Note 35 — B (continued 2)

The Bants are fond of out-door sports, football and buffalo-racing being amongst their favourite amusements. But the most popular of all is cock-fighting. Every Bant, who is not a Jain, takes an interest in this sport, and large assemblages of cocks are found at every fair and festival throughout South Canara. “The outsider,” it has been said,35 “cannot fail to be struck with the tremendous excitement that attends a village fair in South Canara. Large numbers of cocks are displayed for sale, and groups of excited people may be seen huddled together, bending down with intense eagerness to watch every detail in the progress of a combat between two celebrated village game-cocks.” Cock fights on an elaborate scale take place on the day after the Dīpāvali, Sankaranthi or Vinayakachathurthi, and Gokalāshtami festivals, outside the village boundary. At Hiriadaka, in October, 1907, more than a hundred birds were tethered by the leg to the scrub jungle composed of the evergreen shrub Ixora coccinea, or carried in the arms of their owners or youngsters. Only males, from the town and surrounding villages, were witnesses of the spectacle. The tethered birds, if within range of each other, excited by the constant crowing and turmoil, indulged in an impromptu fight. Grains of rice and water were poured into the mouths and over the heads of the birds before the fight, and after each round. The birds were armed with cunningly devised steel spurs, constituting a battery of variously curved and sinuous weapons. It is believed that the Bhūta (demon) is appeased, if the blood from the wounds drops on the ground. The men, whose duty it is to separate the birds at the end of a round, sometimes receive nasty wounds from the spurs. The tail feathers of a wounded bird are lifted up, and a palm leaf fan or towel is waved to and fro over the cloacal orifice to revive it. The owner of a victorious bird becomes the possessor of the vanquished bird, dead or alive. At an exhibition of the products of South Canara, during a recent visit of the Governor of Madras to Mangalore, a collection of spurs was exhibited in the class “household implements.”