crows." When a friend was engaged in making experiments in connection with snake venom, some Dommaras asked for permission to unbury the corpses of snakes and mungooses for the purpose of food.
The Dommaras are, in the Mysore Census Report, 1901, summed up as being buffoons, tumblers, acrobats, and snakecharmers, who travel from place to place, and earn a precarious living by their exhibitions. In the Madras Census Report, 1901, Domban, Kalaikūttādi (pole-dancer), and Ārya Kūttādi, are given as synonyms of Dommara. The Kūttāadi are summed up, in the Tanjore Manual, as vagabond dancers, actors, pantomimists, and marionette exhibitors, who hold a very low position in the social scale, and always perform in public streets and bazaars.
By Mr. F. S. Mullaly *[1] the Dommaras are divided into Reddi or Kāpu {i.e., cultivators) and Āray (Marātha). "The women," he writes, "are proficient in making combs of horn and wood, and implements used by weavers. These they hawk about from place to place, to supplement the profits they derive from their exhibitions of gymnastic feats. In addition to performing conjuring tricks, rope-dancing and the like, the Dommaras hunt, fish, make mats, and rear donkeys and pigs. The head of the tribe is called the Mutli Guru. He is their high priest, and exercises supreme jurisdiction over them both in spiritual and temporal matters. His head-quarters is Chitvēl in the Cuddapah district. The legend regarding the office of the Mutli Guru is as follows. At Chitvēl, or as it was then known Mutli, there once lived a king, who called together a gathering of all the gymnasts among his subjects. Several classes were represented.
- ↑ * Notes on the Criminal Classes of the Madras Presidency.
