Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/392

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KONDA DORA
354

attitude of the Swāmi's followers, had to abandon the attempt. The District Magistrate then went to the place in person, collected reserve police from Vizagapatam, Pārvatipur, and Jeypore, and at dawn on the 7th May rushed the camp to arrest the Swāmi and the other leaders of the movement. The police were resisted by the mob, and obliged to fire. Eleven of the rioters were killed, others wounded or arrested, and the rest dispersed. Sixty of them were tried for rioting, and three, including the Swāmi, for murdering the constables. Of the latter, the Swāmi died in jail, and the other two were hanged. The Swāmi's infant son, the god Krishna, also died, and all trouble ended at once and completely."

Concerning the Konda Kāpus or Konda Reddis of the Godāvari district, Mr. F. R. Hemingway writes as follows.*[1] "The hill Reddis, or Konda Reddis, are a caste of jungle men, having some characteristics in common with the Kōyas. They usually talk a rough Telugu, clipping their words so that it is often difficult to understand them; but it is said that some of them speak Kōya. They are of slighter build than the Kōyas, and their villages are even smaller. They will not eat in the house of a Kōya. They call themselves by various high-sounding titles, such as Pāndava Reddis, Rāja Reddis, and Reddis of the solar race (Sūryavamsa), and do not like the plain name of Konda Reddi. They recognize no endogamous sub-divisions, but have exogamous septs. In character they resemble the Kōyas, but are less simple and stupid, and in former years were much given to crime. They live by shifting cultivation. They do not touch beef, but will eat pork. They profess to be both Saivites and Vaishnavites, and occasionally employ

  1. * Gazetteer of the Godāvari district.