Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India.djvu/15

 collections." Tribes which, only a few years ago, were living in a wild state, clad in a cool and simple garb of forest leaves, buried away in the depths of the jungle, and living, like pigs and bears, on roots, honey, and other forest produce, have now come under the domesticating, and sometimes detrimental influence of contact with Europeans, with a resulting modification of their conditions of life, morality, and even language. The Paniyans of the Wynaad, and the Irulas of the Nllgiris, now work regularly for wages on planters' estates, and I have seen a Toda boy studying for the third standard instead of tending the buffaloes of his mand. A Toda lassie curling her ringlets with the assistance of a cheap German looking-glass ; a Toda man smeared with Hindu sect marks, and praying for male offspring at a Hindu shrine ; the abandonment of leafy garments in favour of imported cotton piece-goods ; the employment of kerosine tins in lieu of thatch ; the decline of the national turban in favour of the less becoming pork-pie cap or knitted nightcap of gaudy hue ; the abandonment of indigenous vegetable dyes in favour of tinned anilin and alizarin dyes ; the replacement of the indigenous peasant jewellery by imported beads and imitation jewellery made in Europe — these are a few examples of change resulting from Western and other influences.

The practice of human sacrifice, or Meriah rite, has been abolished within the memory of men still living, and replaced by the equally efficacious slaughter of a buffalo or sheep. And I have notes on a substituted ceremony, in which a sacrificial sheep is shaved so as to produce a crude representation of a human being, a Hindu sect mark painted on its forehead, a turban stuck on its head, and a cloth around its body. The picturesque, but barbaric ceremony of hook-swinging is now