Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 7.djvu/384

VEDAN god Chāttan would be angry if they neglected the custom. It may be noted that tooth-filing is also practiced by the jungle Kādirs (q.v.). Both males and females wore a cotton loin-cloth, mellowed by wear and weather to a subtle greenish hue. Red and blue necklaces, interstrung with sections of the chank shell (Turbinella rapa) adorned the necks and chests. One woman was of special interest. Her neck and breasts were literally concealed by a medley of beads, shells, brass bells, and two common iron keys — these last, she said, for ornament. Around her hips, over her cloth, hung several rows of small bones of pig and sāmbar (Cervus unicolor). The Mala Vēdars find these bones in the jungle. An aged priest said that he used to perform devil-dancing, but was now too stiff to dance, and had to labour like the younger men. The Mala Vēdans apparently possess no temples or shrines, but Hindus permit them to offer money at the Hindu shrines from a distance, at times of sudden sickness or during other seasons of panic. Their god Chāttan, or Sāttan, has no fixed abode, but, where the Mala Vēdans are, there is he in the midst of them. They bury their dead in a recumbent posture, near the hut of the deceased. The Mala Vēdans practice the primitive method of kindling fire by the friction of wood (also practiced by the Kānakars), and, like the Kānakars, they eat the black monkey. Their implements are bill-hooks, and bows and arrows. They weave grass baskets, which are slung to their girdles, and contain betel, etc." The more important measurements of twenty-five Mala Vēdans examined by myself were —