Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 7.djvu/282

URALI feast to the panchāyat, at which a part of the food is offered to the crows, and the purification is not complete till the birds have partaken thereof. The Urālis are fond of shikār (hunting). On the Sivarātri night, sacrifices are offered to their family gods, and, on the following day, all the men of the village go out hunting. They have a head shikāri (huntsman), called Kāvēttaikāran, who receives every animal which is killed, cuts off its head, and breaks its legs. The head is given to the man who killed the animal, and the rest is shared among the castemen."

Of the Urālis who inhabit the hill country of Travancore, the following account is given in the Travancore Census report, 1901. "The Urālis are a class of hill tribes resident in the Cardamom Hills. They are chiefly found in the tracts known as Kunnanāt, Velampan, Kurakkanāt, Mannukāt, Kalanāt, and Periyūr. The headman of the Urālis in each of these areas is called a Kānikkāran. Tradition tells us that they were the dependents of the kings of Madura, and that their duty was to hold umbrellas in times of State processions. In ancient times, many of the parts now included in the Todupuzha tāluk belonged to the kingdom of Madura. Once, when the king came to Nēriyamangalam, the ancestors of these Urālis are said to have accompanied him, and to have been left there to rule (āli) that locally (ūr). The males dress like the low-country people, with cloths about four cubits long extending from the hip to the knee. Another cloth, about one or two cubits in length, is put over the back, one end of which passes under their right arm and the other over the shoulder, both meeting in front over the chest, where they are tied together in a peculiar knot by folding the extremities, thus forming a bag wherein to contain their wayside necessaries.