OF BHARATAVARSA OR INDIA. 
207 
According to their rank the first to be considered axe 
the Anda Kurumhas who superintend the administration. 
Next follow the Karumha OkkaUgais or agricultural Kuxum- 
bas whom we find mentioned in the iNilagiri Census Report. 
Though the number assigned to them is very insignificant, 
the circumstance of their being reported at all is highly- 
interesting, for it supplies a link to connect them with a 
respectable and influential class of people in Mysore, the 
well-known Okkallgam. Okkalu, pronounced Vokkalu, signi- 
fies in Kanarese ' tenancy,' okkalatana, husbandry, and 
okkaliga, a farmer or cultivator. Dr. Buchanan calls this 
caste, which is very numerous in Mysore, also Cunabis. 
These I shall eventually identify with the Kunbis, Kumbis 
(Kurmis) or Kudumbis, the agricultural class to which 
Sivaji, the great Maratha chieftain belonged who with his 
Kudumbis of Kudumba or Kurumba extraction effected such 
a change in the political aspect of India, some two hundred 
years ago. The sentence in the text of Buchanan leaves it 
doubtful, whether he referred to the Cunabis as an ethno- 
logical or professional distinction. Not all, perhaps not even 
the majority of the Okkaligas of. Mysore are of Kurumba 
origin. With the exception of the abovementioned Ganga- 
dikaras and the Nonaba Okkaligas, the others appear to have 
been later settlers in Mysore. Their name implies only an 
occupation, but it is a remarkable fact that many Okkaligas, 
who do not cultivate the soil are engaged in similar pursuits 
such as the Kurumbas embrace. Both tribes for instance 
have a predilection for a military life, and, what is more sug- 
gestive still, both communities are under the same Gurus, or 
spiritual superiors, the chief of whom resides at Kangundi in 
Their dead are buried, the corpse being placed sideways with the head to 
the west. A widow may be remarried to a relative of the deceased husband, 
hut not to a stranger . . Of the Mysore and Nilgiri Kurumbas it is said that 
they eat the flesh of the cow, but those in Coorg abhor it." 
The Eev. G. Richter is, according to my opinion (seep 193), mistaken 
in his tribal distinction between the Kurumbas and the Kurubas. 
