Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 6.djvu/459

Rh Sondi." A friend was, on one occasion, out after big game in the Jeypore hills, and shot a tiger. He asked his shikāri (tracker) what reward he should give him for putting him on to the beast. The shikāri replied that he would be quite satisfied with twenty-five rupees, as he wanted to get his younger brother out of pledge. Asked what he meant, he replied that, two years previously, he had purchased as his wife a woman who belonged to a caste higher than his own for a hundred rupees. He obtained the money by pledging his younger brother to a sowcar, and had paid it all back except twenty-five rupees. Meanwhile his brother was the bondsman of the sowcar, and cultivating his land in return for simple food.

It is further recorded, in the Gazetteer of the Vizagapatam district, that Dombu (or Dōmb) dacoits "force their way into the house of some wealthy person (for choice the local Sondi liquor-seller and sowcar — usually the only man worth looting in an Agency village, and a shark who gets little pity from his neighbours when forced to disgorge), tie up the men, rape the women, and go off with everything of value."

The titles of the Ganjam Sondis are Bēhara, Chowdri, Podhāno, and Sāhu. In the Vizagapatam agency tracts, their title is said to be Bissōyi.  Sonkari.-— The Sonkaris are a small class of Oriya lac bangle (sonka) makers in Ganjam and Vizagapatam, who should not be confused with the Telugu Sunkaris. The men are engaged in agriculture, and the women manufacture the bangles, chains, chāmaras (fly-flappers), kōlatam sticks (for stick play), and fans ornamented with devices in paddy (unhusked rice) grains, which are mainly sold to Europeans as curios. 