OF BHARATAVARSA OR INDIA. 
175 
They generally bury their dead in solitary and unknown 
places at night, and the traces of their dead disappear so com- 
pletely that the Natives have a common saying : " Nobody 
has seen a monkey's carcass or the corpse of a Kurava," and 
if anything is irretrievably lost the fact is intimated by the 
proverb : " It has gone to the burial place of the Kuravas 
and to the dancing room of the wandering actors." 
As a rule they do not acknowledge the priestly supre- 
macy of the Brahmans, nor do they worship Hindu divini- 
ties, unless Hinduized to a certain extent. However, many 
vagrants called Kuravers are divided into three branches. One of these is 
chiefly engaged in the traffic of salt, which they go, in hands, to the coasts 
to procure, and carry it to the interior of the country on the backs of asses, 
which they have in great droves. . . . The trade of another branch of the 
Kuravers is the manufacture of osier "panniers, wicker baskets, and other 
household utensils of that sort, or bamboo mats. This class, like the 
preceding, are compelled to traverse the whole country, from place to place, 
in quest of employment. . . . The third species of Kuravers is generally 
known under the name of KaUa-Bantru or robbers ; and indeed those who 
compose this caste are generally thieves or sharpers, by profession and right 
of birth. The distinction of expertness in filching belongs to this tribe. . . 
The KaUa-Bantru are so expert in this species of robbery (of cutting through 
the mud wall an opening sufficiently large to pass through), that, in less 
than half-an-hour, they will carry o£E a rich lading of plunder, without being 
heard or suspected till day-light discloses the villainy." 
See Bev. M. A. Sherring's Hindu, Tribes and Castas, vol. Ill, p. 142 : 
" Eoravar, a tribe of thieves and vagabonds wandering about the districts of 
the Carnatic. This tribe is common to several districts. Among the Tamils 
these people are called Koravars, but by the Telugus, Yerakalas. In North 
Arcot they mortgage their unmarried daughters to pay their creditors when 
unable to pay their debts. In some districts they obtain their wives by 
purchase, giving a sum varying from thirty to seventy rupees. The clana 
into which they are divided do not intermarry. In Madura and South 
Arcot the Koravars are hawkers, petty traders, dealers in salt, jugglers, box- 
makers, breeders of pigs and donkeys ; and are a drunken and dissolute 
race." Compare J. H. Nelson's Manual of Madura, Part II, p. 69, about 
the Kuravans. 
Consult further Dr. Edward Balfour "On the Migratory Tribes of Natives 
in Central India" in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. XIII, 
1844, pp. 9-12 : " The Korawa. This migratory people arrange themselves into 
four divisions, the Bajantri, Teling, Kolla, and Soli Korawas, speaking the 
same language, but none of them intermarrying or eating with each other. 
Whence they originally migrated it would be difficult perhaps now to come 
to a conclusion, nor could it be correctly ascertained how far they extend. 
The Bajantri, or Gaon ka Korawa, the musical or village Korawa, are met 
