Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/504

KORAVA own lands, or work as agricultural labourers for the landowners. They say further that they pay an occasional visit to Madras for the purpose of replenishing their stock of coral and beads, which they sell at local shandis (markets). Some Koravas are said to buy gilded beads at Madura, and cheat unsuspecting villagers by selling them as gold. Though the Ūr Koravas are becoming civilised, they have not yet lost their desire for other men's goods, and are reported to be the curse of the Anantapur, Cuddapah, and Bellary districts, where they commit robbery, house-breaking, and theft, especially of sheep and cattle. A particularly bold sheep theft by them a few years ago is worthy of mention. The village of Singanamalla in the Anantapur district lies a few miles off the railway. It is bordered on two sides by Government forest reserves, into which the villagers regularly drove their sheep and goats to graze, in charge of small boys, in the frequent absences of the forest watcher, or when the watcher was well disposed towards them. An arrangement was made between the Koravas and a meat-supplier at Bangalore to deliver on his behalf a large number of sheep at a wayside station near Dharmāvaram, to receive which trucks had to be ready, and the transaction was purely cash. One morning, when more than a hundred sheep had been driven far into the reserve by their youthful charges, who kept more or less close together for the sake of company, a number of Koravas turned up, and represented themselves as forest watchers, captured the small boys, gagged them and tied them to trees, and drove off all the available sheep. The boys were not discovered till late at night, and the police did not get to work till the following morning, by which time the sheep were safely entrained for Bangalore.