djvu/321

Rh when she is taken back to her home. In the event of her illness, none of the caste will attend on her, but a Nāyak (Bēda) woman is engaged to do so. Marriages among them are likewise performed in a temporary shed erected outside the village, and the attendant festivities continue for five days, when the marriage couple are brought into the village. The Golla is allowed to marry as many wives as he likes, and puberty is no bar to marriage. They eat flesh, and drink spirituous liquors. The wife cannot be divorced except for adultery. Their females do not wear the bodice (ravikē) usually put on by the women of the country. Nor do they, in their widowhood, remove or break the glass bangles worn at the wrists, as is done in other castes. But widows are not allowed to remarry. Only 98 persons have returned gōtras, the chief being Yādava, Karadi, Atrēya, and Amswasa. The first two are really sub-sects, while Atreya is the name of a Brāhmin Rishi." Yādava, or descendant of King Yādu, from whom Krishna was descended, also occurs as a synonym for Idaiyan, the great Tamil shepherd class.

Concerning the Adivi, or forest Gollas, Mr.F. Fawcett writes as follows.* " The people of every house in the village let loose a sheep, to wander whither it will, as a sort of perpetual scapegoat. When a woman feels the first pains of labour, she is turned out of the village into a little leaf or mat hut about two hundred yards away. In this hut she must bring forth her offspring unaided, unless a midwife can be called in to be with her before the child is born. For ninety days the woman lives in the hut by herself If anyone touches her, he or she is, like the woman, outcasted, and turned