Miscellaneous. 



170 



[March 1907. 



strange affinity between the Telugu cultivators and black cotton soil, so much so, 

 that if a census were taken of the owners of such soil in the Tamil districts of 

 Coimbatore, Trichinopolly, Madura and Tinnevelly, 90 per cent, would, no doubt, 

 prove to be radugars or the descendants of Telugu immigrants. The black soil having 

 been at most the only class of soil with which those who migrated to the Tamil 

 country had been familiar (the other classes of soils having apparently been 

 brought under cultivation in later times under pressure of population), the immi- 

 grants or their descendants occupied the black soils in the South to the almost utter 

 exclusion of the Tamilians, who cared, and do now care, chiefly for wet cultivatiou, 

 which is dignified with the name nunsei (literally " good cultivation), dry cultivation 

 being called punsei, or " trival cultivation." As a counterpart to the vadugars 

 occupying the bulk of the black cotton soil in the South, I saw a large number of 

 dakshanudulu (Southerners) attracted from Tanjore and other Tamil districts to 

 their favourite wet cultivation, for which there was much scope under the Kurnool. 

 Ouddapah canal, the water-supply from which had been rejected by the local ryots, 

 though the migration from the South stopped on account of malaria and other 

 unfavourable conditions. So great indeed is the attachment of the vadgan to the 

 black cotton soil that the Tamilians mock him by saying that, when God offered 

 paradise to the vadgan, the latter hesitated by enquiring whether there was black 

 cotton soil thee. It is a great pity that the original immigrants from the Telugu 

 into the Tamil country had not stuck as fondly to the implements and tools parti- 

 cularly designed for black cotton soil as they did to the soil itself of that kind. 



The influence of a comparatively recent immigration from the Telugu into 

 the Tamil country, in connection with the introduction of the economical agri- 

 cultural implements and tools of the former country, may now be noticed. During 

 the Guntur Famine of 1833, a number of Telugu Christian ryots left Phiringipuram 

 and migrated into the Chingleput district, where the then Collector, Mr. Place, 

 granted them land near Sriperumbudur. Prom this centre they gradually spread in 

 the Con jeeveram, Trivellur, Madurantakam and other taluks of the district. If one 

 finds a stiff clay soil cultivated with cholam in those parts ; one may be neai'ly 

 certain that the cultivation is by one of the Telugu colonists. For instance, in 

 Badalur and certain other villages on the banks of the Kallar, in the Madurantakam 

 taluk, the cultivators of cholam on the stiff soils there were found about twelve 

 years ago to be all descendants of the immigrants from Phiringipuram, Nothing has 

 struck me as more singular in all my travels than the strange affinity which the immi- 

 grants from the North have for the black and other stiff soils capable of produciug 

 cholam and cotton. The immigrants from Phiringipuram being an agricultural 

 people (unlike the original vadugars), brought with them the gorru, the guntika, 

 the dante, called in the Cuddapah and Kurnool districts metla guntika and different 

 from what is called by the same name in the Bellary district, and also the gidda, 

 padda, pisa, and palapu varieties of jonna (great millet) still grown in the Guntur 

 district. They Avere led by force of custom to cultivate the same sort of land (other 

 kinds of lands have now been taken up) with the same crops (except cotton, which 

 on account of the climatic difference proved a failure), with the same implements 

 with which they Avere familiar in their original home. That the various kinds of 

 implements are really more economical for their respective specific kinds of work 

 viz., preparation of the soil for sowing, sowing seed, covering seed after sowing, and 

 bullock hoeing, than the poor country plough which has to perform all the different 

 functions just referred to, being the Tamil ryot's all in all— is evidenced by the fact 

 of the Tamil neighbours of the immigrants (who had stood gaping at the curious 

 implements, slowly adopting them at last, especially the gorru together with the 

 name, calling it gorru kalappai. The force of custom is again manifest in the fact 

 that the gorru kalappai of the Chingleput district is used, not so much in connection 



