VIZAGAPATAM.
Bodo Bottadas have several totemistic septs. Marriage occurs either before or after puberty and follows éduru ménarikam. The usual preliminary overtures to the girl's parents are made, but the actual ceremony is far more elaborate than an ordinary hill wedding, In front of the bridegroom's house a pandal of nine sál poles is erected, the caste dissari officiates as priest, the couple's little fingers are hooked together and their cloths knotted,they walk seven times round the pandal, hómam is lit, the pair are marked on the forehead with saffron and bathed in saffron water, and a caste banquet concludes the affair. The dead (with the usual exceptions) are burnt, and pollution lasts ten days during which the deceased's relations cannot cook any food; ceremonies are performed at the cremation ground on the second and eighth days.
The Ronas, or Rona Paikos (29,000), are another immigrant tribe. They say that seven brothers, their ancestors, came long ago to Nandapuram. then the capital of the Jeypore country, and took military service under the Rája there. They are still most numerous round Nandapuram (where their caste headman resides), Pádwa and Koraput; rona means 'battle' and poiko 'sepoy'; and some of them are still personal retainers of the Mahárája. They speak Uriya, wear the sacred thread (leave to do so having been purchased from the Rája in days gone by) and hold their heads high, declining to accept food from any but Bráhmans. They are split into three endogamous divisions resembling those of the Bottadas; namely, Rona Paiko proper; Kottiya Paiko, children of Rona men by women of other castes; and Puttiya Paiko, descendants of Kottiya Paiko men and other women. The last two rank below the pure Ronas in social matters. The Kottiyas (who numbered 12,000 in 1901) have usually, but apparently wrongly, been classed as a distinct caste. The people called Odiya Paikos, on the other hand, have generally been treated as Ronas, but they seem to be separate and to follow the customs of the upper Uriya castes, notably their very elaborate seven-days' wedding with its tiresome ceremonial.
The Rona Paikos have several totemistic exogamous septs. When a girl attains maturity she is kept in an enclosure within the house made of thread wound round seven arrows placed on end. Marriage occurs either before or after puberty, follows éduru ménarikam, and is somewhat similar in form to the Bottada ceremony.
The Bhúmiyas, 'soil- folk,' number 19,000 and reside chiefly on the western fringe of Jeypore between Kótapád and Salimi.
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