Part 14

Of the Kadu and Betta Kurumbas, as they were at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the following account is given by Buchanan. [58] "The Cad Curubaru are a rude tribe, who are exceedingly poor and wretched. In the fields near the villages, they build miserable low huts, have a few rags only for clothing, and the hair of both sexes stands out matted like a mop, and swarms with vermin. Some of them hire themselves out as labouring servants to the farmers, and receive monthly wages. Others, in crop seasons, watch the fields at night, to keep off elephants and wild hogs. In the intervals between crops, they work as daily labourers, or go into the woods, and collect the roots of wild yams (Dioscorea), part of which they eat, and part exchange with the farmers for grain. Their manner of driving away the elephant is by running against him with a burning torch made of bamboos. The animal sometimes turns, waits till the Curubaru comes close up; but these poor people, taught by experience, push boldly on, dash their torches against the elephant's head, who never fails to take to immediate flight. Should their courage fail, and should they attempt to run away, the elephant would immediately pursue, and put them to death. The Curubaru have no means of killing so large an animal, and, on meeting with one in the day-time, are as much alarmed as any other of the inhabitants. During the Sultan's reign they caught a few in pitfalls. [I have heard of a clever Kurumba, who caught an elephant by growing pumpkins and vegetable marrow, for which elephants have a partiality, over a pit on the outskirts of his field.--E.T.] The wild hogs are driven out of the fields by slings, but they are too fierce for the Curubaru to kill. These people frequently suffer from tigers, against which their wretched huts are a poor defence; and, when this wild beast is urged by hunger, he is regardless of their burning torches. These Curubaru have dogs, with which they catch deer, antelopes, and hares; and they have the art of taking in snares, peacocks, and other esculent birds. They believe that good men, after death, will become benevolent Devas, and bad men destructive Devas. They are of such known honesty that on all occasions they are entrusted with provisions by the farmers, who are persuaded that the Curubaru would rather starve than take one grain of what was given to them in charge. The spirits of the dead are believed to appear in dreams to their old people, and to direct them to make offerings to a female deity named Bettada Chicama, that is, the mother of the hill. Unless these offerings are made, this goddess occasions sickness. In cases of adultery, the husband flogs his wife severely, and, if he is able, beats her paramour. If he be not able, he applies to the gaudo (headman), who does it for him." The Betta Curubaru, Buchanan continues, "live in poor huts near the villages, and the chief employment of the men is the cutting of timber, and making of baskets. With a sharp stick they also dig up spots of ground in the skirts of the forest, and sow them with ragi (Eleusine Coracana). The men watch at night the fields of the farmers, but they are not so dexterous at this as the Cad Curubaru. In this class, the Cutigas are women that prefer another man to their husband, or widows, who do not wish to relinquish carnal enjoyment. Their children are not considered as illegitimate."

Of the casual system of clearing the jungle in vogue among the Kurumbas, I may quote the following description. [59] "In their search for food, this wild tribe naturally prefers a forest cleared of all undergrowth, in which to move about, and the ingenuity with which they attain this end, and outwit the vigilant forest subordinates, is worthy of a better object. I have heard of a Kurumba walking miles from his hadi or hamlet, with a ball of dry smouldering elephant dung concealed in his waist-cloth. This he carried to the heart of the forest reserve, and, selecting a suitable spot, he placed the smouldering dung, with a plentiful supply of dry inflammable grass over it, in such a position as to allow the wind to play upon it, and fan it into a flame with the pleasing certainty that the smoke from the fire would not be detected by the watchers on the distant fire-lines until the forest was well alight, the flames beyond all control, and the Kurumba himself safe at home in his hadi, awaiting the arrival of the forest subordinate to summon the settlement to assist in the hopeless task of extinguishing the fire."

Of the Kurumbas who are found in the Wynad, Calicut, and Ernad taluks of Malabar, the following account is given in the Gazetteer of that district. "They are sub-divided into Mullu (bamboo) Kurumbans, Jen or Ten (honey) Kurumbans, also called Kadu or Shola Nayakkans (or Jenu Koyyo Shola Nayakas, i.e., honey-cutting lords of the woods), and Urali or Bet Kurumbans; of which the first-named class, who consider themselves superior to the others, are cultivators and hunters; the second wood-cutters and collectors of honey; and the third make baskets and implements of agriculture. The Mullu and Ten Kurumbans have headmen with titles of Muppan and Mudali respectively conferred by their janmis (landlords). The Kurumbans, like many of the other hill-tribes, use bows and arrows, with which they are expert. The caste deity of the Ten Kurumbans is called Masti. It is perhaps worth remarking that the Urali Kurumbans of the Wynaad differ from the other two classes in having no headmen, observing a shorter period of pollution after a birth than any other Malabar tribe and none at all after a death, and in not worshipping any of the Malabar animistic deities."

The chief sub-divisions of the Kurumbas on the Nilgiris, and in the Wynad, are said, in the Madras Census Report, 1891, to be "Mullu (thorn), Betta or Vetta (hill), Urali (Ur, a village), Ten (honey), and Tac'chanadan Muppan (carpenter headman). Of these, the first and last speak Malayalam, and wear a lock in front of their head in the Malabar fashion. The rest speak Canarese. Urali Kurumbas work in metals."

The villages of the Kurumbas on the Nilgiri hills are, Mr. Grigg writes, [60] called mottas. They consist generally of only four or five huts, made of mud and wattle, with thatched roofs. The front of the house is sometimes whitewashed, and ornamented with rude drawings of men and animals in red earth or charcoal. They store their grain in large oval baskets, and for bottles they use gourds. They clear a patch round about the village, and sow the ground with ragi (Eleusine Coracana), tenne (Setaria italica), or kiri (Amarantus). They dig up roots (called gasu) for food, and collect the jungle produce, honey, resin, gall-nuts, etc., which they barter with low-country traders, and they are clever in catching game in nets, and dispose of the flesh in a surprisingly short time. Kurumbas occasionally take work on coffee plantations, and some earn a livelihood by officiating as priests to the Badagas. They are also employed as musicians at wedding feasts and funerals of the other tribes, where they play on clarionets, drums, and tambourines, as well as the buguri. They make baskets of rattan and milk vessels out of a joint of bamboo, as well as nets of a thread called oilhatti. Their women confine themselves to the limited work of their households, fetching water, cooking, etc. The following extract embraces all that can be said of the religion of the Kurumbas. "Some profess to worship Siva, and occasionally women mark their foreheads with the Siva spot. Others, living near Barliar, worship Kuribattraya (lord of many sheep) and the wife of Siva under the name of Musni. They worship also a rough stone under the name of Hiriadeva, setting it up either in a cave, or in a circle of stones like the so-called Kurumba kovil of the Badagas, which the latter would seem to have borrowed from the Kurumbas. To this they make puja, and offer cooked rice at the sowing time. They also profess to sacrifice to Hiriadeva a goat, which they kill at their own houses, after sprinkling water, and eat, giving a portion of flesh to the pujari (priest). Others say that they have no pujari: among such a scattered tribe customs probably vary in each motta"--(Breeks). It is recorded by Dr. Rivers, in connection with the Toda legendary stories of Kwoten, that "one day Kwoten went with Erten of Keadr, who was spoken of as his servant to Poni, in the direction of Polkat (Calicut). At Poni there is a stream called Palpa, the commencement of which may be seen on the Kundahs. Kwoten and Erten went to drink water out of the stream at a place where a goddess (teu) named Terkosh had been bathing.... Finally, they came to Terkosh, who said to Kwoten, "Do not come near me, I am a teu." Kwoten paid no heed to this, but said "You are a beautiful woman," and went and lay with her. Then Terkosh went away to her hill at Poni, where she is now, and to this day the Kurumbas go there once a year and offer plantains to her, and light lamps in her honour."

It is further recorded by Dr. Rivers that "two ceremonial objects are obtained by the Todas from the Kurumbas. One is the tall pole called tadrsi or tadri, which is used in the dance at the second funeral ceremonies, and afterwards burnt. Poles of the proper length are said to grow only on the Malabar side of the Nilgiris, and are probably most easily obtained from the Kurumbas. The other is the teiks, or funeral post at which the buffalo is killed." Besides supplying the Badagas with the elephant-pole required at their funerals, the Kurumbas have to sow the first handful of grain for the Badagas every season. The ceremony is thus described by Harkness. [61] "A family of the Burghers (Badagas) had assembled, which was about to commence ploughing. With them were two or three Kurumbas, one of whom had set up a stone in the centre of the spot on which we were standing, and, decorating it with wild flowers, prostrated himself to it, offered incense, and sacrificed a goat, which had been brought there by the Burghers. He then took the guidance of the plough, and, having ploughed some ten or twelve paces, gave it over, possessed himself of the head of the sacrificed animal, and left the Burghers to prosecute their labours.... The Kurumba, sowing the first handful, leaves the Burgher to go on with the remainder, and, reaping the first sheaf, delivers it with the sickle to him, to accomplish the remainder of the task. At harvest time, or when the whole of the grain has been gathered in, the Kurumba receives his dues, or proportion of the produce." The relations of the Kurumbas with the Badagas at the present day, and the share which the former take in the ceremonies of the latter, are dealt with in the account of the Badagas.

I am informed that, among the Kurumbas of the Nilgiris, it is the custom for several brothers to take one wife in common (adelphogamy), and that they do not object to their women being open to others also. There is said to be no marriage rite. A man and woman will mate together, and live as husband and wife. And, if it happens that, in a family, there has been a succession of such wives for one or two generations, it becomes an event, and is celebrated as such. The pair sit together, and pour water over each other from pots. They then put on new cloths, and a feast is partaken of. Among the Shola Nayakkars, a feature of the marriage ceremony is said to be for the bride to roll a cheroot of tobacco leaves, which both parties must smoke in turn.

Writing concerning the Irulas and Kurumbas, Mr. Walhouse says [62] that "after every death among them, they bring a long water-worn stone (devva kotta kallu), and put it into one of the old cromlechs sprinkled over the Nilgiri plateau. Some of the larger of these have been found piled up to the cap-stone with such pebbles, which must have been the work of generations. Occasionally, too, the tribes mentioned make small cromlechs for burial purposes, and place the long water-worn pebbles in them. Mr. Breeks reports that the Kurumbas in the neighbourhood of the Rangasvami peak and Barliar burn their dead, and place a bone and a small round stone in the savu-mane (death-house)--an old cromlech." The conjecture is hazarded by Fergusson [63] that the Kurumbas are the remnant of a great and widely spread race, who may have erected dolmens. As bearing on the connection between Kurumbas and Kurubas, it is worthy of note that the latter, in some places, erect dolmens as a resting-place for the dead. (See Kuruba.)

It is noted, in the Gazetteer of the Nilgiris, that the Kurumbas "trade largely on the extraordinary dread of their supposed magical powers which possesses the Todas and the Badagas--the latter especially. Stories are told of how they can summon wild elephants at will, and reduce rocks to powder merely by scattering mystic herbs upon them."

"The Kurumbas," Harkness writes, "have a knowledge of herbs and medicinal roots, and the Burghers (Badagas) say that they limit their knowledge thereof to those which are noxious only, and believe that, with the assistance of their magic, they are able to convey them into the stomachs of those to whom they have any dislike. The violent antipathy existing between the Burghers and the Kurumbas, and the dread and horror which the former entertain of the preternatural powers of the latter, are, perhaps, not easily accounted for; but neither sickness, death, nor misfortune of any kind, ever visit the former, without the latter having the credit of producing it. A few years before, a Burgher had been hanged by the sentence of the provincial court for the murder of a Kurumba. The act of the former was not without what was considered great provocation. Disease had attacked the inhabitants of the hamlet, a murrain their cattle. The former had carried off a great part of the family of the murderer, and he himself had but narrowly escaped its effects. No one in the neighbourhood doubted that the Kurumba in question had, by his necromancy, caused all this misfortune, and, after several fruitless attempts, a party of them succeeded in surrounding him in open day, and effecting their purpose." In 1835 no less than forty-eight Kurumbas were murdered, and a smaller number in 1875 and 1882. In 1900 a whole family of Kurumbas was murdered, of which the head, who had a reputation as a medicine-man, was believed to have brought disease and death into a Badaga village. The sympathies of the whole country-side were so strongly with the murderers that detection was made very difficult, and the persons charged were acquitted. [64] In this case several Todas were implicated. "It is," Mr. Grigg writes, "a curious fact that neither Kota, Irula, or Badaga will slay a Kurumba until a Toda has struck the first blow, but, as soon as his sanctity has been violated by a blow, they hasten to complete the murderous work, which the sacred hand of the Toda has begun." The Badaga's dread of the Kurumba is said to be so great that a simple threat of vengeance has proved fatal. My Toda guide--a stalwart representative of his tribe--expressed fear of walking from Ootacamund to Kotagiri, a distance of eighteen miles along a highroad, lest he should come to grief at the hands of Kurumbas; but this was really a frivolous excuse to get out of accompanying me to a distance from his domestic hearth. In like manner, Dr. Rivers records that, when he went to Kotagiri, a Toda who was to accompany him made a stipulation that he should be provided with a companion, as the Kurambas were very numerous in that part. In connection with the Toda legend of Ön, who created the buffaloes and the Todas, Dr. Rivers writes that "when Ön saw that his son was in Amnodr (the world of the dead), he did not like to leave him there alone, and decided to go away to the same place. So he called together all the people, and the buffaloes and the trees, to come and bid him farewell. All the people came except a man of Kwodrdoni named Arsankutan. He and his family did not come. All the buffaloes came except the Arsaiir, the buffaloes of the Kwodroni ti (sacred dairy). Some trees also failed to come. Ön blessed all the people, buffaloes and trees present, but said that, because Arsankutan had not come, he and his people should die by sorcery at the hands of the Kurumbas, and that, because the Arsaiir had not come, they should be killed by tigers, and that the trees which had not come should bear bitter fruit. Since that time the Todas have feared the Kurumbas, and buffaloes have been killed by tigers."

On the Nilgiri hills, honey-combs are collected by Jen Kurumbas and Sholagas. The supply of honey varies according to the nature of the season, and is said to be especially plentiful and of good quality when Strobilanthes flowers. [65] The Kurumbas are said to have incredibly keen eye-sight, gained from constantly watching the bee to his hive. When they find a hive not quite ready to take, they place a couple of sticks in a certain position. This sign will prevent any other Kurumba from taking the honey, and no Badaga or other hillman would meddle with it on any account, for fear of being killed by sorcery.

Fortified by a liberal allowance of alcohol and tobacco, the Kurumbas, armed with bamboo torches, will follow up at night the tracks of a wounded 'bison' (Bos gaurus), and bring back the head and meat to camp. A European sportsman recounts that he has often seen his Kurumba shikari (tracker) stop, and, with the one word "honey," point to the top of an adjacent tree. "How do you know?" he asked, "Oh! I saw a bee" was the answer given with the greatest nonchalance. On one occasion he found himself close to a swarm of bees. The Kurumba, seeing him hesitate, thrust his stick clean through the swarm, and, with the bare remark "No honey," marched on. The District Forest Officer, when out shooting, had an easy shot at a stag, and missed it. "There," said the Kurumba, pointing to a distant tree, "is your bullet." His trained sense of hearing no doubt enabled him to locate the sound of the bullet striking the tree, and his eyes, following the sound, instantly detected the slight blaze made by the bullet on the bark. The visual acuity of a number of tribes and castes inhabiting the mountains, jungles, and plains, has been determined by Dr. W. H. R. Rivers and myself, by means of the Cohn letter E method. And, though the jungle man, who has to search for his food and mark the tracks or traces of wild beasts, undoubtedly possesses a specially trained keenness of vision for the exigencies of his primitive life, our figures show that, as regards ordinary visual acuity, he has no advantage over the more highly civilised classes.

"The Kurumbas of the Mysore forests," Mr. Theobald writes, "make fire by friction. They follow the same method as the Todas, as described by Mr. Thurston, but never use the powdered charcoal in the cavity of the horizontal piece of wood which is held down by their feet, or by a companion. The fine brown powder, formed during the rotation of the longer vertical piece, gives sufficient tinder, which soon ignites, and is then placed on a small piece of cotton rag, rolled loosely, and gently blown until it is ignited. The vertical stick is held between the palms, and has a reciprocal motion, by the palms being moved in opposite directions, at the same time using a strong downward pressure, which naturally brings the palms to the bottom, when they are at once raised to their original position, and the operation continued till the naturally formed tinder ignites."

In his report on Forest Administration in Coorg, 1902-1903, Mr. C. D'A. McCarthy writes as follows concerning the Kurumbas, who work for the Forest department. "We experienced in connection with the Kurumbas one of those apparent aberrations of sense and intellect, the occurrence of which amongst this peculiar race was foreshadowed in the last report. The Chief Commissioner is aware that, in the interests of the Kurubas themselves, we substitute for a single cash payment distributions to the same value of food-grains, clothes and cash, in equal proportions of each. Now, seventy years ago, before the annexation of Coorg, the Kurubas and similar castes were prædial slaves of the dominant Coorgs, receiving no other remuneration for service than food and clothing. In fact, this institution, nothing less than real slavery, was not entirely broken up until the great demand for local labour created by the opening up of the country for coffee cultivation so late as 1860-1870, so that the existing generation are still cognisant of the old state of affairs. Last year, during the distribution of rewards for the successful protection of the reserves that season from fire, it seems that the idea was put into the heads of these people that our system of remuneration, which includes the distribution of food and clothing, was an attempt to create again at their expense a system of, as it were, forest slavery; with the result that for a time nothing would induce many of them to accept any form of remuneration for the work already performed, much less to undertake the same duties for the approaching season. It was some time, and after no little trouble, that the wherefore of this strange conduct was discovered, and the suspicions aroused put at rest." In his report, 1904-1905, Mr. McCarthy states that "the local system of fire protection, consisting of the utilisation of the Kuruba jungle population for the clearing of fire lines and patrolling, and the payment of rewards according to results, may now be said to be completely established in Coorg. The Kurubas appear to have gained complete confidence in the working of the system, and, provided the superior officers personally see to the payment of the rewards, are evidently quite satisfied that the deductions for failures are just and fair."

The Kurumbas are said to have been very useful in the mining operations during the short life of the Wynad gold-mines. A few years ago, I received the skulls of two Kurumbas, who went after a porcupine into a deserted tunnel on the Glenrock Gold-mining Company's land in the Wynad. The roof fell in on them, and they were buried alive.

In a note on the 'Ethnogénie des Dravidiens', [66] Mr. Louis Lapicque writes as follows. "Les populations caractéristiques du Wainaad sont les Panyer, les négroides les plus accusés et les plus homogenes que j'ai vus, et probablement qui existent dans toute l'Inde. D'autre part, les tribus vivant de leur côté sur leurs propres cultures, fortement négroides encore, mais plus mélangées. Tels sont les Naiker et les Kouroumbas."

===================+==========+=============+======== ==== | Indice | Indice | | nasal. | céphalique. | Taille. ===================+==========+=============+======== 54 Panyer | 84 | 74 | 154 28 Kouroumbas | 81 | 75 | 157 12 Naiker | 80 | 76.9 | 157 ===================+==========+=============+========