] 844.] Natives in Central India. 9 



side ; but the unmarried dead are buried, and for three days after 

 the funeral food is carried to the grave, though they draw no augury 

 of the state of the soul of the deceased from any creature eating the 

 food. 



THE KORAWA. 



This migratory people arrange themselves into four divisions, the 

 Bajantri, Teling, Kolla, and Soli Korawas, speaking the same lan- 

 guage, but none of them intermarrying or eating with each other. 

 Whence they originally migrated it would be difficult perhaps now to 

 come to a conclusion, nor could it be correctly ascertained how far 

 they extend. The Bajantri or Gaon ka Korawa, the musical or 

 village Korawa, are met with in fiejapore, Bellary, Hyderabad, and 

 throughout Canara. The men of this people are somewhat more 

 robustly formed than the settled population ; but the females are less 

 tall, and more dark than the Canarese women among whom they are 

 located. Their food differs from that of the Hindoo as well as the 

 Mahomedan ; they never eat the cow or bullock, but the jackal, 

 porcupine, hog and wild boar, deer and tigers, are sought after and 

 used by them. They deny that robbery is ever made a regular mode 

 of earning a subsistence ; an honesty, however, that the people among 

 whom they dwell give them but little credit for. Indeed, from my 

 own observation, on an occasion that brought the circumstances of a 

 community to the light, it is difficult to believe that the great sums 

 found in their possession could have been honestly earned. They 

 live by thieving, making grass screens and baskets. The men likewise 

 attend at festivals, marriages, and births, as musicians, which has 

 obtained for them the name of Bajantri ; and at the reaping season all 

 resort to the fields to beg and pilfer from the farmers, for they will 

 not be induced to put their hands to labour. The women, too, earn 

 a little money by tattooing on the skin the marks and figures of the 

 gods, which the females of all castes of Hindus ornament their arms 

 and foreheads with. The Bajantri Korawa reside in mud huts, in 

 small societies outside the walls of the village to which they have 

 temporarily attached themselves. The age for marrying is not a fixed 

 time ; and, different from every other people in India, the youth of 

 the female is not thought of consequence, the old man telling this 



c 



