any part of their heads and allow long locks to hang down in front of their ears.
The beggar community attached to them are the Bhatrázus, who were originally their court bards and panegyrists, but now beg from other castes as well and have less special claim upon them than formerly. These people are notorious for their importunity and their gift for lampooning those who refuse them alms, and they trade upon the fact.
The Kómatis are the great trading and money-lending caste of the Telugu country, and are not popular. They call themselves Vaisyas, wear the sacred thread, claim to have 102 'gótras,' and of late years some of them have adopted Védic rites at their marriages and funerals in place of the Puránic rites which are traditional with them. But on the other hand their gótras are not Bráhmanical and they follow the Dravidian rule of ménarikam in their marriages. In this district they are subdivided into the Gavaras, Kalingas, and Traivarnikas ('third-caste-men'), who neither intermarry nor dine together, and the last of whom differ from the others in the strictness of their observance of Bráhmanical ways. The Gavaras are by far the most numerous.
Their caste goddess, Kanyakamma or Kanyaká Paramésvari already mentioned, is said to be a deification of a beautiful Kómati girl named Vasavamma who belonged to Penugonda in Kistna. The Eastern Chálukya king Vishnuvardhana wanted to marry her, her caste-people objected and were persecuted accordingly, and at last she burnt herself alive to end the trouble. The headmen of 102 families, the ancestors of the present 'gótras,' sacrificed themselves with her. She has many temples, but the chief is at her native village of Penugonda. The fines collected at caste panchayats are even now sent to this.
Of the 102 'gótras ' some at least are totemistic, which is another argument against the twice-born origin of the caste. They are derived from the names of plants, and to this day the members of these gótras may not touch their eponymous plants, and even involuntary contact with them involves ceremonial pollution which must be removed by a bath. Some of these are given in the report on the Madras census of 1901, p. 162. The same volume gives authorities for the custom among Kómatis (which is strenuously denied by them) requiring them to give betel and nut to a Mádiga before a wedding is performed in the caste. The practice is said to be dying out or to be usually veiled by the Kómati giving the Mádiga some cobbling work to do and handing him the betel and nut with the amount of his bill. Members of the caste
