garments, mounts, while some of his friends cling, like ants struggling round a dead beetle, to the buffaloes. When he is fairly up, they let go, and the animals start. The course is a wet rice-field, about 150 yards long, full of mud and water. All round are hundreds, or perhaps thousands of people, including Pariahs who dance in groups in the mud, play stick-game, and beat drums. In front of the galloping buffaloes the water is clear and still, throwing a powerful reflection of them as they gallop down the course, raising a perfect tornado of mud and water. The driver stands with one foot on the stool, and one on the pole of the car. He holds a whip aloft in one hand, and one of the buffaloes' tails in the other. He drives without reins, with nothing but a waggling tail to hold on to and steer by. Opening his mouth wide, he shouts for all he is worth, while, to all appearances, a deluge of mud and water goes down his throat. So he comes down the course, the plank on which he stands throwing up a sort of Prince of Wales' feathers of mud and water round him. The stance on the plank is no easy matter, and not a few men come to grief, but it is soft falling in the slush. Marks are given for pace, style, sticking to the plank, and throwing up the biggest and widest splash. Sometimes a kind of gallows, perhaps twenty feet high, is erected on the course, and there is a round of applause if the splash reaches up to or above it. Sometimes the buffaloes bolt, scatter the crowd, and get away into the young rice. At the end of the course, the driver jumps off with a parting smack at his buffaloes, which run up the slope of the field, and stop of themselves in what may be called the paddock. At a big meeting perhaps a hundred pairs, brought from all over the Tulu country, will compete, and the big men always send their
Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India.djvu/269
