Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 6.djvu/359

Rh the rest of the house, and a separate door, so that It may go in and out without going through that part of the house occupied by the family. Rude drawings are very common in Saora houses. They are invariably, if not always, in some way that I could never clearly apprehend, connected with one of the fetishes in the house." " When," Mr. Ramamurti writes, "a tiger enters a cottage and carries away an inmate, the villages are deserted, and sacrifices are offered to some spirits by all the inhabitants. The prevalence of small-pox in a village requires its abandonment. A succession of calamities leads to the same result. If a Savara has a number of wives, each of them sometimes requires a separate house, and the house sites are frequently shifted according to the caprice of the women. The death or disease of cattle is occasionally followed by the desertion of the house."

When selecting a site for a new dwelling hut, the Māliah Savaras place on the proposed site as many grains of rice in pairs as there are married members in the family, and cover them over with a cocoanut shell. They are examined on the following day, and, if they are all there, the site is considered auspicious. Among the Kāpu Savaras, the grains of rice are folded up in leaflets of the bael tree (Ægle Marmelos), and placed in split bamboo.

It is recorded by Mr. Fawcett, in connection with the use of the duodecimal system by the Savaras that, "on asking a Gōmango how he reckoned when selling produce to the Pānos, he began to count on his fingers. In order to count 20, he began on the left foot (he was squatting), and counted 5; then with the left hand 5 more; then with the two first fingers of the right hand he made 2 more, i.e., 12 altogether; then with the thumb of the