OF BHARATAVARSA OR INDIA. 
171 
" to eat the flesh of buffalo calves ; and the Kotas were 
" allowed perfect liberty in the choice of their food, being 
" informed that they might eat carrion, if they could get 
" nothing better, and beef also, though it is repulsive to all 
" Hindu notions." 
It is wrong to connect the name of the Kotas with cow- 
slaying and to derive it from the Sanskrit go-hatyd. This 
derivation seems to have been suggested from Kohatur, one 
of the corrupted forms of the name of the Kotar or Koter. 
According to the late Mr. Breeks, in his Primitive Tribes of 
the NUagiris, p. 40 : " The Todas call them Kuof, or cow- 
people ; " but singularly enough the Toda word for cow is 
danam, like the Kurumba and Badaga dana. Dr. Pope on 
the other hand goes so far as to contend that the Todas had 
no word for cow ; a statement which I regard as extremely 
venturous. However in both circumstances, if the Todas 
have no term for cow, or if that term is danam, they could not 
have called the Kotas, Kuof or cow-people. Moreover, the 
Kotas would not call themselves by such a name, nor would 
the Todas and the other hill-tribes who have no knowledge of 
Sanskrit apply a Sanskrit word to designate their neighbours. 
The derivation of the term Kota is, as clearly indicated, from 
the Gauda-Dravidian wordA"o, [ku], mountain, and the Kotas 
belong to the Graudian branch.*' It is a peculiar coincidence 
86 Metz, pp. 27 and 128: "The Kotas are the only of all the hill 
tribes -who practise the industrial arts, and they are therefore essential 
almost to the very existence of the other classes. They work in gold and 
silver, are carpenters and blacksmiths, tanners and rope-makers, umbrella- 
makers, potters, and musicians, and are at the same time cultivators of the 
soil. They are, however, a squalid race, living chiefly on carrion, and are 
on this account a bye- word among the other castes, who, while they feel that 
they cannot do without them, nevertheless abhor them for their filthy 
habits. AU the cattle that die in the villages are carried off by the Kotas, 
and feasted on by them, in common with the vultures, with whose tastes 
their own precisely agree ; and at no time do the Kotas thrive so well as 
when there is murrain among the herds of the Todas and Badagas." 
See Breeks, p. 40 : " The name is found differently spelt. Kota, 
Kotar, Koter, Kohatur. The derivation is uncertain. Kohatd or Gohata, 
