Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/258

250 dance are such as would naturally suggest themselves to the dwellers in forests or jungles; the club-dance is also a favourite with some of the semi-wild and aboriginal races who inhabit the jungles in Coorg and the outlying districts of the Mysore State, such as the Holeyas and the Kurumbers, who belong to the very lowest caste (if, indeed, they should not be styled outcasts or pariahs); the men have been civilized to a small extent owing to the demand for labour in opening out coffee plantations; their womenkind, however, remain in the thickets, and are rarely, if ever, seen by Europeans.

The war-dances which we read of as still taking place amongst savage peoples before going into battle have their prototypes in Asia, in Greece, and even amongst ourselves.

Some of the hill tribes in Assam execute a dance which in some of its aspects carries us back to a very early stage of human civilization (this will be described in its proper place).

A favourite dance with the Coorgis proper is a true sham-fight which sometimes degenerates into real earnest blows given on both sides; and in Ladakh, or Western Tibet, in Greece, and in the high-lands of Scotland, we find a dance performed between two crossed swords, which is probably but a remnant of a very ancient custom—that of worshipping weapons before going into a combat, or, maybe, of rejoicing over a vanquished foe.

The province of Coorg (a mountainous district situated to the west of the native state of Mysore, in Southern India) has only been British territory little more than fifty years, therefore it is highly probable that in their singular and characteristic war-dance we see the mode in which they were in the habit of attacking their foes—each man singling out his adversary. The Coorgis proper (as distinguished from the wild and aboriginal tribes of whom we have already spoken) are a decidedly fair race compared with the people of Mysore; possibly there may be an admixture of Arab blood in their veins, for in more than one respect they resemble the Arabs of Hyderabad, in the Deccan; their dress is not dissimilar; in build and general personal appearance they are not unlike the Nizam's Arab subjects, and, like these latter, they are a warlike race: almost every man carries arms of some kind, even if he does not possess a gun. Both