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 1 or village zemindars 

 who rule over and claim the proprietary right in each village are of 

 this caste. I have not been able to ascertain what proportion of the 

 actual cultivators are of the same class. For the rest, office of every 

 kind, including the village and pergunnah 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 Telinga 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 Grwallas called 



Yadavas and Telagoo Chetties (perhaps a merchant class, but I am 



i not sure), who must a good deal interfere with the Bramins. They 



