VIZAGAPATAM
their deficiency in words for numerals. After 'five' or 'seven' they have often to borrow the Uriya or Telugu words for the higher numerals. Mr. H. G. Turner sent a note on this subject to the Indian Antiquary (ii, 97).
The education of the people is referred to in Chapter X below, which shows that the district (and particularly the Agency) has long been a byword for illiteracy.
The means of subsistence of the inhabitants are discussed in Chapter VI, from which it will be seen that arts, industries and trade support but few of them, and that an overwhelming proportion depend upon the land for a livelihood.
The religion of the district before the beginning of the Christian era was probably (see p. 25) Buddhism. Nowadays practically the whole of the population of the Agency are Hindus or Animists, Christians numbering only 37 in 10.000 in 1901, and Musalmans only 18 in the same number. The census figures attempt to differentiate Hindus (that is, those who worship the orthodox gods of the Hindu pantheon) from Animists (that is, those who reverence only animistic deities); but the accuracy of the result is vitiated by the fact that many members of the hill tribes, though Animists at heart, offer none the less a perfunctory and spasmodic worship to the Hindu gods of the plains and thus come within the four corners of the definition of a Hindu.
In the low country, nearly 99 per cent, of the people are Hindus and Animists, and Musalmans (108 in every 10,000) and Christians (20 in the same number) are proportionately fewer than in any district in the Presidency except Ganjám.
The Jains number only 49. Jain remains appear to occur in only one place in the plains (Rámatírtham, see p. 335) and the faith was presumably never powerful. In the Canarese country and the Deccan the Jains were ousted by the Lingáyats, and perhaps the same fate overtook them in Vizagapatam, for the district contains a proportion of Lingáyats which is curiously high for a tract so remote from the birthplace of that faith. Many of the Dévángas, Sáles and Kómatis belong to the sect, there are Lingáyat gurus at Anakápalle and Pálkonda, and Pondúru is a great centre o£ the creed.
The Christians, as has been said, form a smaller proportion of the total population than in any other district except Ganjám. They are relatively least scarce in the Vizagapatam and Koraput taluks, where they number about 2 per cent, of the population, and in the Sálúr Agency. In these latter two areas they consist almost entirely of Dombus converted by the Schleswig-Holstein
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