A child receives its name on the seventh, ninth, or eleventh day. A sumptuous meal is given to the community, and the grandfather (paternal, if possible) milks a cow, and pours the milk into a brass cup placed in the milk-house. With it a little cooked sāmai grain is mixed. The babe is washed with water brought from a stream; marked on the forehead with sacred ashes; a turmeric-dyed thread is tied round its waist; a silver or iron bangle placed on its wrists; and a silver bead tied by a thread round its neck. Thus decorated, the infant is taken up by the oldest man of the village who is not a widower, who gives it a name, which has already been chosen. The elder, and the child's parents and grand-parents then place a little milk in its mouth.
Children, both male and female, go through a shaving ceremony, usually when they are seven months old. The infant is seated in the lap of a Badaga, and, after water has been applied to its head by a Badaga or a barber, the maternal uncle removes some of the hair with a razor, and then hands it over to another Badaga or a barber to complete the operation.
Of the death rites as carried out by the Badaga sub-division, the following note was recorded during a visit to Kotagiri. When death is drawing near, a gold coin, called Vīrarāya hana or fanam, dipped in butter or ghī, is given to the dying man to swallow. If he is too far gone to be capable of swallowing, the coin is, according to Mr. Natesa Sastri, tied round the arm. But our informants told us that this is not done at the present day. " If," Mr. Gover writes,*[1] " the tiny coin slips down, well. He will need both gold and ghī, the one to sustain his strength in the dark journey to the river of death, the
- ↑ * Op. cit.
