Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 8.djvu/59

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GAULI.
(419)

THE Gaulis of Mysore are a numerous class, which does not connect itself with any other, and they are the same in every respect as Gaulis elsewhere described. They possess cows and buffaloes, but chiefly the latter, on account of their large yield of milk, and in the management of their dairies are very successful. Their cattle are well fed and well cared for. After being grazed during the day, they are given, at milking time, feeds of oilcake and cotton seed bruised, with salt, which maintains the yield of milk, and is repeated at the milking in the morning. Whatever may be left unsold of the milk is churned at once, and the butter boiled down into ghee, for which there is always a ready sale at a remunerative price. Many of the Gaulis are cattle breeders on a large scale, wherever grass is abundant; and the oxen produced are strong, hardy, and large enough to be employed in the artillery, when bullocks are used for that force. Such cattle are now employed in agriculture, and many of them are exported from Mysore to the surrounding provinces on all sides, where they are highly valued for their power and endurance. Some families of Gaulis are settled in all large towns and cities, where they sell milk, butter, ghee, curds, and buttermilk. Others are migratory, frequenting the high pasturage lands to the west and east of Mysore, breeding cattle, and carrying on a larger trade in ghee than their brethren of the towns. Wherever they are found, Gaulis are well disposed and peaceable. No organic crime appears to exist among them. They do not in Mysore drink intoxicating liquors, nor eat flesh; but subsist on farinaceous food and vegetables, with milk and ghee. Their women do not ordinarily wear the sari, but a petticoat and bodice, with a scarf thrown over all, much like the women of the Lambanies or Brinjaries, with whom many suppose the original Gaulis to have been connected. They are now, however, entirely separate. It is not a little remarkable, that all through India the Gaulis scarcely differ anywhere either in habits, profession, or costume. They are the same in the Punjab, in Bengal, in Central India, and Maharashtra, as they are in