Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 3.djvu/149

 SOOKHA KUNJUR. (145)

OOKHA resides at Coel, where members of the tribe have had their home for centuries past. They live by snaring wild animals, making ropes and twine, as well as brushes of cocoa nut fibre, used by weavers. Kunjurs are for the most part a wandering, thievish race, resembling gipsies, and are to be found in nearly all parts of India. Being of degraded and filthy habits, they are reckoned a very low caste; living on the flesh of wild animals of every description, and not even sparing carrion. Nevertheless many of them attain a great age, females as well as males.

Sookha's age is thirty-six, and his height five feet four inches, his complexion dark, and hair black; eyes of a dark brown.

The Kunjurs are descended from an aboriginal stock. Neither in their habits or their features is there any trace of Aryan intermixture. The man represented in the photograph is a fair specimen of his tribe, and the women are perhaps more repulsive, even from their youth. Except when they settle temporarily near large towns, where they can support themselves by rope or brush making, the Kunjurs roam perpetually over the country, carrying then reed huts, or patched blanket tent coverings with their scanty household goods, upon asses, and halting where they please. They cannot endure the ties of a settled existence. They wear the smallest amount of clothing that will suffice for decency, and that is usually ragged; and the wilds of the country provide them food. Sookha, it will be observed, has dug down upon a fox in his earth, and drawn him out to be eaten, with unerring sagacity and skill. So also he is an adept at snaring hares, decoying partridges and quails into his nets, digging up iguanos, field rats, and land tortoises, all of which form his food. Partridges and quails he can, however, sell to Mahomedans, if they are alive; and when he cannot get game he makes brushes and ropes, as his women sew patchwork quilts for sale. He spends most part of these money gains in spirits, of which his women, for he may have several wives, partake freely with him, and some of it, no doubt, is wanted for gratuities to the