Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/264

KAPU and used foul language. The third son promised to secure it, and, hearing this, one of his brothers ran away. Finally the ornament was recovered by the youngest son. The Panta Kāpus are said to be descended from the eldest son, the Pākanātis from the second, the Velamas from the son who ran away, and the Kammas from the son who secured the jewel. The Kāpus are said to have originally dwelt in Ayōdhya. During the reign of Bharata, one Pillala Mari Belthi Reddi and his sons deceived the King by appropriating all the grain to themselves, and giving him the straw. The fraud was detected by Rāma when he assumed charge of the kingdom, and, as a punishment, he ordered the Kāpus to bring Cucurbita (pumpkin) fruits for the srādh (death ceremony) of Dasarātha. They accordingly cultivated the plant, but, before the ceremony took place, all the plants were uprooted by Hanumān, and no fruits were forthcoming. In lieu thereof, they promised to offer gold equal in weight to that of the pumpkin, and brought all of which they were possessed. This they placed in the scales, but it was not sufficient to counterbalance a pumpkin against which it was weighed. To make up the deficiency in weight, the Kāpu women removed their bottus (marriage badges), and placed them in the scales. Since that time women of the Mōtāti and Pedakanti sections have substituted a cotton string dyed with turmeric for the bottu. It is worthy of notice that a similar legend is current among the Vakkaligas (cultivators) of Mysore, who, instead of giving up the bottu, seem to have abandoned the cultivation of the Cucurbita plant. The exposure of the fraud led Belthi Reddi to leave Ayōdhya with one of his wives and seventy-seven children, leaving behind thirteen wives. In the course of their journey, they had