Kota temple.
In addition to Kāmatarāya and Mangkāli, the Kotas at Gūdalūr, which is near the Malabar frontier, worship Vettakaraswāmi, Adiral and Udiral, and observe the Malabar Ōnam festival. The Kotas worship further Māgāli, to whose influence outbreaks of cholera are attributed, and Māriamma, who is held responsible for smallpox. When cholera breaks out among the Kota community, special sacrifices are performed with a view to propitiating the wrath of the goddess. Māgāli is represented by an upright stone in a rude temple at a little distance from Kotagiri, where an annual ceremony takes place, at which some man becomes possessed, and announces to the people that Māgāli has come. The Pūjāri offers up plantains and cocoanuts, and sacrifices a sheep and fowls. My informant was, or pretended to be ignorant of the following legend recorded by Breeks as to the origin of the worship of the smallpox goddess. “A virulent disease carried off a number of Kotas of Peranganoda, and the village was abandoned by the survivors. A Badaga named Munda Jogi, who was bringing his tools to the Kotagiri to be sharpened, saw near a tree something in the form of a tiger, which spoke to him, and told him to summon the run-away Kotas. He obeyed, whereupon the tiger form addressed the Kotas in an unknown tongue, and vanished. For some time, the purport of this communication remained a mystery. At last, however, a Kota came forward to interpret, and declared that the god ordered the Kotas to return to the village on pain of a recurrence of the pestilence. The command was obeyed, and a Swāmi house (shrine) was built on the spot where the form appeared to the Badaga (who doubtless felt keenly the inconvenience of having no Kotas at hand to sharpen his tools).” The Kotas are not allowed to approach Toda or Badaga temples.
It was noted by Lieutenant R. F. Burton[11] that, in some hamlets, the Kotas have set up curiously carved stones, which they consider sacred, and attribute to them the power of curing diseases, if the member affected be only rubbed against the talisman.
A great annual festival is held in honour of Kāmatarāya with the ostensible object of propitiating him with a view to his giving the Kotas an abundant harvest and general prosperity. The feast commences on the first Monday after the January new moon, and lasts over many days, which are observed as a general holiday. The festival is said to be a continuous scene of licentiousness and debauchery, much indecent dancing taking place between men and women. According to Metz,[12] the chief men among the Badagas must attend, otherwise their absence would be regarded as a breach of friendship and etiquette, and the Kotas would avenge themselves by refusing to make ploughs or earthen vessels for the Badagas. The programme, when the festival is carried out in full detail, is, as far as I have been able to gather, as follows:—
First day. A fire is kindled by one of the priests in the temple, and carried to the Nadukēri section of the village, where it is kept burning throughout the festival. Around the fire men, women, adolescent boys and girls, dance to the weird music of the Kota band, whose instruments consist of clarionet, drum, tambourine, brass horn and flute (buguri).
| Second day |  | Dance atnight. |
| Third day | ||
| Fourth day | ||
| Fifth day |
Sixth day. The villagers go to the jungle and collect bamboos and rattans, with which to re-roof the temple. Dance at night.
The seventh day is busily spent in re-roofing and decorating the temples, and it is said to be essential that the work should be concluded before nightfall. Dance at night.
Eighth day. In the morning the Kotas go to Badaga villages, and cadge for presents of grain and ghī (clarified butter), which they subsequently cook, place in front of the temple as an offering to the god, and, after the priests have eaten, partake of, seated round the temple.
Ninth day. Kotas, Todas, Badagas, Kurumbas, Irulas, and ‘Hindus’ come to the Kota village, where an elaborate nautch is performed, in which men are the principal actors, dressed up in gaudy attire consisting of skirt, petticoat, trousers, turban and scarves, and freely decorated with jewelry, which is either their own property, or borrowed from Badagas for the occasion. Women merely dressed in clean cloths also take part in a dance called kumi, which consists of a walk round to time beaten with the hands. I was present at a private performance of the male nautch, which was as dreary as such entertainments usually are, but it lacked the go which is doubtless put into it when it is performed under natural conditions away from the restraining influence of the European. The nautch is apparently repeated daily until the conclusion of the festival.