Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/174

KURUMBA OR KURUMAN W. R. King. Aboriginal Tribes of the Nilgiri Hills — "Kurumbas. — This tribe is of another race from the shepherd Kurumbas. The Nīlgiri tribe have neither cattle nor sheep, and in language, dress, and customs, have no affinity whatever with their namesakes."

G. Oppert. Original Inhabitants of India — "Kurubas or Kurumbas. — However separated from each other, and scattered among the Dravidian clans with whom they have dwelt, and however distant from one another they still live, there is hardly a province in the whole of Bharatavarasha which cannot produce, if not some living remnants of this race, at least some remains of past times which prove their presence. Indeed, the Kurumbas must be regarded as very old inhabitants of this land, who can contest with their Dravidian kinsmen the priority of occupation of the Indian soil. The terms Kuruba and Kurumba are originally identical, though the one form is, in different places, employed for the other, and has thus occasionally assumed a special local meaning. Mr. H. B. Grigg appears to contradict himself when, while speaking of the Kurumbas, he says that ' in the low country they are called Kurubas or Cūrubāru, and are divided into such families as Ānē or elephant, Naya or dog, Māle or hill Kurumbas.'* Such a distinction between mountain Kurumbas and plain Kurumbas cannot be established. The Rev. G. Richter will find it difficult to prove that the Kurubas of Mysore are only called so as shepherds, and that no connection exists between these Kurubas and the Kurumbas. Mr. Lewis Rice calls the wild tribes as well as the shepherds Kurubas, but seems to overlook the fact that both terms are identical, and refer to only the ethnological distinction."