them with their magic arts, and indeed killed by sorcery several of their most prominent citizens." *[1]
Like other Canarese people, the Badagas have exogamous septs or kūlas, of which Māri, Madhave (marriage), Kastūri (musk), and Belli (silver) are examples. A very large number of families belong to the Māri and Madhave septs, which were time after time given as the sept name in reply to my enquiries. It may be noted that Belli occurs as an exogamous sept of the Canarese classes Vakkaliga, Toreya, and Kuruba, and Kastūri is recorded in my notes as a sept of the Vakkaligas and Telugu Kammas.
The Badagas dwell in extensive villages, generally situated on the summit of a low hillock, composed of rows of comfortable thatched or tiled houses, and surrounded by the fields, which yield the crops. The houses are not separate tenements, but a line of dwellings under one continuous roof, and divided by party walls. Sometimes there are two or three, or more lines, forming streets. Each house is partitioned off into an outer (edumane) and inner apartment (ozhaga or ōgamane). If the family has cows or buffaloes yielding milk, a portion of the latter is converted into a milk-house (hāgōttu), in which the milk is stored, and which no woman may enter Even males who are under pollution, from having touched or passed near a Kota or Paraiyan, or other cause, may not enter it until they have had a ceremonial bath. To some houses a loft, made of bamboo posts, is added, to serve as a store-house. In every Badaga village there is a raised platform composed of a single boulder or several stones with an erect stone slab set up thereon, called sūththu
- ↑ * Gazetteer of the Nilgiris.
