Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India.djvu/164

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They are the lowest in the scale, and they are prohibited from intermarrying with the other or high caste Badagas, as long as they are sons to them." The Toreya does the menial duties for the tribe. He is the village servant, carries the corpses to the burning-ground, conveys the news of a death from village to village, is the first to get shaved when a death occurs, and is sent along with a woman when she is going to visit her mother or mother-in-law at a distance from her own home. "The Udayas, Adhikaris and Kanakas are Lingayats in religion, and the other three, the Haruvas, Badagas, and Toreyas are Saivites." Of the six divisions referred to, the Udayas and Toreyas are endogamous, but intermarriage is per- missible between the other four. At the census, 1891, a large number of Badagas returned as their sub-division Vakkaliga, which means cultivator, and is the name of the great cultivating caste of Mysore.

Seven miles west of Coonoor is a village named Athikarihatti, or village of the Athikari or Adhikari section of the Badagas. " The story goes that these people, under a leader named Karibetta Raya, came from Sarigur in Mysore territory, and settled first at Nelliturai (a short distance south-west of Mettupalaiyam) and afterwards at TudOr (on the plateau west of Kulakambi) and Tadasimarahatti (to the north-west of MelOr), and that it was they who erected the sculptured cromlechs of TudQr and Melur. Tudur and Tadasi- marahatti are now both deserted ; but in the former a cattle kraal, an old shrine, and a pit for fire-walking may still be seen, and in the latter another kraal, and one of the raised stone platforms called mandaikallu by the Badagas. Tradition says that the Badagas left these places and founded Athikarihatti and its hamlets instead, because the Kurumbas round about continually troubled