Page:Castes and tribes of southern India, Volume 5.djvu/520

PALIYAN one of them is bitten, he chews these, and also applies them to the wound. Patience and cunning above all are required in their hunting-methods. One of their devices, used for big game, e.g., against the sambar (deer), or against the boar, consists in digging pitfalls, carefully covered up with twigs and leaves. On the animal being entrapped, it is dispatched with clubs or the aruvāl (sickle). Another means consists in arranging a heap of big stones on a kind of platform, one end of which is made to rest on higher ground, the other skilfully equipoised by a stick resting on a fork, where it remains fixed by means of strong twine so disposed that the least movement makes the lever-like stick on the fork fly off, while the platform and the stones come rapidly down with a crash. The string which secures the lever is so arranged as to unloose itself at the least touch, and the intended victim can hardly taste the food that serves for bait without bringing the platform with all its weight down upon itself. Similar traps, but on a smaller scale, are used to catch smaller animals: hares, wild fowl, etc. Flying squirrels are smoked out of the hollows of trees, and porcupines out of their burrows, and then captured or clubbed to death on their coming out. The first drops of blood of any animal the Paliyans kill are offered to their god. A good catch is a great boon for the famished Paliyan. The meat obtained therefrom must be divided between all the families of the settlement. The skins, if valuable, are preserved to barter for the little commodities they may stand in need of, or to give as a tribute to their chief One of their methods for procuring fish consists in throwing the leaves of a creeper called in Tamil karungakodi, after rubbing them, into the water. Soon the fish is seen floating on the surface. Rough fashioned hooks are also used. When not engaged on some