Page:Castes and tribes of southern India, Volume 5.djvu/108

MUDUVAR less jewelry than the married women, and widows wear no jewelry till they are remarried, when they can in no way be distinguished from their sisters. Tattooing is not practiced. Sometimes a stout thread is worn on the arm, with a metal cylinder containing some charm against illness or the evil eye, but only the wise men or elders of the caste lay much store on, or have knowledge of these things. The Muduvars believe that they were originally cultivators of the soil, and their surroundings and tastes have made them become hunters and trappers, since coming to the hills. At the present day, they cut down a bit of secondary jungle or cheppukad, and, after burning it off, sow rāgi (millet), or, where the rainfall is sufficient, hill-rice, which is weeded and tended by the women, the men contenting themselves by trying to keep out the enemies to their crops. After harvest there is not much to be done, except building a new village perhaps, making traps, and shooting. All they catch is game to them, though we should describe some of the animals as vermin. They catch rats, squirrels, quail, jungle fowl, porcupines, mouse-deer, and fish. They kill, with a blowpipe and dart, many small birds. The traps in use are varied, but there are three principal ones, one of which looks like a big bow. It is fixed upright in the ground as a spring to close with a snap a small upright triangle of sharp-edged bamboo, to which it is connected, and into which any luckless small game may have intruded its head, induced to do so by finding all other roads closed with a cunningly made fence. Another is a bent sapling, from which a loop of twine or fibre hangs on what appears to be the ground, but is really a little platform on which the jungle fowl treads, and immediately finds itself caught by both legs, and