Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 8.djvu/124

KOTA MEN.—KOTA WOMEN. from thirty to sixty houses, which have mud walls and are covered with thatch. The pillars of some of their verandahs are of stone, neatly sculptured by low country stone-cutters. Each village has one or two houses set apart for the purification of women.

"The Kotas are the only one of all the hill tribes who practise the industrial arts, and they are therefore essential almost to the existence of other tribes and classes. They work in gold and silver, are carpenters and blacksmiths, tanners and rope-makers, umbrella makers, potters, and musicians, and are, at the same time, tillers of the soil. In agriculture they are quite on a par with the Badagas. They are, however, a squalid race, living chiefly on carrion, and are on this account a by-word among the other castes, who, while they feel they cannot do without them, nevertheless abhor them for their filthy habits. It is odd that their disgusting food seems to agree with them; they are active, muscular fellows, with twice the strength of a Badaga. Every village has three or four forges, where they work with the usual native bellows, pincers, and hammers. The women make clay pots on a wheel, work in the fields, and fetch water and firewood. The potter's wheel is a disc of wood with a blunt iron point, on which it revolves; the socket is a hole in a stone fixed permanently in the ground in front of their houses." T

he Kotas perform all the artizan work for the Badagas, and are paid in allowance of grain at harvest. The Todas pay their services with hides of dead buffaloes and ghee; the Irulas and Kurumbars in grain and plantains. On the whole they make a good livelihood, especially as their music and dancing are indispensable at feasts, and are necessarily well rewarded. It will be observed in the Plate that one of the men sits upon a drum, and bears the long brass horn common to Southern India, indeed to India generally. A brass horn of nearly similar shape and construction, found in a bog in Ireland, is now in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin.

The Kotas worship one god, Kamataraya and his wife, Kahasumma; there are two priests to each village, one is called Devadi, whose office is hereditary, and should the family fail a new one is selected by inspiration. The Devadi selects the second priest. Kamataraya is considered the creator of the three most ancient hill tribes, Todas, Kotas, and Kurumbars, out of three drops of sweat from his forehead; which resembles legends in Scandanavia, in China, and the Vedic legend of Purasha. They have but one festival in the year, which consists of ceremonies at the temple, dancing, singing, and pantomime performances. The whole lasts for about a fortnight.

The marriage ceremonies are simple. When a lad is from fifteen to twenty years old his parents ask a wife for him, and the pair are betrothed, and a piece of gold worth ten to twenty rupees is paid for her; sometimes ornaments of gold and