442 ORIGIN OF THE RIVER CAUVERY. Chap. XXVI. 



with the poor young princess Devammaji. Her sister, who 

 had married a Coorg, escaped into British territory. It would 

 be too revolting to recount all the atrocities of the last Rajah 

 of Coorg ; but at length the patience of Lord \Allliam Ben- 

 tinck was exhausted, and in April 1834 General Eraser 

 entered Mercara, and deposed him. Coorg has since been 

 governed by an English Superintendent, under the orders of 

 the Commissioners of Mysore. 



The Kodagas or Coorgs are a tall, muscular, broad-chested, 

 well-favoured race of mountaineers, numbering about 25,000, 

 with a population rapidly in(?reasing since the deposition of 

 the Eajah.* They are of Dravidian origin, and speak a dialect 

 of Canarese ; but a colony of Brahmins early settled in the 

 country, and endeavoured to mould the traditions of the 

 Coorgs into harmony witli their own legends. These are em- 

 bodied in the Cauvery Purana, where there is a romantic 

 account of the origin of that important river, which rises in 

 the mountains of Coorg. 



In the Mahabharata it is related that the amrit or drink of 

 immortality, which had been lost in the waters of the Deluge, 

 was recovered by the Suras and Asuras, gods and demons, by 

 churning the ocean. The Asuras are then said to have stolen 

 it, and it was finally restored to the gods by the maiden 

 Lopamudre, who charmed the Asuras by her beauty. The 

 fair damsel then resolved to become a river, and thus pour 

 herseK out in blessings over the earth. But the sage Aghastya, 

 so famous in the history of Madura, was enamoured of her, 

 and she at length so far yielded as to consent to be his wife, 

 on condition that she should be at liberty to forsake liim the 

 first time he left her alone. One day he went to a sliort dis- 

 tance to bathe, when Lopamudre immediately gratified her 

 early longings, by jumping into Aghastya's holy tank, and 



^ The whole populatiun of Coorg is about 119,1 (JO. 



