The Jettis of Mysore still have in their possession knuckle-dusters of the type described above, and take part annually in matches during the Dasara festival. A Jetti police constable, whom I saw at Channapatna, had wrestled at Baroda, and at the court of Nepal, and narrated to me with pride how a wrestler came from Madras to Bangalore, and challenged any one to a match. A Jetti engaged to meet him in two matches for Rs. 500 each, and, after going in for a short course of training, walked round him in each encounter, and won the money easily.
The Mysore Jettis are said to be called, in some places, Mushtigas. And some are stated to use a jargon called Mallabāsha.*[1]
Jetti further occurs as the name of an exogamous sept of the Kavarais.
Jew.—It has been said by a recent writer that "there is hardly a more curious, and in some respects one might almost say a more weird sight than the Jew town, which lies beyond the British Settlement at Cochin. Crossing over the lagoon from the beautiful little island of Bolghotty, where the British Residency for the Cochin State nestles in a bower of tropical vegetation, one lands amidst cocoanut trees, opposite to one of the old palaces of the Cochin Rājahs, and, passing through a native bazaar crowded with dark-skinned Malayālis, one -turns off abruptly into a long narrow street, where faces as white as those of any northern European race, but Semitic in every feature,transport one suddenly in mind to the Jewish quarter in Jerusalem, or rather perhaps to some ghetto in a Polish city,"
- ↑ * Manual of the Bellary district.
