Koonapilli vāndlu.—Beggars attached to Padma Sālēs.
Koppala.—A section of Velamas, who tie the hair in a knot (koppu) on the top of the head, and an exogamous sept of Mutrāchas, whose females do up their hair in a knot when they reach puberty.
Kōra (sun).—A sept of Gadaba, Mūka Dora, and Rōna.
Koracha.—See Korava.
Koraga.—The Koragas are summed up, in the Madras Census Report, 1901, as being a wild tribe of basket-makers and labourers, chiefly found in Mudbidri, and in Puttūr in the Uppinangadi tāluk of South Canara. They are, Mr. M. T. Walhouse writes,[187] “a very quiet and inoffensive race; small and slight, the men seldom exceeding five feet six inches; black-skinned, like most Indian aborigines, thick-lipped, noses broad and flat, and hair rough and bushy. Their principal occupation is basket-making, and they must labour for their masters. They live on the outskirts of villages, and may not dwell in houses of clay or mud, but in huts of leaves, called koppus. Like many of the wild tribes of India, they are distinguished by unswerving truthfulness. The word of a Koragar is proverbial.”
The Koragas rank below the Holeyas. In some towns, they are employed by the sanitary department as scavengers. They remove the hide, horns, and bones of cattle and buffaloes, which die in the villages, and sell them mainly to Māppilla merchants. They accept food, which is left over after feasts held by various castes. Some are skilful in the manufacture of cradles, baskets, cylinders to hold paddy, winnowing and sowing baskets, scale-pans, boxes, rice-water strainers, ring-stands for supporting pots, coir (cocoanut fibre) rope, brushes for washing cattle, etc. They also manufacture various domestic utensils from soapstone, which they sell at a very cheap rate to shopkeepers in the bazar.
“Numerous slave-castes,” Mr. Walhouse continues, “exist throughout India, not of course recognised by law—indeed formally emancipated by an Act of Government in 1843—but still, though improved in condition, virtually slaves. Their origin and status are thus described. After the four principal classes, who sprang from Brahma, came six Anuloma castes, which arose from the intercourse of Brahmans and Kshatriyas with women of the classes below them respectively. The term Anuloma denotes straight and regular hair, which in India characterises the Aryan stock. After these came six Pratiloma castes, originating in reverse order from Brahman and Kshatriya women by fathers of the inferior classes. The third among these was the Chandāla, the offspring of Shudra fathers by Brahman women. The Chandālas, or slaves, were sub-divided into fifteen classes, none of which might intermarry, a rule still strictly observed. The two last, and lowest of the fifteen classes, are the Kapata or rag-wearing, and the Soppu or leaf-wearing Koragas. Such is the account given by Brahman chroniclers; but the probability is that these lowest slave-castes are the descendants of that primitive population which the Aryan invaders from the north found occupying the soil, and, after a struggle of ages, gradually dispossessed, driving some to the hills and jungles, and reducing others to the condition of slaves. All these races are regarded by their Hindu masters with boundless contempt, and held unspeakably unclean. This feeling seems the result and witness of times when the despised races were powerful, and to be approached as lords by their now haughty masters, and was probably intensified by struggles and uprisings, and the memory of humiliations inflicted on the ultimately successful conquerors. Evidences for this may be inferred from many curious rights and privileges, which the despised castes possess and tenaciously retain. Moreover, the contempt and loathing in which they are ordinarily held are curiously tinctured with superstitious fear, for they are believed to possess secret powers of magic and witchcraft, and influence with the old malignant deities of the soil, who can direct good or evil fortune. As an instance, if a Brahman mother’s children die off when young, she calls a Koragar woman, gives her some oil, rice, and copper money, and places the surviving child in her arms. The out-caste woman, who may not at other times be touched, gives the child suck, puts on it her iron bracelets, and, if a boy, names it Koragar, if a girl, Korāpulu. She then returns it to the mother. This is believed to give a new lease of life. Again, when a man is dangerously ill, or perhaps unfortunate, he pours oil into an earthen vessel, worships it in the same way as the family god, looks at his face reflected in the oil, and puts into it a hair from his head and a nail paring from his toe. The oil is then presented to the Koragars, and the hostile gods or stars are believed to be propitiated.” According to Mr. Ullal Raghvendra Rao,[188] old superstitious Hindus never venture to utter the word Koraga during the night.
It is noted in the Manual of the South Canara district, that “all traditions unite in attributing the introduction of the Tulu Brahmins of the present day to Mayūr Varma (of the Kadamba dynasty), but they vary in details connected with the manner in which they obtained a firm footing in the land. One account says that Habāshika, chief of the Koragas, drove out Mayūr Varma, but was in turn expelled by Mayūr Varma’s son, or son-in-law, Lōkāditya of Gōkarnam, who brought Brahmins from Ahi-kshētra, and settled them in thirty-two villages.” Concerning the power, and eventual degradation of the Koragas, the following version of the tradition is cited by Mr. Walhouse. “When Lokadirāya, whose date is fixed by Wilks about 1450 B.C., was king of Bhanvarshe in North Canara (a place noted by Ptolemy), an invader, by name Habāshika, brought an army from above the ghauts, consisting of all the present Chandāla or slave-castes, overwhelmed that part of the country, and marched southward to Mangalore, the present capital of South Canara. The invading host was scourged with small-pox, and greatly annoyed by ants, so Habāshika moved on to Manjeshwar, a place of ancient repute, twelve miles to the south, subdued the local ruler Angarawarma, son of Virawarma, and reigned there in conjunction with his nephew; but after twelve years both died—one legend says through enchantments devised by Angarawarma; another that a neighbouring ruler treacherously proposed a marriage between his sister and Habāshika, and, on the bridegroom and his caste-men attending for the nuptials, a wholesale massacre of them all was effected. Angarawarma, then returning, drove the invading army into the jungles, where they were reduced to such extremity that they consented to become slaves, and were apportioned amongst the Brahmans and original landholders. Some were, set to watch the crops and cattle, some to cultivate, others to various drudgeries, which are still allotted to the existing slave-castes, but the Koragars, who had been raised by Habāshika to the highest posts under his government, were stripped and driven towards the sea-shore, there to be hanged, but, being ashamed of their naked condition, they gathered the leaves of the nicki bush (Vitex Negundo), which grows abundantly in waste places, and made small coverings for themselves in front. On this the executioners took pity on them and let them go, but condemned them to be the lowest of the low, and wear no other covering but leaves. The Koragas are now the lowest of the slave divisions, and regarded with such intense loathing and hatred that up to quite recent times one section of them, called Andē or pot Koragars, continually wore a pot suspended from their necks, into which they were compelled to spit, being so utterly unclean as to be prohibited from even spitting on the highway; and to this day their women continue to show in their leafy aprons a memorial of the abject degradation to which their whole race was doomed.” It is said that in pre-British days an Andē Koraga had to take out a licence to come into the towns and villages by day. At night mere approach thereto was forbidden, as his presence would cause terrible calamity. The Koragas of those days could cook their food only in broken vessels. The name Vastra, by which one class of Koragas is called, has reference to their wearing vastra, or clothes, such as were used to shroud a dead body, and given to them in the shape of charity, the use of a new cloth being prohibited. According to another account the three divisions of the Koragas are (1) Kappada, those who wear clothes, (2) Tippi, who wear ornaments made of the cocoanut shell, and (3) Vanti, who wear a peculiar kind of large ear-ring. These three clans may eat together, but not intermarry. Each clan is divided into exogamous septs called balis, and it may be noted that some of the Koraga balis, such as Haledennaya and Kumērdennaya, are also found among the Māri and Mundala Holeyas.
Koraga.