days. Nearly three thousand females, and six thousand males, assembled on Thursday. To crown all the confusion, there appeared nearly a thousand Badagas armed with new mamotis (spades). They came on dancing for some distance, rushed into the crowd, and danced round the car. These Badagas belonged to a gang of public works, local fund, and municipal maistries. On the last day a sheep was slaughtered in honour of the deity. The musicians throughout the festivities were Kotas and Kurumbas. The dancing of the men of three score showed that they danced to music, and the stepping was admirable, while the dancing of young men did not show that they had any idea of dancing, or either taste or knowledge of music. They were merely skipping and jumping. This shows that the old art of the Badaga dance is fast decaying." The cot is eventually burnt at the burning-ground, as if it contained a corpse.
A kind of edible truffle (Mylitta lapidescens) is known as little man's bread on the Nllgiris. The Badaga legendary name for it is Pandva-unna-buthi, or dwarf bundle of food,[1] i.e., food of the dwarfs, who are supposed once to have inhabited the Nilgiris and built the pandu kulis or kistvaens.
The story goes that Lord Elphinstone, a former Governor of Madras, was anxious to build a residence at Kaiti. But the Badagas, who had on the desired site a sacred tree, would not part with the land. The Governor's steward succeeded in making the Badaga headman drunk, and secured, for a rental of thirty-five rupees annually, the site, whereon a villa was built, which now belongs to the Basel Mission.[2]
