186 
ON THE OEIGIXAL IXHABITANTS 
They resemble in their customs the aboriginal tribes of the 
jungles, revere Grond deities, and avoid all intercourse with 
Brahmans. With the Kurumbas they have in common the 
peculiar habit that all males are clean-shaved when a death 
takes place among their connections. Their features have a 
thorough Turanian aspect, their color is darkish, their noses 
are broad, and their lips rather thick. They assert, and their 
neighbours all round support them in their claim, that they 
are the survivors of the Kauravas who, after the battle of 
Kuruksetra, fled to the south and took refuge in the hill 
tracts of Central India.^' 
On the Kunnuvas and Kunavaris. 
Dr. Shortt mentions, on p. 85 in the fifth part of his 
" Hill Ranges of Southern India," the " Manadies, Coonoovars 
Read Colonel Dalton's Ethnology of India, pp. 136-138 : " In a paper 
entitled ' Notes of a Tour in the Tributarj* Mahals,' published in the Journal, 
Asiatic Socictij, Bengal, I introduced them as a dark, coarse-featured, broad- 
nosed, wide-mouthed, and thick-lipped race, and it was natural to conclude 
from this that they were one of the aboriginal tribes. . .They are decidedly 
ugly, but are taller and better set up than most of the people described in this 
chapter. The Kaurs form a considerable proportion of the population of 
Jashpur, Udaipur, Sirguja, Korea, Chand Bhakar, and Korba of Chattisgarh, 
and though they are much scattered, and the various divisions of the tribe 
hold little communication with each other, they all tenaciously cling to one 
tradition of their origin, that they are the descendants of the survivors of 
the sons of Kuru, called Kauravas in Purans, who, when defeated by the 
Pandavas at the great battle of Kurukshetrya, and driven from Hastinapur, 
took refuge in the hill country of Central India. They not only relate this 
of themselves, but it is firmly believed by the people of .all castes of Hindus, 
their neighbours, who, notwithstanding their dark complexions and general 
resemblance to the offspring of Nishada and some anti-Hindu pi-actices, do not 
scruple to regard them as brethren. . . I was informed that the Kaurs were 
divided into four tribes— (1) the Kaitrs, (2) Faikera, (3) Si ffiafi Kaiiys. 
The Kaurs of Udaipur described by me in the paper above quoted belong to 
this class. They rear and eat fowls, and have no veneration for Brahmans. 
The village barber is their priest, and officiates as such at marriages and 
other ceremonies. At births, marriages and deaths, the males affected by 
the casualty and all connected with them of the same sex are clean-shaven 
all round. Some villages maintain, besides, a Byga priest, or exorcist for 
the Dryads, Naiads, and witches. The P.ailcera Kaurs therefore, who are, I 
think, the most numerous, cannot be regarded as Hindu in faith . . (4) the 
Chorwa Kaurs . . . The Dudh Kanrs alone preserve the true blood of the 
Kuru race . . . They have none of them in the tr;icts mentioned, attained 
