1900.] Annual Address. 31 



but less warlike, neighbours living on the rich agricultural lowlands 

 around. 



"The sporting and fighting proclivities of the Coorgs reveal them- 

 selves even in their festive and religious ceremonies. From his very 

 birth, when a bow-and-ariovv made from the castor-oil plant is placed 

 in the hands of the small baby-boy, the Ooorg male is, or at least in the 

 old days was, regarded as a huntsman and a warrior, whose first pride 

 should be in his size and physical strength. The selective influences 

 arising from this have combined with many healthy habits to make the 

 Coorgs the finest race, without exception, in South India. 



"The unique privileges they enjoy in the system of administration, 

 and, amongst other things, their exception from the provisions of the 

 Disarming Act which was enforced after the Mutiny, are merely present- 

 day expressions of the peculiarities in history which have distinguished 

 Coorg frgm the rest of South India ; and, assuming that the history of 

 a country is necessarily dependent on native character, it is interesting 

 to find by actual measurement that the Coorg people occupy amongst 

 the races of South India a completely isolated position in regard to 

 their physical characters as they do in history, tradition, customs 

 and dress. 



" The extensive and excellent researches by Mr. E. Thurston in the 

 Madras Presidency enable us to show that there is at any rate no 

 consanguinity between the Coorgs and the Dravidian races of the South. 

 The traditions concerning their origin bear the stamp of comparatively 

 recent manufacture, and their language being now a dialect of the 

 Canarese prevalent in that region, we have no clue to their origin. 

 Until, therefore, further anthropometric researches have been made 

 in Peninsular India, the social affinities of the Coorgs must remain 

 undetermined. 



"The average height of the Coorg man is 168*7 cm. (5 ft. 6|- in.), 

 which is only equalled by the Todas (169'6 cm.) amongst the native 

 races of South India, all other tribes being below 165 cm. Their nasal 

 index (72' 1) is of a higher type than any of the people of the South 

 except the nomadic Lambadis (69*1), who have a fair skin and speak 

 an Aryan language, and the Sheik Mahommedans (70) who claim to bo 

 descendants of recent immigrants from the North. Regarded as per- 

 centages of the stature, they have a distinctly shorter foot, shorter 

 fore-arm, and narrower span than the other tribes, and these characters 

 are approximately coincident with what we generally consider to be 

 concomitants of racial superiority. In many of these points the Coorgs 

 are closely approached by the Todas ; but they are sharply distinguished 

 from these peculiar people by showing the only approach to brachy- 



