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and served up, but the result was far from pleasant; my civilised stomach indignantly repelled the savage food, and was not pacified till it had made me suffer for some hours from cold sweat, sickness and giddiness." 1

The Korwas in the Tributary States have other resources 10.Dacoity. than these. They are expert hunters, and to kill a bird flying or an animal running is their greatest delight. They do not care to kill their game without rousing it first. They are also very fond of dacoity and often proceed on expeditions, their victims being usually travellers, or the Ahirs who bring large herds of cattle to graze in the Sargūja forests. These cattle do much damage to the village crops, and hence the Korwas have a standing feud with the herdsmen. They think nothing of murder, and when asked why he committed a murder, a Korwa will reply, 'I did it for my pleasure'; but they despise both house-breaking and theft as cowardly offences, and are seldom or never guilty of them. The women are also of an adventurous disposition and often accompany their husbands on raids. Before starting they take the omens. They throw some rice before a chicken, and if the bird picks up large solid grains first they think that a substantial booty is intended, but if it chooses the thin and withered grains that the expedition will have poor results. One of their bad omens is that a child should begin to cry before the expedition starts; and Mr. Kunte, who has furnished the above account, relates that on one occasion when a Korwa was about to start on a looting expedition his two-year-old child began to cry. He was enraged at the omen, and picking up the child by the feet dashed its brains out against a stone.

Before going out hunting the Korwas tell each other 11. Folkhunting tales, and they think that the effect of doing this is tales. to bring them success in the chase. A specimen of one of these tales is as follows: There were seven brothers and they went out hunting. The youngest brother's name was Chilhra. They had a beat, and four of them lay in ambush with their bows and arrows. A deer came past Chilhra and he shot an arrow at it, but missed. Then all the brothers 1 Ethnology of Bengal, pp. 228, 229.

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were very angry with Chilhra and they said to him, "We have been wandering about hungry for the whole day, and you have let our prey escape." Then the brothers got a lot of mahul1 fibre and twisted it into rope, and from the rope they wove a bag. And they forced Chilhra into this bag, and tied up the mouth and threw it into the river where there was a whirlpool. Then they went home. Now Chilhra's bag was spinning round and round in the whirlpool when suddenly a sambhar stag came out of the forest and walked down to the river to drink opposite the pool. Chilhra cried out to the sambhar to pull his bag ashore and save him. The sambhar took pity on him, and seizing the bag in his teeth pulled it out of the water on to the bank. Chilhra then asked the sambhar after he had quenched his thirst to free him from the bag. The sambhar drank and then came and bit through the mahul ropes till Chilhra could get out. He then proposed to the sambhar to try and get into the bag to see if it would hold him. The sambhar agreed, but no sooner had he got inside than Chilhra tied up the bag, threw it over his shoulder and went home. When the brothers saw him they were greatly astonished, and asked him how he had got out of the bag and caught a sāmbhar, and Chilhra told them. Then they killed and ate the sambhar. Then all the brothers said to Chilhra that he should tie them up in bags as he had been tied and throw them into the river, so that they might each catch and bring home a sambhar. So they made six bags and went to the river, and Chilhra tied them up securely and threw them into the river, when they were all quickly drowned. But Chilhra went home and lived happily ever afterwards.

In this story we observe the low standard of moral feeling noticeable among many primitive races, in the fact that the ingratitude displayed by Chilhra in deceiving and killing the sambhar who had saved his life conveys no shock to the moral sense of the Korwas. If the episode had been considered discreditable to the hero Chilhra, it would not have found a place in the tale.

The following is another folk-tale of the characteristic

1 Bauhinia Vahlii.

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type of fairy story found all over the world. This as well as the last has been furnished by Mr. Narbad Dhanu Sao, Assistant Manager, Uprora:

A certain rich man, a banker and moneylender (Sāhu), had twelve sons. He got them all married and they went out on a journey to trade. There came a holy mendicant to the house of the rich man and asked for alms. The banker was giving him alms, but the saint said he would only take them from his son or son's wife. As his sons were away the rich man called his daughter-in-law, and she began to give alms to the saint. But he caught her up and

1

carried her off. Then her father-in-law went to search for her, saying that he would not return until he had found her. He came to the saint's house upon a mountain and said to him, 'Why did you carry off my son's wife?' The saint said to him, 'What can you do?' and turned him into stone by waving his hand. Then all the other brothers went in turn to search for her down to the youngest, and all were turned into stone. At last the youngest brother set out to search but he did not go to the saint, but travelled across the sea and sat under a tree on the other side. In that tree was the nest with young of the Raigidan and Jatagidan birds. A snake was climbing up the tree to eat the nestlings, and the youngest brother saw the snake and killed it. When the parent birds returned the young birds said, "We will not eat or drink till you have rewarded this boy who killed the snake which was climbing the tree to devour us." Then the parent birds said to the boy, 'Ask of us whatever you will and we will give it to you.' And the boy said, 'I want only a gold parrot in a gold cage.' Then the parent birds said, "You have asked nothing of us, ask for something more; but if you will accept only a gold parrot in a gold cage wait here a little and we will fly across the sea and get it for you." So they brought the parrot and cage, and the youngest brother took them and went home. Immediately the saint came to him and asked him for the gold parrot and cage because the saint's soul was in that parrot. Then the youngest brother told him to dance and he would give him the parrot; and the saint danced, and his legs and

1 Believed to be some kind of vulture.

arms were broken one after the other, as often as he asked for the parrot and cage. Then the youngest brother buried the saint's body and went to his house and passed his hands before all the stone images and they all came to life again.

Koshti, Koshta, Salewār.'-The Maratha and Telugu 1. General caste of weavers of silk and fine cotton cloth. They belong notice. principally to the Nāgpur and Chhattisgarh Divisions of the Central Provinces, where they totalled 157,000 persons in 1901, while 1300 were returned from Berār. Koshti is the Marathi and Salewār the Telugu name. Koshti may perhaps have something to do with kosa or tasar silk; Sālewār is said to be from the Sanskrit Sālika, a weaver, and to be connected with the common word sări, the name for a woman's cloth; while the English 'shawl' may be a English'shawl' derivative from the same root. The caste suppose themselves to be descended from the famous Saint Markandi Rishi, who, they say, first wove cloth from the fibres of the lotus flower to clothe the nakedness of the gods. In reward for this he was married to the daughter of Surya, the sun, and received with her as dowry a giant named Bhavāni and a tiger. But the giant was disobedient, and so Mārkandi killed him, and from his bones fashioned the first weaver's loom.3 The tiger remained obedient to Markandi, and the

1 This article is based on a good paper by Mr. Raghunath Wāman Vaidya, schoolmaster, Hinganghat, and others by Mr. M. E. Hardās, Tahsildar, Umrer, and Messrs. Adurām Chaudhri and Pyare Lal Misra of the Gazetteer Office.

2 V. Nanjundayya, Monograph on the Sale Caste (Mysore Ethnographical Survey).

3 With this may be compared the tradition of the sweeper caste that winnowing fans and sieves were first made out of bones and sinews.