Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/341

Rh leaves, an onion or brinjal (Solanum Melongena), a few chillies, a handful of grain, or a pinch of salt, and helped to deplete the slender stock of the market-sellers. One holy man from Sholapūr was profusely decorated with beads, ashes, brass snakes, and deities. Holding out for four pies worth of betel leaves, while the stall-keeper only offered one pie worth, he, after making a circle in the ground with his staff round his sandals thickly studded with blunt nails, stood thereon, and abused the vendor in language which was not nice. A Native Magistrate thereon summoned a constable, who, hastily donning his official belt, took the holy man in custody for an offence under the Act.

A conspicuous feature of Hospet are the block-wheel carts with wooden wheels, solid or made of several pieces, with no spokes. Dragged by sturdy buffaloes, they are excellent for carrying timber or other loads on rough roads or hill-tracks, where ordinary carts cannot travel. During the breezy and showery season of the south-west monsoon, kite-flying is the joy of the Hospet youths, the kites being decorated with devices of scorpions and Hindu gods, among which a representation of Hanumān, one of the genii loci, soared highest every evening. It is fairly easy to distinguish a Mādiga from a Bēdar, but difficult to put the distinction in words. The Mādigas have more prominent cheek-bones, a more vinous eye, and are more unkempt. The Bēdar, it is said, gets drunk on arrack (alcohol obtained by distillation), whereas the Mādiga contents himself with the cheaper toddy (fermented palm juice). The Bēdars resort freely to the Mādiga quarters (Mādiga keri), situated on the outskirts of the town, and fenced in by milk-hedge (Euphorbia Tirucalli) bushes. My Brāhman assistant, hunting in the Mādiga quarters for subjects for