Note 51 — K (Continued) (continued 3)

Concerning the religion of the Kurubas, Mr. Francis writes as follows. “The most striking point about the caste is its strong leaning towards the Lingāyat faith. Almost everywhere, Jangams are called in as priests, and allegiance to the Lingāyat maths (religious institutions) is acknowledged, and in places (Kāmalāpuram for example), the ceremonies at weddings and funerals have been greatly modified in the direction of the Lingāyat pattern.”51 “In the North Arcot district, the Gaudu is entrusted with the custody of a golden image representing the hero of the clan, and keeps it carefully in a small box filled with turmeric powder. There are also some images set up in temples built for the purpose. Once a year, several neighbouring clans assemble at one of their bigger temples, which is lighted with ghī, and, placing their images in a row, offer to them flowers, cocoanuts, milk, etc., but they do not slay any victim. On the last day of their festival, the Kurumbas take a bath, worship a bull, and break cocoanuts upon the heads of pūjāris who have an hereditary right to this distinction, and upon the head of the sacred bull. Some Kurumbas do not adopt this apparently inhuman practice. A pūjāri or priest, supposed to have some supernatural power, officiates, and begins by breaking a few nuts on the heads of those nearest to him, and then the rest go on, the fragments belonging by right to those whose skulls have cracked them, and who value the pieces as sacred morsels of food. For a month before this ceremony, all the people have taken no meat, and for three days the pūjāris have lived on fruits and milk alone. At the feast, therefore, all indulge in rather immoderate eating, but drink no liquor, calling excitedly upon their particular god to grant them a prosperous year. The temples of this caste are usually rather extensive, but rude, low structures, resembling an enclosed mantapam supported upon rough stone pillars, with a small inner shrine, where the idols are placed during festival time. A wall of stone encloses a considerable space round the temple, and this is covered with small structures formed of four flat stones, three being the walls, and the fourth the roof. The stone facing the open side has a figure sculptured upon it, representing the deceased Gaudu, or pūjāri, to whom it is dedicated. For each person of rank one of these monuments is constructed, and here periodically, and always during the annual feasts, pūja is made not only to the spirits of the deceased chiefs, but also to those of all who have died in the clan. It seems impossible not to connect this with those strange structures called by the natives Pāndava’s temples. They are numerous where the Kurumbas are now found, and are known to have been raised over the dead. Though the Kurumbas bury, they do not now raise their monuments over the resting place of the corpse. Nor can they build them upon anything approaching to the gigantic scale of the ancient kistvaen or dolmen.”52 It was noted by a correspondent of the Indian Antiquary53 that, in the Kaladgi ‘district,’ he “came across the tomb of a Kuruba only four years old. It was a complete miniature dolmen about eighteen inches every way, composed of four stones, one at each side, one at the rear, and a cap-stone. The interior was occupied by two round stones about the size of a man’s fist, painted red, the deceased resting in his mother earth below.” In the open country near Kadūr in Mysore, is a shrine of Bīradēvaru, which consists of four stone pillars several feet in height surmounted by flat slabs as a cap-stone, within which the deity is represented by round stones, and stones with snakes carved on them are deposited. Within the Kuruba quarter of the town, the shrine of Anthargattamma is a regular dolmen beneath a margosa (Melia Azadirachta) tree, in which the goddess is represented by rounded stones imbedded in a mound of earth. Just outside the same town, close to a pīpal tree (Ficus religiosa) are two smaller dolmen-like structures containing stones representing two Kuruba Dāsaris, one a centenarian, who are buried there.