Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/205

Rh Some Kānikars are tattooed on the forehead with a crescent and dot, or a vertical stripe. The Kānikars say that their ancestors wore a garment made of jungle fibre, which has been replaced by a cotton loin-cloth. " Both men and women," Mr. M. Ratnaswami Aiyar writes," wear on the neck numerous strings of red beads and rings made of shells, which hang down to the abdomen in the case of the women. The men wear ear-rings of brass or silver. The women wear bangles of brass and iron, and a number of brass rings on the fingers. The men bear suspended from one of their shoulders a cloth bag containing two or more partitions, in which they keep their vilangupetti or box containing betel, tobacco, and chunam. They carry, too, suspended from the shoulder, a cane basket wherein they place their day's crop of grain or roots, or any other food obtained by them. They attach to their waist-string or cloth a billhook and knife, and carry their bows and arrows slung on their shoulders. Whenever the Kānikars from the different kanis or settlements have to be gathered together for a common meeting, or for going together elsewhere on a common purpose, a messenger amongst them carries from one kāni to another the message with a knot of fibres of creepers, which serves as a symbol of call. The knotted fibre is passed on from one kāni to another till the required assembly is secured. It is thus that I secured my Kānikars to present them to their Excellencies Lord and Lady Curzon."

For most of the information contained in this article I am indebted to Mateer's * Native Life in Travancore,'an article by Mr. Ratnaswami Aiyar,* and notes by Mr. N, Subrahmani Aiyar.