Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/147

Rh the necessary consistency. They are then made into a paste with water, and applied to the yarn. Madura. — Coarse blankets are manufactured to a small extent by Kuruba women in twenty-two villages of the Mēlūr, Dindigul, and Palni tāluks.

In the province of Mysore, parts of Chitaldrūg and the town of Kolar are noted for the manufacture of a superior kind of blanket, of fine texture like homespun, by Kurubas. The wool is spun by the women.

By one section of the Kurubas, called Sunnata or Vasa (new) only white blankets are said to be made.

The personal names of Kurubas are derived from their gods, Basappa, Lingappa, Narasimha, Huliga, etc., with Ayya, Appa, or Anna as affixes. An educational officer tells me that, when conducting a primary examination, he came across a boy named Mondrolappa after Sir Thomas Munro, who still lives in the affections of the people. "It has," Mr. H. A. Stuart writes,* " been suggested that the name Kuruba is a derivative of the Canarese root kuru, sheep (cf. Tamil kori); but it has been objected to this that the Kurumbas were not originally a purely shepherd tribe, and it is contended that the particular kind of sheep called kori is so called because it is the sheep of the Kurumbas. Again, the ancient lexicographer of the Tamil language, Pingala Muni, defines Kurumban as Kurunila Mannar, or petty chieftains. But the most common derivation is from the Tamil kurumbu, wickedness, so that Kurumban means a wicked man. With this may be compared the derivation of Kallan from kalavu, theft, and the Kallans are now generally believed to have been closely