Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/46

KADIR The collection of Kādir combs in the Madras Museum shows very clearly that the patterns thereon are conventional designs. The bamboo combs worn by the Semang women are stated* to serve as talismans, to protect them against diseases which are prevalent, or most dreaded by them. Mr. Vincent informs me that, so far as he knows, the Kādir combs are not looked on as charms, and the markings thereon have no mystic significance. A Kādir man should always make a comb, and present it to his intended wife just before marriage, or at the conclusion of the marriage ceremony, and the young men vie with each other as to who can make the nicest comb. Sometimes they represent strange articles on the combs. Mr. Vincent has, for example, seen a comb with a very good imitation of the face of a clock scratched on it. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish adolescent Kādir youths with curly fringe, chests covered by a cotton cloth, and wearing necklets made of plaited grass or glass and brass beads, from girls. And I was myself several times caught in an erroneous diagnosis of sex. Many of the infants have a charm tied round the neck, which takes the form of a dried tortoise foot; the tooth of a crocodile mimicking a phallus, and supposed to ward off attacks from a mythical water elephant which lives in the mountain streams; or wooden imitations of tiger's claws. One baby wore a necklet made of the seeds of Coix Lachryma-Jobi (Job's tears). Males have the lobes of the ears adorned with brass ornaments, and the nostril pierced, and plugged with wood. The earlobes of the females are widely dilated with palm-leaf rolls or huge wooden discs, and they wear ear-rings,