VIZAGAPATAM
Rája returned to Jeypore and agreed in 1877 to pay a kattubadi of Rs. 15,000 and to attend the Dasara with 500 paiks. He was given a patta allowing him to enjoy the estate in perpetuity on these terms, but for some years refused either to pay anything or go to the Dasara. He died in October 1889 and his heir, Naréndra, being a minor, the estate was administered by Government, The minor was educated at Párvatípur and Vizagapatam and married a daughter of the Belgám zamindar. He came of age on the 20th July 1903, but almost at once refused to attend the Dasara at Jeypore and has since declined to pay any tribute either. The Mahárája of Jeypore has now filed a suit to recover possession of the estate.
The Tát Rája's flef consists of eight muttas comprising some 500 Khond villages with a gross rental of about Rs. 40,000. Two of the muttas— Jagdalpur and Ambadála — are under pátros who pay an annual kattubadi (which the Rája claims to be entitled to raise if Jeypore raises his tribute) and in certain cases render feudal service. The relations between them and the Tát Rája have not always been satisfactory. The feudal tenure which once prevailed in these secluded areas is breaking down with the advance of new ideas, and the pátros have questioned the Tat Rája's authority to enhance their kattubadi because his own has been raised. The other muttas are managed directly by the Rája himself, nearly all the villages being rented out.
The Bissamkatak country was formerly one of the worst centres of Meriah sacrifice. In 1851, when a fight between the Jeypore and Bissamkatak troops was imminent, Col. Campbell found confined in the Tát Rája's residence a young boy who had been purchased to be offered up to propitiate Manaksuro (? Manikésvara), the god of war, as soon as hostilities began. In 1854, however, the Tát Rája prevented any of his people from going to get morsels of the flesh of a Meriah who had been sacrificed at Ráyabijji, by threatening to set his peons to shoot them down if they did; and the authorities gave him a double-barrelled rifle in appreciation of this achievement. At the Dasara four buffaloes, instead of human victims, are now sacrificed to the four goddesses Márkama, Tákuráni, Durgi and Nyámarázu. The Khonds come in great numbers for the event, and after the pújári has given the animals one blow they rush in and kill them with their tangis and each carry off a portion of the flesh. This is not buried in the earth to secure good crops, as is apparently done in Ganjám,1[1] but is eaten in a convivial fashion and washed down with much strong drink.
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- ↑ 1 Ganjám District Manual, 86-7.
