Note 215 — K (continued 6)

It is recorded, in the Cuddapah Manual, that “a Yerukala came to a village, and, under the pretence of begging, ascertained which women wore jewels, and whether the husbands of any such were employed at night in the fields. In the night he returned, and, going to the house he had previously marked, suddenly snatched up the sleeping woman by the massive kamma (gold ear-ring) she wore, sometimes with such violence as to lift up the woman, and always in such a way as to wrench off the lobe of the ear. This trick he repeated in three different hamlets of the same village on one night, and in one house on two women. In one case, the woman had been lifted so high that, when the ear gave way, she fell to the ground, and severely injured her head.” A new form of house robbery is said to have been started by the Koravas in recent years. They mark down the residence of a woman, whose jewels are worth stealing, and lurk outside the house before dawn. Then, when the woman comes out, as is the custom, before the men are stirring, they snatch her ear-rings and other ornaments, and are gone before an alarm can be raised.215 Another favourite method of securing jewelry is for the Korava to beg for rice, from door to door, on a dark night, crying “Sandi bichcham, Amma, Sandi bichcham” (night alms, mother, night alms). Arrived at the house of his victim, he cries out, and the lady of the house brings out a handful of rice, and puts it in his pot. As she does so, he makes a grab at her tāli or other neck ornament, and makes off with the spoil.