Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/546

KORAVA The Korava child's technical education commences early. From infancy, the Koravas teach their children to answer "I do not know" to questions put to them. They are taught the different methods of stealing, and the easiest way of getting into various kinds of houses. One must be entered through the roof, another by a hole in the wall, a third by making a hole near the bolt of the door. Before letting himself down from a roof, the Korava must make sure that he does not alight on brass vessels or crockery. He generally sprinkles fine sand in small quantities, so that the noise made thereby may give him an idea of the situation. The methods to be adopted during the day, when hawking wares, must be learnt. When a child is caught red-handed, he will never reveal his identity by giving the name of his parents, or of the gang to which he belongs. A girl about twelve or thirteen years old was captured a few years ago in the Mysore State at the Oregam weekly market, and, on being searched, was found to have a small knife in her cheek. She declared that she was an orphan with neither friends nor relations, but was identified by the police. The Koravas are adepts at assuming aliases. But the system of finger-print records, which has been introduced in recent years, renders the concealment of their identity more difficult than it used to be. "Both men and women," Mr. Paupa Rao writes,"have tattoo marks on their foreheads and forearms. When they are once convicted, they enlarge or alter in some way the tattoo marks on their forearms, so that they might differ from the previous descriptive marks of identification entered by the police in their search books and other records. During festivals, they put red stuff (kunkuma) over the tattoo marks on their foreheads."