Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/294

KATHTHIRAVANDLU Midnapore. An important way of identifying them is the fact that everyone of them, male and female, is branded at the corners of the eyebrows and between the eyes in childhood, as a safeguard against convulsions," For the following additional information I am indebted to an official of the Police department. "I am not aware of these people using any particular shoes. They use sandals such as are generally worn by ryots and the lower classes. These they get by stealing. They pick them up from houses during the daytime, when they go from house to house on the pretence of begging, or they steal them at nights along with other property. These sandals are made in different fashions in different districts, and so those possessed by Kathiras are generally of different kinds, being stolen from various parts of the country. They have no shoes of any peculiar make, nor do they get any made at all. Kathiras do not generally wear any shoes. They walk and run faster with bare feet. They wear shoes when walking through the jungle, and entrust them to one of their comrades when walking through the open country. They sometimes throw them off when closely pursued, and run away. In 1899, when we arrested one on the highroad, he had with him five or six pairs of shoes of different kinds and sizes, and he did not account satisfactorily for being in possession of so many. I subsequently learnt that some supernumeraries were hiding in the jungle close to the place where he was arrested.

"About marks of branding on the face, it is not only Kathiras, but almost all nomadic tribes who have these marks. As the gangs move on exposed to changes of weather, the children sometimes get a disease called sandukatlu or palakurkura. They generally get this disease from the latter part of the first year up to the