Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/26

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South India, a field second to none in value for investigation of the human animal in relation to his conditions, the early course of his civilisation, and the like, is almost an unknown country. If ever there was a country where the value of the science of folk-lore can be fully exemplified and justified, here is one, full of the strangest medley of races.

It is noteworthy that the usually scattered communities of the earliest races of the plains of South India are invariably either distinctly criminal or entirely harmless. All are, even now when the schoolmaster is very much about, almost to a man unlearned. They are not the agriculturists, or the workers in metals, or the weavers, or the traders, but the people who prey upon these ordinary and useful members of society. They are also the hunters. The nomadic Yanadis, Erakalas, Koravas, and the Kullens are some of these depredators and hunters, who are responsible for by far the greater part of the crime of the country. On the other hand, there are the Pullers of Tinnevelly in the extreme south, who are perfectly harmless and inoffensive, though perhaps deserving the lowest place on the list for culture and intelligence.

There is, so far as my research goes, amongst the aboriginal races of South India of the hills or plains, no trace of a beneficent Deity, who, wherever we meet him, is of Hindu, or, we might say, Aryan origin.

I propose to attempt some description of the Wadders and of the Kullens, both of the class Dravidian. First, the Wadders, more or less nomadic, found nearly all over South India. They are somewhat of an exception to the criminal class, in that their life is not entirely criminal. They are the earth-workers, the diggers of all kinds of earthworks, tanks, wells, railway embankments, canals, and