Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India.djvu/155

 fact (pointed out by Dr. Rivers ) that the Badagas are not mentioned in a single one of the Todas' legends about their gods, whereas the Kotas, Kurumbas, and Irulas, each play a part in one or more of these stories, raises the inference that the relations between the Badagas and the Todas are recent as compared with those between the other tribes. A critical study of the Badaga dialect might perhaps serve to fix within closer limits the date of the migration. As now spoken, this tongue contains letters (two forms of r for instance) and numerous words, which are otherwise met with only in ancient books, and which strike most strangely upon the ear of the present generation of Canarese. The date when some of these letters and words became obsolete might possibly be traced, and thus aid in fixing the period when the Badagas left the low country. It is known that the two forms of r, for example, had dropped out of use prior to the time of the grammarian Kesiraja, who lived in the thirteenth century, and that the word betta (a hill), which the Badagas use in place of the modern bettu, is found in the thirteenth century work Sabdamanidarpana."

It is recorded, in the Gazetteer of the Nilgiris, that "Nellialam, about eight miles north-west of Devala as the crow flies, is the residence of the Nellialam Arasu (Urs), who has been recognised as the janmi (landlord) of a considerable area in the Munanad amsam, but is in reality a Canarese-speaking Lingayat of Canarese extraction, who follows the ordinary Hindu law of inheritance, and is not a native of the Wynad or of Malabar. Family tradition, though now somewhat misty, says that in the beginning two brothers named Sadasiva Raja Urs and Bhujanga Raja Urs moved (at some date and for