Note 189 — K (continued 5)

On the subject of Koraga dress, Mr. Ullal Raghvendra Rao informs us that “while the males gird a piece of cloth round their loins, the females cover their waist with leaves of the forest woven together. Various reasons are assigned for this custom. According to a tradition, at the time when the Koragars had reigned, now far distant, one of these ‘blacklegged’ (this is usually the expression by which they are referred to during the night) demanded a girl of high birth in marriage. Being enraged at this, the upper class withheld, after the overthrow of the Koragas, every kind of dress from Koraga women, who, to protect themselves from disgrace, have since had recourse to the leaves of the forest, conceiving in the meantime that god had decreed this kind of covering.” Mr. Walhouse writes189 further that the Koragas wear an “apron of twigs and leaves over the buttocks. Once this was the only covering allowed them, and a mark of their deep degradation. But now, when no longer compulsory, and of no use, as it is worn over the clothes, the women still retain it, believing its disuse would be unlucky.” “The Koragas,” Mr. H. A. Stuart tells us,190 “cover the lower part of their body with a black cloth and the upper part with a white one, and their head-dress is a cap made of the areca-nut spathe, like that worn by the Holeyas. Their ornaments consist of brass ear-rings, an iron bracelet, and beads of bone strung on a thread and tied around their waist.” The waist-belt of a Koraga, whom I saw at Udipi, was made of owl bones.