Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/107

Rh Canara district. Those who live at the two former places are agrestic slaves of landlords who own cardamom plantations on the ghāts. They live for the most part in the jungles, beneath rocks, in caves, or in low huts, and shift from one spot to another. At the season of the cardamom crop, they come down to the plains once a week with the produce. They are said to carry off cardamoms to the Mysore frontier, and sell them fraudulently to contractors or merchants. They make fire traces for the Forest Department. Except in stature, the Kudiyas have not retained the characters of a primitive race, and, as the result of racial admixture, or contact metamorphosis, some individuals are to be seen with comparatively light coloured skins, and mesorhine or leptorhine noses. In the matter of personal names, septs, and ceremonial observances, they have been much influenced by other castes. They speak a corrupt form of Tulu, and say that they follow the aliya santana law of inheritance (in the female line), though some, especially at Sisala and on the Mysore frontier, follow the law of succession from father to son (makkala santāna). They are not regarded as a polluting class, and can enter all parts of their landlords' houses, except the kitchen and dining-room. They are presided over by a headman, called Gurikāra, who inquires into transgression of caste rules, and assists on ceremonial occasions. Their chief deities are Bhairava, Kāmandēvaru, and the Pancha Pāndavas (the five Pāndava brothers), but they also believe in certain bhūthas (devils), such as Malē Kallurti and Ambatadaiva. The Kudiyas do not object to marriage between a widowed woman and her eldest son. Among those attached to a landlord at Neriya, two such cases were