Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/188

KANIKAR (Manihot utilissima), sweet potatoes (Ipomœa batatas), ganja (Indian hemp), and tobacco. Each settlement now has a forest block assigned to it for cultivation, with which other tribes are not allowed to interfere, and wherein the Kānikars are allowed to fell, clear, and grow their crops. They do not pay anything in the way of tax to the Government. Once a year they go in a group to visit the Mahārāja at Trivandrum, and he "always receives them most kindly, accepting the nuzzur they offer in the shape of the bamboo plantain with large though few fruits, a parcel of Muttucheri hill rice, bamboo joints containing different varieties of honey, and virukachattam or a parcel of civet. The customary modes of court address, and the prescribed court etiquette are alike unknown to them, and the Mahārāja, pleased with their simplicity and unaffected homage, rewards them with presents of cloth, money, salt, and tobacco, with which they return satisfied to their jungle home."The Rev. S. Mateer notes that he had difficulty in persuading the Kānikars to part with a sucker of the bamboo plantain, as they fancied it must be reserved for the use of the Mahārāja alone. Some Kānikars are engaged as coolies on planters'estates, or in felling timber and cutting bamboos for contractors, others in the manufacture of bows and arrows with blunt or barbed iron heads. Heated arrows are used by them, for hitting elephants which invade their sugar-cane or other crop, from the safe protection of a hut built on a platform of sticks in tall trees of branches or bamboo covered with leaves of Ochlandra Travancorica or other large leaves. In connection with these huts, which are called ānamadam (elephant huts),it has been said that "the hills abound with game.'Bison' (Bos gaurus), bears, and sāmbar (Cervus unicolor)