VIZAGAPATAM.
are more expert; the Kóya girls of Málkanagiri dance prettily in a ring with their hands on each others shoulders; and perhaps the best exponents of the art are the Jódia Poroja girls of the Koraput and Nandapuram country.
Picturesque in the extreme is a dancing party of these cheery maidens, dressed all exactly alike in clean white cloths with cerise borders or checks, reaching barely half way to the knee; great rings on their fingers; brass bells on their toes; their substantial but shapely arms and legs tattooed from wrist to shoulder and from ankle to knee; their left forearms hidden under a score of heavy brass bangles; and their feet loaded with chased brass anklets weighing perhaps a dozen pounds. The orchestra, which consists solely of drums of assorted shapes and sizes, dashes into an overture, and the girls quickly group themselves into a corps de ballet, each under the leadership of a première danseuse who marks the time with a long baton of peacock's feathers. Suddenly, the drums drop to a muffled beat and each group strings out into a long line, headed by the leader with the feathers, each maiden passing her right hand behind the next girl's back and grasping the left elbow of the next but one. Thus linked, and in time with the drums (which now break into allegro crescendo) the long chains of girls — dancing in perfect step, following the leader with her swaying baton, marking the time by clinking their anklets (right, left, right, clink; left, clink; right, left, right, clink; and so da capo), chanting the while (quite tunefully) in unison a refrain in a minor key ending on a sustained falling note — weave themselves into sinuous lines,curves, spirals, figures-of-eight and back into lines again; wind in and out like some brightly-coloured snake; never halting for a moment, now backwards, now forwards, first slowly and decorously, then, as the drums quicken, faster and faster, with more and more abandon and longer and longer steps, until suddenly some one gets out of step and the chain snaps amid peals of breathless laughter.
The most jovial occasion in the Agency is the feast in the month of Chaitra (March- April;, which is usually known as the Chaitra parvam but in the Golgonda and Víravilli Agencies is called the Ittika panduga. Everything makes for jollity in that month. There is nothing to be done in the fields, the sap is rising in the trees, the jungles have been burnt and are clear for shikár, and, above all, the sago-palms are giving toddy and the mohwa flower, from which strong waters are brewed, is falling. The month is spent in feasting, deep potations, night-long
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