8 



The Migratory Races of India. 



[No. 39, 



though they seem thus almost without a form of religion the women 

 had small gold and silver ornaments suspended from cords round 

 their necks and which they said had been supplied to them by a 

 goldsmith from whom they had ordered figures of Mariamma. The 

 form represented is that of the Goddess Kali the wife of Seva. 



They mentioned that they had been told by their forefathers, that 

 ■when a good man dies, his spirit enters the body of some of the better 

 animals as that of aJiorse or cow, and that a bad man's spirit gives 

 life to the form of a dog or jackall ; but though they told me this 

 they did not seem to believe in it. They believe firmly, however, in 

 the existence and constant presence of a principle of evil who, they 

 say, frequently appears ; my informant having himself often seen it 

 in the dusk of the evening assuming various forms, at times a cat, 

 anon a goat, and then a dog, and so a cat again, taking these shapes 

 that it might approach to injure him. 



"When they die the married people are burned, but the unmarried 

 are buried, quite naked without shroud or kufn, or other clothing, 

 a custom which some other castes in India likewise follow ; and, on 

 the third day after the funeral, they place rice over the grave of the 

 deceased, but draw no omens from the manner in which the food is 

 carried off by animals. 



The Coorroo people are naturally of a bamboo colour, though 

 tanned by the sun into a darker hue. Their faces are oval with 

 prominent bones, their features having something of the Tartar ex- 

 pression of countenance, and some of the women are pretty, at least 

 passable in their faces, but all of them had ungainly figures. 



The men average about 5 feet 3 inches in height, and the women 

 4 feet 9 inches. The men had only a blue cloth twisted on their heads, 

 a loin cloth, and a blue kumrbund for clothing ; but all the women 

 wore the choli and sarhi with rings and armlets of brass. 



The dialect spoken by the " Coorroo," as their lingua franca, in 

 their intercourse with the people of the country is the Teloogoo, and 

 I was surprised to find them entirely ignorant of the Canarese 

 language although living exclusively among the Canarese nation. 

 Amongst themselves, they have a distinct dialect but from their 

 timidity I could only get from them a few of their .words. 



