VIZAGAPATAM.
than a feast is, however, spreading among the better classes of Musalmans.
The Dúdékulas, the cotton-cleaning section, are scarcely to be distinguished, in outward appearance, from Hindus, and have adopted many Hindu ways — tying a táli (called pusti in Telugu) at weddings, worshipping the village deities, marrying according to the rule of ménarikam (see p. 76) and following the Hindu laws of inheritance.
There remain for consideration the Hindus (among whom will be included the Animists), who make up the mass of the population. These divide themselves into two widely differing sections; namely, the Telugus of the low country, who in casts customs resemble generally the rest of the Telugu-speaking population of the Northern Circars and in religious ritual follow semi-Bráhmanical ceremonies; and the backward peoples of the Agency, whose ways have been protected from outside influences by their isolation and whose religious beliefs are even yet but little imbued with Hinduism. It will be convenient first to refer shortly to a few of the more distinctive points in the social and religious ways of these two classes of the people and then to attempt briefly to describe the castes and tribes among them which are especially characteristic of this district or occur in it in greater strength than in any other.
In the case of the Agency, both these tasks are of extreme difficulty. The people there may be said to be more diverse, more out of the common and less known than any others in the Presidency. Their origins, their ways and their religious beliefs are the most interesting things in the district; but all three are almost untrodden ground. Except Lieutenant Smith, who contributed a few pages of somewhat general statements to Mr.Carmichael's Manual of the district, Messrs. H G. Turner and H. D. Taylor, who supplied the Census reports of 1871 and 1891 with brief notes on some of the castes of the Jeypore country, and Mr. F. Fawcett, who has written to the magazine Man an account of the Dombus— none of the many officers who have served in the Agency have placed on record the information they acquired concerning the people of their charges. The time at my own disposal has been too limited to admit of any presence of supplying this unfortunate gap by systematic personal enquiry, and the notes which follow are chiefly based on second-hand information or material collected by my Assistant, M.R.Ry. C. Hayavadana Rao, B.A., who has had a long training in matters ethnographical and was able to spend a considerable time in the hill country
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