Often, when out on the tramp with the late Government Botanist, Mr. M. A. Lawson, I have heard him lament that it is impossible to train arboreal monkeys to collect specimens of the fruit and flowers of lofty forest trees, which are inaccessible to the ordinary man. Far superior to any trained Simian is the Kādir, who, by means of pegs or notches, climbs even the tallest masts of trees with an agility which recalls to memory the celebrated picture in “Punch,” representing Darwin’s ‘Habit of climbing plants.’ For the ascent of comparatively low trees, notches are made with a bill-hook, alternately right and left, at intervals of about thirty inches. To this method the Kādir will not have recourse in wet weather, as the notches are damp and slippery, and there is the danger of an insecure foot-hold.
An important ethnographic fact, and one which is significant, is that the detailed description of tree-climbing by the Dyaks of Borneo, as given by Wallace,[10] might have been written on the Ānaimalai hills, and would apply equally well in every detail to the Kādir. “They drove in,” Wallace writes, “a peg very firmly at about three feet from the ground, and, bringing one of the long bamboos, stood it upright close to the tree, and bound it firmly to the two first pegs by means of a bark cord and small notches near the head of each peg. One of the Dyaks now stood on the first peg and drove in a third about level with his face, to which he tied the bamboo in the same way, and then mounted another step, standing on one foot, and holding by the bamboo at the peg immediately above him, while he drove in the next one. In this manner he ascended about twenty feet, when the upright bamboo became thin; another was handed up by his companion, and this was joined on by tying both bamboos to three or four of the pegs. When this was also nearly ended, a third was added, and shortly after the lowest branch of the tree was reached, along which the young Dyak scrambled. The ladder was perfectly safe, since, if any one peg were loose or faulty, the strain would be thrown on several others above and below it. I now understood the use of the line of bamboo pegs sticking in trees, which I had often seen.”
In their search for produce in the evergreen forests of the higher ranges, with their heavy rainfall, the Kādirs became unpleasantly familiar with leeches and blue bottle flies, which flourish in the moist climate. And it is recorded that a Kādir, who had been gored and wounded by a bull ‘bison,’ was placed in a position of safety while a friend ran to the village to summon help. He was not away for more than an hour, but, in that short time, flies had deposited thousands of maggots in the wounds, and, when the man was brought into camp, they had already begun burrowing into the flesh, and were with difficulty extracted. On another occasion, the eye-witness of the previous unappetising incident was out alone in the forest, and shot a tiger two miles or so from his camp. Thither he went to collect coolies to carry in the carcase, and was away for about two hours, during which the flies had, like the child in the story, ‘not been idle,’ the skin being a mass of maggots and totally ruined. I have it on authority that, like the Kotas of the Nīlgiris, the Kādirs will eat the putrid and fly-blown flesh of carcases of wild beasts, which they come across in their wanderings. To a dietary which includes succulent roots, which they upturn with a digging stick, bamboo seed, sheep, fowls, rock-snakes (python), deer, porcupines, rats (field, not house), wild pigs, monkeys, etc., they do credit by displaying a hard, well-nourished body. The mealy portion of the seeds of the Cycas tree, which flourishes on the lower slopes of the Ānaimalais, forms a considerable addition to the ménu. In its raw state the fruit is said to be poisonous, but it is evidently wholesome when cut into slices, thoroughly soaked in running water, dried, and ground into flour for making cakes, or baked in hot ashes. Mr. Vincent writes that, “during March, April, and May, the Kādirs have a glorious time. They usually manage to find some wild sago palms, called by them koondtha panai, of the proper age, which they cut down close to the ground. They are then cut into lengths of about 1½ feet, and split lengthways. The sections are then beaten very hard and for a long time with mallets, and become separated into fibre and powder. The powder is thoroughly wetted, tied in cloths and well beaten with sticks. Every now and then, between the beatings, the bag of powder is dipped in water, and well strained. It is then all put into water, when the powder sinks, and the water is poured off. The residue is well boiled, with constant stirring, and, when it is of the consistency of rubber, and of a reddish brown colour, it is allowed to cool, and then cut in pieces to be distributed. This food stuff is palatable enough, but very tough.” The Kādir is said to prefer roasting and eating the flesh of animals with the skin on. For catching rats, jungle-fowl, etc., he resorts to cunningly devised snares and traps made of bamboo and fibre, as a substitute for a gun. Porcupines are caught by setting fire to the scrub jungle round them as they lie asleep, and thus smoking and burning them to death.
Kādir Tree-climbing.
When a Kādir youth’s thoughts turn towards matrimony, he is said to go to the village of his bride-elect, and give her a dowry by working there for a year. On the wedding day a feast of rice, sheep, fowls, and other luxuries is given by the parents of the bridegroom, to which the Kādir community is invited. The bride and bridegroom stand beneath a pandal (arch) decorated with flowers, which is erected outside the home of the bridegroom, while men and women dance separately to the music of drum and fife. The bridegroom’s mother or sister ties the tāli (marriage badge) of gold or silver round the bride’s neck, and her father puts a turban on the head of the bridegroom. The contracting parties link together the little fingers of their right hands as a token of their union, and walk in procession round the pandal. Then, sitting on a reed mat of Kādir manufacture, they exchange betel. The marriage tie can be dissolved for incompatibility of temper, disobedience on the part of the wife, adultery, etc., without appeal to any higher authority than a council of elders, who pronounce judgment on the evidence. As an illustration of the manner in which such a council of hill-men disposes of cases, Mr. Bensley cites the case of a man who was made to carry forty basket loads of sand to the house of the person against whom he had offended. He points out how absolute is the control exercised by the council. Disobedience would be followed by excommunication, and this would mean being turned out into the jungle, to obtain a living in the best way one could.
By one Kādir informant I was assured, as he squatted on the floor of my bungalow at “question time,” that it is essential that a wife should be a good cook, in accordance with a maxim that the way to the heart is through the mouth. How many men in civilised western society, who suffer from marrying a wife wholly incompetent, like the first Mrs. David Copperfield, to conduct the housekeeping, might well be envious of the system of marriage as a civil contract to be sealed or unloosed according to the cookery results! Polygyny is indulged in by the Kādirs, who agree with Benedick that “the world must be peopled,” and hold more especially that the numerical strength of their own tribe must be maintained. The plurality of wives seems to be mainly with the desire for offspring, and the father-in-law of one of the forest-guards informed me that he had four wives living. The first two wives producing no offspring, he married a third, who bore him a solitary male child. Considering the result to be an insufficient contribution to the tribe, he married a fourth, who, more prolific than her colleagues, gave birth to three girls and a boy, with which he remained content. In the code of polygynous etiquette, the first wife takes precedence over the others, and each wife has her own cooking utensils.
Special huts are maintained for women during menstruation and parturition. Mr. Vincent informs me that, when a girl reaches puberty, the friends of the family gather together, and a great feast is prepared. All her friends and relations give her a small present of money, according to their means. The girl is decorated with the family jewelry, and made to look as smart as possible. For the first menstrual period, a special hut, called mutthu salai or ripe house, is constructed for the girl to live in during the period of pollution; but at subsequent periods, the ordinary menstruation hut, or unclean house, is used. All girls are said to change their names when they reach puberty. For three months after the birth of a child, the woman is considered unclean. When the infant is a month old, it is named without any elaborate ceremonial, though the female friends of the family collect together. Sexual intercourse ceases on the establishment of pregnancy, and the husband indulges in promiscuity. Widows are not allowed to re-marry, but may live in a state of concubinage. Women are said to suckle their children till they are two or three years old, and a mother has been seen putting a lighted cigarette to the lips of a year old baby immediately after suckling it. If this is done with the intention of administering a sedative, it is less baneful than the pellet of opium administered by ayahs (nurses) to Anglo-Indian babies rendered fractious by troubles climatic, dental, and other. The Kādir men are said to consume large quantities of opium, which is sold to them illicitly. They will not allow the women or children to eat it, and have a belief that the consumption thereof by women renders them barren. The women chew tobacco. The men smoke the coarse tobacco as sold in the bazars, and showed a marked appreciation of Spencer’s Torpedo cheroots, which I distributed among them for the purposes of bribery and conciliation.
The religion of the Kādirs is a crude polytheism, and vague worship of stone images or invisible gods. It is, as Mr. Bensley expresses it, an ejaculatory religion, finding vent in uttering the names of the gods and demons. The gods, as enumerated and described to me, were as follows:—
(1) Paikutlātha, a projecting rock overhanging a slab of rock, on which are two stones set up on end. Two miles east of Mount Stuart.