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MANUAL OF THE NILAGIEI DISTRICT. 



CHAPTER IX. 

 ETHNOLOGY. 



PART I.— THE TO'DAS. 

 PART II.— THE KO'TAS. 

 PART III.— THE KU'RUMBAS. 



PART IV.— THE IRULAS. 

 PART v.— THE BADAGAS. 



Ethnology. 

 The tribes. 



General view 

 of their 

 history. 



Introduction. 



The tribes. — General view of their history. — Sources of information. — Local 

 distribution. 



CHAP. IX. The Nilagiris are inhabited by five native tribes, four of wbicb 

 may be regarded as primitive or aboriginal, viz., the Todas, the 

 Kotas, Kiirumbas and the Irulas, and the fifth as belonging to 

 the Aryanized Hindu races now in ascendancy throughout 

 Peninsula India. 



These tribes deserve, and have received the careful attention of 

 ethnologists, and their language that of philologists. They are, 

 in a measure, representatives of races which once overspread large 

 portions of South India, some of which appear to have attained to 

 a certain degree of civilization, and even to extended rule. In the 

 Todas we may perhaps see the remnants of tribes who occupied 

 the river tracts of the Dekhan, and who tended their sacred herds 

 of buffaloes long before their bovine rivals monopolised the venera- 

 tion of the people; — in the Kotas, perhaps, the representatives of the 

 early artisans of the south, who wrought metal and wood for the 

 aborigines in the ages before the handicrafts became the monopoly 

 of the present castes, who wear the thi-ead of the twice-born and 

 boldly dispute with the Brahmans their supremacy in the social 

 scale ; — again, in the Kurumbas we may see the kinsmen of the 

 primitive shepherds and goatherds of the southern uplands, who, 

 unlike the more pliable Ideiyas, were too independent to ally 

 themselves with the immigrant races from the north : — whilst in 

 the Irulas we find the descendants of the hunting tribes of the 

 south, who have attained to some civilization and power, as, for 

 example, in the case of the Bedas and Nayaks. Lastly the Bada- 

 gas, or people of the north, have a historic position, in that they 

 bear witness to the fact that portions of the Nilagiris must have 

 been long under the authority of Carnatic chiefs. 



