VIN-MALVI TAL. 177 ornaments. The women wear tin ear-rings, necklaces of beads or shells, and brass bangles and armlets, much like those worn by Bhíl women. Their chief food is Indian corn gruel, the well-to-do sometimes using coarse rice. Except the ass, crow, and snake, few forms of flesh are forbidden the Náikdás. They eat large black ants, squirrels, and monkeys; even in large towns the sight of a Naikda is said to be enough to frighten away the monkeys. For months in each year, after their stock of grain is finished, most of them live on wild fruits and roots. They are much given to mahu' spirits, and at their festivals drink to excess. Though the Náikdís eat carrion and rank among the very lowest classes, their touch, though avoided, is not held to cause pollution. They are labourers and wood-cutters. A few have bullocks and ploughs, and till regular fields. But most of them practise only the rough nomadic tillage, burning down the brushwood on the hillsides, and sowing the coarser millets among the ashes. Náikdás show no respect to Bráhmans, and care little for Brahmanical rites, fasts, or feasts. The objects of their worship are spirits and ghosts. In honour of the spirits whom they invoke by various fantastic names, they fix teak posts in the ground, roughly blacking them at the top into something like a human face. Over these posts they smear milk or red lead, and set round then rows of small clay horses. Marriages and deaths are the only occasions of ceremony. A widow may marry again; on such occasions there is no ceremony. The Náikdás do not intermarry with any other caste. Lazy, thriftless, and fond of drink, they are most of them deeply sunk in debt. — See NARUKOT. Náin.-Small village in Salon tahsil, Rái Bareli District, Oudh ; situated 20 miles from Rai Bareli town. Population (1881) 789, all of whom are Hindus. The head-quarters of a branch of the Kanhpuria clan, reported to be the most turbulent Rájputs in Oudh. During native rule, constant fighting took place between the landholders and the king's troops; and in 1857, the Náin túlukdárs joined the rebel soldiery, and plundered the station of Parshádepur. Naina Kot. — Village and municipality in Shakargarh tahsil, in Gurdaspur District, Punjab, Population (1881) 1452, namely, 984 Hindus, 449 Muhammadans, 16 Sikhs, and 3 others;' number of houses, 407. A third-class municipality, with a revenue in 1880-81 of £80; expenditure, £79; average incidence of taxation, is. Iļd. per head of the population. The village contains a police station (thánd), post-office, and school. Náini Tál.---Hill station in Kumaun District, North-Western Provinces. Lat. 29° 22' x., long. 79° 29' 35" E. Picturesquely situated on the banks of a beautiful little lake, which nestles among the spurs of VOL. X. M
