license is forbidden. Men sometimes occupy themselves in felling trees, catching birds and hares, and tracking and beating game for sportsmen. The Gadabas are also employed as bearers in the hills, and carry palanquins. There is a settlement of them on the main road between Sembliguda and Koraput, in a village where they are said to have been settled by a former Rāja expressly for such service. It is said that the Gadabas will not touch a horse, possibly because they are palanquin-bearers, and have the same objection to the rival animal that a cabman has for a motor-car.
There is a tradition that the tribe owes its name to the fact that its ancestors emigrated from the banks of the Godābari (Godāvari) river, and settled at Nandapur, the former capital of the Rājas of Jeypore. The Gadabas have a language of their own, of which a vocabulary is given in the Vizagapatam Manual. This language is included by Mr. G. A. Grierson *[1] in the Mundā linguistic family.
The tribe is apparently divided into five sections, called Bodo (big) or Gutōb, Pārenga, Olāro, Kaththiri or Kaththara, and Kāpu. Of these, the last two are settled in the plains, and say that they are Bodo and Olāro Gadabas who migrated thither from the hills. As among the Gadabas, so among the Savaras, there is a section which has settled on the plains, and adopted Kāpu as its name. In the Madras Census Report, 1891, nearly a thousand Gadabas are returned as belonging to the Chenchu sub-division. Chenchu is the name of a separate jungle tribe in the Telugu country, and I have been unable to confirm the existence of a Chenchu sub-division among the Gadabas.
- ↑ * Linguistic Survey of India IV, 1906.
