Page:Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan.djvu/39

Rh the legitimate Rájá of Bednúr, a chiefdom in the Malnád, a hill country to the westward, and better known as the territory of the Náyaks of Kiladi. Kiladi, now a petty village in the north-west of Mysore, was the homestead of two brothers who, about the year 1560, having found a treasure, and duly sacrificed a human victim, according to the barbarous practice of the time, received from the Rájá, of Vijayanagar a grant for the territory which their wealth enabled them to overrun. Their descendants moved the capital to Ikkeri, ten miles to the south, where Venkatappa Náyak was ruling at the time when the Italian traveller Pietro della Valle visited this part of India about 1623. Della Valle, who had great powers of observation, gives an interesting account of the social and religious customs of the Lingáyats, to which sect the chief belonged. Della Valle was in the suite of the Portuguese envoy, for whose amusement various entertainments were provided, among which Della Valle mentions the Kolahátá dance, in which the girls held short sticks in their hands, which they struck against one another as they danced, singing as they circled round in the piazza of the temple. This dance is still practised by the Coorgs.