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KURUBAR, OR KURUMBAR.

long and black, and is grown matted and straggling, somewhat wavy, and is sometimes tied in a knot with a piece of cord on the crown or back of the head, while the ends are allowed to be free and floating. They have scarcely any mustachios or whiskers, and a scanty, straggling beard; occasionally one is met who has a full mustachios, whiskers, and beard. They are, as a body, sickly looking, potbellied, large mouthed, prognathous, with prominent outstanding teeth and thick lips; frequently saliva dribbles from their mouths.
"The women have much the same features as the men, only somewhat softened in expression and slightly modified in feature, with a small pug nose and surly aspect. Their general appearance is anything but prepossessing. Hair tied at the back and carelessly divided in the centre, and the sides scraggy. Some of them are of small stature and coarse build, others smaller and of delicate make."
The Kurumbars live on the slopes of the hills in villages called mottas. Four or five houses form a motta. The walls of these habitations are of wattle and mud, and the better sort have their fronts whitewashed and covered with rude designs of men and animals in charcoal and red earth. They store their grain in large oval baskets. For cultivation they clear a patch round the village, and sow the ground with ragi (cynosarus corolana), tenni (panilum italicum), or kire (amaranthus tustes). They dig up roots, gasu (dioscorea alata), for food, and collect jungle produce, honey, resin, gall nuts, which they barter with low country traders, and are clever at catching game in nets.
The women cook and fetch water. They are fond of ornaments, wearing many bead necklaces, nose and ear rings, and glass and iron bracelets. The men make baskets of ratan, and milk vessels out of bamboo stems. They play on the clarionet, the drum, and the tambourine, the kotas, and also on the bugari in use with Todas and Badagas. They usually attend all Toda funerals, and add their quota to the instrumental part of the performance. Of late, many of them have taken to work on coffee plantations, and are found industrious.
Kurumbars have no marriage ceremonies beyond a feast to friends, when the wife is taken home. Some burn their dead, others bury them, placing a circle of stones round the grave. Small cromlechs used to be made of three stones, and a covering slab, in which the ashes of the dead used to be placed; but the practice appears to have been given up.
In Mysore, and particularly at the bases of the western mountains, Dr. Buchanan found many parties of Kurumbars; some subsisting as shepherds, others as collectors of jungle produce, but few as cultivators. Everywhere, however, as now on the Neelgerries, they had an evil reputation for witchcraft. Miserable as their condition on the Neelgerries now is, the Kurumbars appear at one time, no doubt a very early period, to have formed a State of very considerable power. "They are chiefly known to us," continues Mr. Breeks, "as the possessors