Page:Omens and superstitions of southern India.djvu/262

232 the Paniyans, of whom one ran out, and struck the victim on the head with a chopper. She was then gagged with a cloth, carried some distance, and killed.

In 1834, the inhabitants of several villages in Malabar attacked a village of Paraiyans on the alleged ground that deaths of people and cattle, and the protracted labour of a woman in childbed, had been caused by the practice of sorcery by the Paraiyans. They were beaten inhumanely with their hands tied behind their backs, so that several died. The villagers were driven, bound, into a river, immersed under water so as nearly to produce suffocation, and their own children were forced to rub sand into their wounds. Their settlement was then razed to the ground, and they were driven into banishment.

The Kādirs of the Ānaimalais are believers in witchcraft, and attribute diseases to the working thereof. They are expert exorcists, and trade in mantravādam or magic. It is recorded by Mr Logan that "the family of famous trackers, whose services in the jungles were retained for H.R.H. the Prince of Wales's (afterwards King Edward VII.) projected sporting tour in the Ānamalai mountains, dropped off most mysteriously one by one, stricken down by an unseen hand, and all of them expressing beforehand their conviction that they were under a certain individual's spell, and were doomed to certain death at an early date. They were probably poisoned, but how it was managed remains a mystery, although the family was under the protection of a European gentleman, who would at once have brought to light any ostensible foul play."

The Badagas of the Nīlgiris live in dread of the jungle Kurumbas, who constantly come under reference in their folk-stories. The Kurumba is the necromancer of the hills,