The Ethnology of India, 73 
towns of the North Canarese Coast, the Hindu traders are said to be 
chiefly ‘‘ Konkanee Bramins who trade and keep shops.” 
In the Maratta Konkan the Bramins are at the head of the 
agricultural community. Most of the ‘ Kotes’ or village zemindars 
who rule over and claim the proprietary right in each village are of 
this caste. I have not been able to ascertatm what proportion of the 
actual cultivators are of the same class. For the rest, office of every 
kind, including the village and pergunnal accountantships all over the 
country, and every service of the head and the pen, seem to be their 
great resources. They are not military, nor generally in any way 
men of the sword, though, as I have said, they have in their prosperity 
taken the command of Maratta Armies. Nor do they seem to have 
any great commercial proclivities. Among the various races who 
push to so great a point mercantile enterprise in Bombay I cannot 
find that the Bramins have any great share. Under our Government 
they have almost a monopoly of office in Western India. 
Adjoining the Maratta country on the east is the Teclinga or Telagoo 
country, very little of which I have visited and of the castes and 
population of which I have been able to learn less than of any other 
part of India. This at least, however, I find that here also the 
Bramins, though not so famous nor, I apprehend, so clever as those 
of Maharashtra, are numerous and powerful. The Telinga people 
are described as generally illiterate and as (unlike their Tamil neigh- 
bours) leaving literature and science to the Bramins; so that the 
latter would seem in Telingana, free from the competition of a 
writer caste, to have in their hands all the secular business of a 
clerkly character and a good deal more besides. I have not ascer- 
tained what proportion of the population they there form, and 
whether many of them are actual cultivators; but in more than one 
place I find it stated that many of the Zemindars are Bramins, and 
in Rajamundry the more respectable inhabitants of the Town are said 
to be chiefly Bramins. 
I can only trust that this meagre account of the Telagoo Bramins 
will be supplemented by some one better qualified to describe them. 
Towards Madras I gather that there are some learned Gwallas called 
Yadayas and Telagoo Chetties (perhaps a merchant class, but I am 
not sure), who must a good deal interfere with the Bramins. They 
