1851.] 



Remarks on the Ethnography of Bellary. 



6 9 



val, they take to rest in the heat of the day, they use in general 

 earthenware dishes unglazed. 



The Brahmins as usual never use stale food, but eat their two 

 meals freshly cooked, the first about eleven in the forenoon and the 

 second at eight or ten o'clock at night. 



The dishes they eat off are made of the leaves of trees, either of 

 the plantain leaves, which in Bellary cost five annas the hundred, 

 or off a round platter made of the leaves of other trees sewed or 

 pinned together with pieces of bamboo or grass. 



The Rajpoots or Cheytrees who have been born in this country 

 live on the same food as the Brahmins, but those who have been 

 brought up in Rajputanah and in Hindustan dine at noon on wheat- 

 en cakes fired on the girdle. This is the only hot meal of all this peo- 

 ple and many of them make it their sole one ; but, in general, they 

 feed again at night (it cannot be called eating) on raw grains soft- 

 ened by being previously steeped in water. Owing to this pro- 

 tracted fasting some of them learn to use surprising quantities of 

 food, and, I have been informed that, some of them will, at noon, 

 eat three and even four pounds of flour made into cakes, and again 

 chew two, three and even four pounds of soaked grain in the even- 

 ing. The Cheytrees eat their food off brass dishes. 



The strangers from Telingana'and the Dravida country, the Telin- 

 gas and Aravas, residing there, make rice their sole article of diet 

 and never eat the jooaree or ragi, unless compelled to do so by scar- 

 city, as these hard grains frequently occasion diarrhoea : the great 

 body of the Dhers or outcasts here continue to use the bodies of 

 animals that have died from disease and also to use creatures for 

 food which other nations do not eat. 



The other castes here have no peculiar mode of living as regards 

 food. In this country wealth does alter the manner of life but not 

 to an equal extent as in others, and, excepting the addition of a lit- 

 tle clarified butter, and a little mutton there is but a slight differ- 

 ence between the food of the rich and the poor. It is not the prac- 

 tice among any Hindoo people for the wives to eat with their hus- 



