Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 3 of 7Thurston, Edgar
History
Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 3 of 7
Thurston, Edgar
Caste -- India, South; Ethnology -- India, South; India, South -- Social life and customs; Tribes -- India, South
such as are in force among the Chenchus in Kurnool, would be necessary.
In the course of a lament over the change which has come over the
Kondhs who live in the range of hills near Berhampore, Mr. S. P. Rice
writes as follows. [158] "Here they live in seclusion and in freedom,
but also in the lowest depths of squalor and poverty. Once they
loved gay colours. True Khond dresses, both male and female, are
full of stripes and patterns, in blue, yellow, and red. Where has
gone the love of colour? Instead of the long waistcloth ending in
tails of blue and red, the man binds about him a wretched rag that
can hardly be called a garment. Once the women took a delight in
decking themselves with flowers, and a pride in the silver ornaments
that jangled on their naked breasts. Where are now the grasses that
adorned them, and the innocence that allowed them to go clothed
only to the waist? Gone! withered by the blast of the breath of a
'superior civilization.' Gone are the hairpins of sambur bone--an
inestimable treasure in the eyes of the true hill Khond. Gone are
the floral decorations, and the fantastic head-dresses, which are
the pride of the mountain tribes. In dull, unromantic squalor our
Khond lives, moves, and has his being; arid, ever as he moves, is
heard the clanking upon his wrists of the fetters of his debt. Yet
for all that he is happy." The hairpins referred to above are made
from sambur (deer: Cervus unicolor) bones, and stuck in the hair of
male Kondhs. Porcupine quills are sometimes used by them as hairpins.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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