Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/30

KOTA concerned. The chief annual ceremony of the Kotas is held about January in honour of the Kota god Kambataraya. In order that this ceremony may take place, it is essential that there should be a palol (dairy man) at the kwòdrdoni ti, and at the present time it is only occupied every year shortly before and during the ceremony. The palol gives clarified butter to the Kotas, which should be made from the milk of the arsaiir, the buffaloes of the ti. Some Kotas of Kotagiri vvhoral interviewed claimed that these buffaloes belonged to them, and that something was done by the palol at the kwòdrdoni ti in connection with the Kambataraya ceremony, but they could not, or would not, tell me what it was." In making fire by friction (nejkōl), the Kotas employ three forms of apparatus: — (1) a vertical stick, and horizontal stick with sockets and grooves, both made of twigs of Rhodomyrtus tomentosus ; (2) a small piece of the root of Salix tetrasperma is spliced into a stick, which is rotated in a socket in a piece of the root of the same tree; (3) a small piece of the root of this tree, made tapering at each end with a knife or fragment of bottle glass, is firmly fixed in the wooden handle of a drill. A shallow cavity and groove are made in a block of the same wood, and a few crystalline particles from the ground are dropped into the cavity. The block is placed on several layers of cotton cloth, on which chips of wood, broken up small by crushing them in the palm of the hand, are piled up round the block in the vicinity of the grove. The handle is, by means of a half cocoanut shell, pressed firmly down, and twisted between the palms, or rotated by means of a cord. The incandescent particles, falling on to the chips, ignite them.