Note 64 — K (Continued) (continued 3)

“The Kurumbas,” Harkness writes, “have a knowledge of herbs and medicinal roots, and the Burghers (Badagas) say that they limit their knowledge thereof to those which are noxious only, and believe that, with the assistance of their magic, they are able to convey them into the stomachs of those to whom they have any dislike. The violent antipathy existing between the Burghers and the Kurumbas, and the dread and horror which the former entertain of the preternatural powers of the latter, are, perhaps, not easily accounted for; but neither sickness, death, nor misfortune of any kind, ever visit the former, without the latter having the credit of producing it. A few years before, a Burgher had been hanged by the sentence of the provincial court for the murder of a Kurumba. The act of the former was not without what was considered great provocation. Disease had attacked the inhabitants of the hamlet, a murrain their cattle. The former had carried off a great part of the family of the murderer, and he himself had but narrowly escaped its effects. No one in the neighbourhood doubted that the Kurumba in question had, by his necromancy, caused all this misfortune, and, after several fruitless attempts, a party of them succeeded in surrounding him in open day, and effecting their purpose.” In 1835 no less than forty-eight Kurumbas were murdered, and a smaller number in 1875 and 1882. In 1900 a whole family of Kurumbas was murdered, of which the head, who had a reputation as a medicine-man, was believed to have brought disease and death into a Badaga village. The sympathies of the whole country-side were so strongly with the murderers that detection was made very difficult, and the persons charged were acquitted.64 In this case several Todas were implicated. “It is,” Mr. Grigg writes, “a curious fact that neither Kota, Irula, or Badaga will slay a Kurumba until a Toda has struck the first blow, but, as soon as his sanctity has been violated by a blow, they hasten to complete the murderous work, which the sacred hand of the Toda has begun.” The Badaga’s dread of the Kurumba is said to be so great that a simple threat of vengeance has proved fatal. My Toda guide—a stalwart representative of his tribe—expressed fear of walking from Ootacamund to Kotagiri, a distance of eighteen miles along a highroad, lest he should come to grief at the hands of Kurumbas; but this was really a frivolous excuse to get out of accompanying me to a distance from his domestic hearth. In like manner, Dr. Rivers records that, when he went to Kotagiri, a Toda who was to accompany him made a stipulation that he should be provided with a companion, as the Kurambas were very numerous in that part. In connection with the Toda legend of Ön, who created the buffaloes and the Todas, Dr. Rivers writes that “when Ön saw that his son was in Amnodr (the world of the dead), he did not like to leave him there alone, and decided to go away to the same place. So he called together all the people, and the buffaloes and the trees, to come and bid him farewell. All the people came except a man of Kwodrdoni named Arsankutan. He and his family did not come. All the buffaloes came except the Arsaiir, the buffaloes of the Kwodroni ti (sacred dairy). Some trees also failed to come. Ön blessed all the people, buffaloes and trees present, but said that, because Arsankutan had not come, he and his people should die by sorcery at the hands of the Kurumbas, and that, because the Arsaiir had not come, they should be killed by tigers, and that the trees which had not come should bear bitter fruit. Since that time the Todas have feared the Kurumbas, and buffaloes have been killed by tigers.”