The Country and People

CHRISTIAN MISSIONS

TELUGU COUNTRY

THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE

' Telugu The name ' does not stand for a language, and country, but It is derived ultimately from Trilinga, that is, speak it. tri, or three, and linga, or lingam, the emblem of the god Tradition has that Shiva descended Shiva. it form a lingam on three of SrisaUam, and Bhimesvaram. the country boundaries the of Telinga, Tenugu, or Telugu country. At time the country where Telugu the present spoken extends from the city of Madras nearly to the borders of Bengal, comprising the whole of that coast region and stretching far to the west beyond the middle The three countries which make up of the Peninsula. the greater part of this area are known as the Northern Circars, the Ceded Districts, and the Nizam's Dominions. The first two are British, the third

(1300/O.13811)

IN THE

Meaning for a place or a for the people who jelugu in the Kalesvaram, mountains, These, therefore, marked the called Trilinga, The is cJuntry is under a native

B

MISSIONS IN THE TELUGU COUNTRY

2 The Northern Circars comprise a region about ruler. twenty to a hundred miles wide along the coast of the Bay of Bengal. It was ceded in 1757 by the subahdar or governor of the Deccan. long struggle on the part of Lord Clive, by the East Delhi court the to till 1823, however, that it became to all intents was not and purposes a British possession. came earlier under direct British rule. Seringapatam, the of fail Mysore territories was made between the British and the Roughly speaking, the country now known as Nizam. the districts of Cuddapah, Kurnool, and Bellary, became the portion of the Nizam. of British troops at Hyderabad, he bar- for the keep gained to hand back these districts to the British in lieu From 1800, therefore, this piece of country, of payment. known as the Ceded Districts, has been British territory. The Nizam's Dominions, often known as the Hyderabad make up the greatest State, population having, in 1901, a dates back formation the of state The governor of the Deccan, known officially century. as the Nizam ul Mulk, in the early part of threw allegiance his off an independent During the ruler. century the Nizam was generally aUied with the British power, and was confirmed by the These meet the Madras Presidency on the east tories. the Bombay Presidency on the west. and language is spoken over the eastern half of the country.

French the to After a it was granted India Company. It The Ceded Districts In 1799, after the a

part

division of of As he had to pay a subsidy native of India, state The of eleven miUions. the eighteenth to that century Delhi, and made to himself

part

the of latter British in his terri- The Telugu

THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE

The speak people that is an old race in India Dravidian race. This not been proved that any is older. Dravidian peoples is unknown. forward that they entered India from the north-west, from the north-east, and from the south. been satisfactorily established. they may be looked upon goes, Their languages form an isolated group, South India. and no connexion wth any But the Dravidians are an important people, proved. though overshadowed in popular esteem by the Aryans. The Indian branch of the contribution people to the early literature of our race was so great, and the Aryan languages made their way over so wide an area, that it is apt to be overlooked how small a part of India the Aryan race, in anything like purity, occupies. The ethnographical section of the Census Report of 1901 assigns the races broadly as India to the Ganges the south of nearly up to Agra, including much of Bengal Dravidian, the western side of India as far north as the Indus Mongolo-Dravidian, ; Burmah Aryo-Dravidian, the United Provinces up to ; Nepal for the Indo-Aryans only Rajputana, leaving ; the Punjab, and Kashmir. the Dravidian race, in either a pure or a mixed form, is predominant in India as a whole. The seen ways. other in is while Aryans, the agriculturists, military^and conquering race,

3 the are language this of The '^^'"p it has : people, The origin of the Theories have been put But none has As far as the evidence as the aborigines of been has family other of the Aryan Dravidian, from follows : Allahabad, and at Scytho- ; Bengal from Calcutta to It wiU thus be seen that And its predominance Dravidians were great entering a India as The were not. village

MISSIONS IN THE TELUGU COUNTRY

4 system, which has survived devastating war the of vicissitudes is, over a great area, purely Dravidian, and over India, most mainly Dravidian, of the rest, In other ways, too, the Dravidians invading Aryans. own. have held their and Presidency leads, and Travancore Cochin, is more literate than any other part it may be remarked that the purely Dravidian of South India have led all the rest in colonising foreign regions. The chief Dravidian languages are four in number, Tamil, Telugu, Canarese, is the most widely spoken. Telugu speak it, out of a total of fifty-six milUons that speak the Dravidian languages, should be noted here that in India language is only to an a degree limited majority of the mixed Dravidian races speak an Aryan curious language. It is these races have easily 3delded up their own language and adopted that of their conquerors. The Telugu language has been long famed The When melodiousness. hi euaee Visitors to the Telugu Mission are beautiful. generally disappointed at the harsh voices that they hear. This is, unfortunately, a characteristic of the race from most which our of training is bad no doubt better training ; But it this defect.

so remarkable a degree to in every

part

of modified by the Madras education the In a that

part

Presidencj', of which purely Dravidian, is Again, of India. peoples and Malayalam. Of these, The number that is, roughly, twenty millions. It The great indication of race. on being conquered, that, for its spoken singularly well is it perhaps Christians Their spring. early will remedy possible, by going to the Brah- is

THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE

to find people who speak mans, to the music of the language. Some other characteristics of the language may be Telugu, though notoriously hard for of interest here. Europeans to acquire, is very regular in its constructions. The difficulty of learning it is due to the fact that, given any complex idea express, to route entirely different The rule that would choose. must precede the principal one ' must be preceded by the whole of what ' to say The verb is said, however long the sentence may be. however, that a speech is coming is usually given by a roundabout phrase such as, The language, therefore, shows a perplexing tendency to defer the principal verb as long as possible. on a collect out of the English Prayer Book, for example, AU the attributes ascribed in the collect is very curious. to God must precede the Name, which, therefore, may appear for the first time quite a long way down. in a long compound sentence translated not unusual, into Telugu, find the order to so that the English reader, in order to retrans- reversed ; late the passage, learns by experience to go at once to the end and proceed, clause by clause, backwards. of the Telugu writers delight, by using participles instead mass to of verbs, finite Enghsh would be short long one. possible It is printed matter without a single full stop before the close. Other practices indicate,

'5 softly and do justice an speaker the takes that which an Englishman to all subordinate sentences is most kept. strictly A warning, 'if you ask what he said.' The effect It is clauses exactly of the Some which together in phrases, into one complete sentences, find two pages to of closely a speaking, especially in

MISSIONS IN THE TELUGU COUNTRY

6 to bring a sentence to a pause peculiar unwillingness give room for an which will ' ganuka,' in continual use, word, ' therefore,' word English But in Telugu sentences together. end of the first, and not at the beginning of the second. The person addressed knows, therefore, whenever that word is spoken, that he another sentence has been added. use among convention curious in praying extempore, they have a certain word which means Lord,' but which is not the one used at ' the beginning of a prayer. to make the very last word of his prayer. therefore, know that at that point, and not before, they ' Amen.' One fact which commonly strikes are to say visitors to our Telugu churches may be mentioned here is the great length of the service when translated that is probably half as long again as the into Telugu. It This is due mainly to the remarkable English service. length the individual of the same characteristic advantage, in Telugu an appearance of great eloquence. that, whUe he is rolling out these long words, he has plenty of time to think of what is coming next. is no need for him to halt in his speech. hand, idiomatic native speech short, expressing a great deal by means of a few words. Though the basis of the language is Dravidian, there mixture a large in is it other parts of India, so here, old-fashioned people make

A

certain interruption. is translated by the two and bind serves to is placed at the it is not to reply until at least There is a still more When Christians. ' Swami,' is used by the speaker It His hearers, : As compensating a words. gives the preacher The fact is There On the other is often quite pithy and As Sanskrit of words. in

THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE

a pedantic display of learning by packing their language as possible Sanskrit. as of full the crowd unintelligible to The writer once saw in an Indian paper an enthusiastic description of a Sanskrit lecture, in which the crowning praise was that the lecture was In Telugu there has come to be could understand it. a wide divergence between the language of speech, even speech, and the language polite practically two learn to dialects even add a poetry. third for modern assmiilate scholars to is certain differences and corruptions, Telugu not does in split off dialects. Telugu one few the of is before the advent possessed a literature As is weU known, many of the vernaculars civUisation. first introduced into the rank of literary of India were Bengali, now one of the fore- dialects by the missionaries. is an example most of them, it were brought out by the Baptist missionaries of in The alphabet used Serampore. peculiar to that language, though it closely resembles the Like aU the modern Indian scripts, such as Canarese. Devanagari, Tamil, and the rest, it is descended from the so-caUed Brahmi alphabet. alphabets employed in the inscriptions of King Asoka, It was written from left to right. about 270 B.C. whether, in spite of that fact, alphabet, introduced by a North Semitic

7 Too what often is high passes learning. for so hard that nobody There of books. are We may these. for tendency among The from Apart them. it may be said that provinces into different languages Indian that Telugu ''t^^a- of European the first serious writings ; Telugu writing in is of the two This was one But is to be derived from it Dravidian

MISSIONS IN THE TELUGU COUNTRY

8 merchants about the eighth century B.C., or whether it was invented in India, an inscription at least as early as A.D. ion. Telugu alphabet. character may Xelugu beautiful and the most It has a great fondness for rounded forms, characters. derived from the habit palm leaves, on which straight 5Cx>u,;$3 "^Sbo C^S0t)-(3 THE lord's prayer IN TELUGU. made without be hardly consonant has its vowel attached, so that each character a represents really syllable. clear, and capable, unlike those of Hindustani, of being Even when written rapidly by hand, printed. easily they are far more legible than is generally the case with the Indian languages. Telugu, the like all accurately expressed in the Roman character. great length of the words makes

Telugu appears in is uncertain. The modern most be claim the to fairly Indian convenient the of all writing with the stylus on of lines and angles could ^kj^ tX>0O&)0 igz-S-'oSbo, oS0i>rv$5^ Every the splitting leaf. The characters are very The system is perfectly phonetic. be Indian can languages, chief But the it spread out on the

Daybreak at Kurnool; Telegraph posts on the way to Kurnool

Telegraph posts on the way to Kurnool

THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE

printed page to such a length as soon to reconcile the European to the task of mastering the perfectly scientific native character. the matter In of religion from country, apart the Christians Indian), may be conveniently Mohammedans, and certain out-caste classes sometimes included among Hindus, the standing apart from them. From the missionary standpoint, the most important are two of these classes of out-castes, named Malas and Madigas, and, next to these, the farmer class among the As a Sudras. people called devoted to each of these, we shaU, pass them over. The Mohammedans are not numerous in this country. India they numbered in 1901 about In the whole of sixty-two millions, forming rather less than one-fifth of But most of these are to be found the total population. in Bengal and the north-west near Elsewhere they are generally only a small fraction of the Even Nizam's population. the in a Mohammedan nominally is ten per cent, the whole. of country they make up only a minute proportion of the One inhabitants. exception, Owing to the long rule of the is the town of Kurnool. Pathan Nawabs at that town, the Mohammedans form about one-half of the population. are generally poor and very ignorant, and their mosques are small and insignificant.

9 beautiful and inhabitants the this of Religions, and (European Hindus, divided into sometimes regarded as separate chapter be will for the time being, India. frontier of which Dominions, country, they are only Elsewhere in the Telugu our mission in districts, In the villages they They themselves, having

MISSIONS IN THE TELUGU COUNTRY

10 sprung originally for retained many have stock, altered to suit the new faith. It is singular that, in a village of which the idolatrous. farmers are Mohammedans, the Malas from whom most of our Christians are derived may be as much entangled in idolatrous rites through their dependence on them as, another in village, Sudras, and many find The Mohammedans from distinguished is due not only This to a difference in their type of mixture the result modification that has arisen naturally in the course of it would be hard to say. centuries, are some There The altogether outside the range of the Hindu caste system. chus'' One of these is an interesting tribe, living on the Nalla- and malla called hiUs, numerous—there are hardly over four thousand in the the two whole of districts in which our Mission works. They simple. are of which owns a portion each munities, Their granted lands are return for the guarding of the jungles, and their mode of life is very primitive. They are often hired to watch fields, and some of them are road watchmen. people flock from the plains to the

Hindu the most from a

part

old customs very slightly Some of these are distinctly their dependence on through the it as difficult to break them off. in outward appearance are easily Hindus a corresponding of class. differences in dress, but also to Whether this of face. is of blood from of a or outside, this country which are in tribes They Chenchus. not the are of Cuddapah and Kurnool Their organisation is very ' gudems com- divided into or ' of the hiHs. to them by Government in They have no taste for cultivation. During which the at festivals, hills on pilgrimages,

THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE

the Chenchus take fees from the pilgrims. only contact into slightly Telugu Church Conference has send preachers to them, but there work near at hand that no plan has yet been formed for their evangelisation. The natural features of the country occupied by the S.P.G. Mission differ somewhat from those of the parts of India most likely to be known to our readers. a hilly country and lies within the region of the Eastern Two ranges of mountains run across the dis- Moun- Ghauts. trict—the NallamaUas, or black hiUs, on the the Yerramallas, or red hiUs, on the west. are so called from the dark colour of the vegetation on ; the latter from the red colour of their bare their slopes The Yerramalla hills are generally flat- rocks and soU. topped, and run up to about 2000 peaks of the NallamaUas are only just short of 3000 feet, and one, Biranikonda, exceeds mission-stations, being near these hiUs, stand com- the The elevation of Giddalur is 1000 feet, paratively high. The of Kalasapad, 700. hills being sparsely inhabited, districts extend the mission in the consequence, S.P.G. Mission which are almost everywhere in sight, lend a variety to the view that is lacking in most of the mission stations of India. Some of the rivers that traverse the region are of The largest considerable size. Though the bed is the Pennar. district broad, the river itself in the hot weather is quite small.

ii They come The with work.

S.P.G.

a expressed desire to is so much pressing Natural ^^^^^g^ country, It is *^'"^' east, and The former But several feet. Some that height. of As a along the valleys. the district hills, Rivers, the Cuddapah river of is very of it

MISSIONS IN THE TELUGU COUNTRY

12 There is often nothing but a huge waste no water visible except in pools. be found by digging just below the surface of the sand. The great rivers of the Kurnool district are the Krishna, its tributary, the Tungabhadra. and in flood, is said to be more than half a mile broad and fifteen feet deep. The forests that cover the slopes of some of these hills Forests} magnificent, but not are The two kinds best splendid wood, able to defy the white ants, and another generally known (Shorea robusta), name of Sal. Other smaller products of the forests are honey, wax, tamarinds (a fruit), bamboos, stick-lac, and The forests are gall-nuts. people the of of life fodder for cattle, food for themselves, timber and grass for building and roofing houses. tection of the forests are one of the greatest grievances Until about the middle of the nineteenth of the people. century the forests of No doubt there was much reckless people themselves. Timber was cut improvidently waste. made for cultivation without regard to the future was much wasteful burning of wood to produce charcoal. By successive enactments the Government took charge The amount of the forests. siderably in different parts. of the total area of the country one-half falls as low as four per cent, of the whole. India it together more than one-fifth of

of sand, with Water, however, may The latter, when they produce some timber. teak a are (tectona grandis), by Hindustani its absolutely necessary to the They supply these parts. fuel, The laws for the pro- India were in the hands of the clearings were ; there ; of forest land varies con- In Burma it is rather over in parts of ; Al- all British India is now

THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE

The intention of the Government reserved for forest. was not to extract money from the people, but to pre- serve a due supply of timber and pasturage, and to avoid the disturbances of climate supposed to be caused by the clearing of forests. Nevertheless, the with great hardness on some of the poorest of the people. They have undoubtedly made it much more difficult for them to maintain their flocks and herds and to get the necessary materials for their houses. impossible to prevent the bribing of forest forest produce the of selling Consequently the officers. still goes on, notwithstanding the country occupied by the S.P.G. Mission difficult, and the specially service have a bad reputation. of destruction of forest produce—viz. destruction by fire —the Forest Department has been unable to suppress. When the grass in the forest that springs up is specially good. temptation to the people of the surrounding villages to burn off the grass, and, with it, seeds and seedUngs, and even mature trees. Forest in the early and dry part and quent, hUls are wreathed in flame night after night. The jungles thicker numerous wild the haunts of uncommon, but for the most keep Leopards, however, descend to the plains, and even visit the camp of the officer or missionary on tour. ally persons injured by these wild beasts are brought

13 forest laws press As a result, it is officials and by the lowest grades of cutting down of the trees In wild the laws. supervision is subordinates the of forest One very serious form is burned, the pasturage This affords a great are therefore very fre- fires of the year the Nallamalla on are the hills Tigers are not beasts. the

part

to hUls. Occasion-

MISSIONS IN THE TELUGU COUNTRY

14 for treatment to the mission dispensary. wUd animals are bears, wolves, pigs, hyaenas, deer, an( Bison and wild goats are also found. antelopes. Most available land of the The case is different in the hills cultivation. said to be much waste land in the Nallamallas which was formerly cultivated but is now under jungle. most important crops Crops. It is a common error to suppose that cotton, and indigo. rice is the main food of the people of India. is that it is grown in a very limited area, and to the vast majority a luxury, is Rice cannot be grown except The young plants, raised in nurseries, are trans- water. ferred to saturated mud, and grow up under constantly fields only be raised where dinarily abundant, as on immediate neighbourhood of the or canals, in Different varieties, which come to maturity at different grown can be seasons, Rice such land. is can be grown, no other Mission area, no large amount of rice is raised. The staple food of India as a whole is mUlet. Millet. mission districts this forms the greater part of the food is commonly made of the people. It pudding, and so eaten. can easUy take to. Herein it differs from the the common bread of North India, which, when made of wheat quite flour, is

Other common is under in the plains there is ; The of the are mUlet, district rice, The truth on obtainable only occasions. in ground soaked with to maturity in can water. Rice, therefore, the supply of water is extraor- lands watered by rivers or tanks. on same succession the in a where profitable crop, that, it is grown. Within the

S.P.G.

In our into a kind of It is not a food that a European ' chapati,' palatable Europeans. to Social

A CORNFIELD THE TELUGU COUNTRY.

SHAVING THE HEAD SCHOOLBOY.

A Cornfield in the Telugu Country

THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE

intercourse between Europeans and Indians little more difficult in these districts by the use of There are various kinds of millet, mostly grown food. The most important of them is the on unirrigated land. great millet (sorghum vulgare) , commonly called ' jowar in South India, and ' in the north. looking plant, generally standing about twelve feet high. In favourable circumstances it is said to reach the height of eighteen feet, and it is recorded that 2200 seeds have been counted on one plant. yielded by the spiked mUlet, called ' bajra ' in the north, which is grown on very dry soU. and A third variety, called ' ragi ' (eleusine coracana) is grown or second as a winter crop. It is not eaten alone, but mixed price than the above. with one of the other two varieties. The is measured of living difficulty mainly by the price of these grains. illustrate the effects of recent hard years. ^ grain is always quoted at so many measures of price of grain to the rupee, not at such and such a price for the In 1904 cholam and ragi were sold at twenty- measure. fom: and twenty-two measures respectively to the rupee. In more years the price recent almost steady at ten and eight measures. pay nothing for rent and very little for clothing fore the expenditure on these grains makes up nearly the whole total expenditure. of their have risen only very slightly. varies from threepence to fourpence a day. now usual fourpence will purchase about 7^ lbs. of grain.

15 is made a this ' cholam It is a coarse- A coarser kind of food is ' cumbu ' in the south This commands a better in hard times Increase A word or two will

JJJ ^J^"

In India the has come to remain Our people there- ; Wages, meanwhile, The labourer's wages still At the price

MISSIONS IN THE TELUGU COUNTRY

i6 It will easily be seen, when the margin of income is so is now, what sharp minute as it of price may cause. The peculiar black soil desired for cotton is only found Cotton. ; there it is sometimes in certain parts Where fertility. it difficulty of the missionary on his tours, as, when soaked is so sticky that his wagons cannot make with rain, it their way through it, and he has perforce to wait Then it often cracks and dries. that add a new difficulty to his pony's progress. Indigo was formerly grown on a large scale. Indigo. manufacture the indeed, in India in which any considerable amount of industry European capital was invested. the German by ruined nearly superior qualities of the natural indigo cannot secure it against the cheapness of its rival. still dotted with indigo is private property, but used in common by makers of a village. supply water. natural of is soaked in the first vat tiH the water before it flowers, thoroughly coloured is then drawn into the second vat to settle to the bottom, and is then collected, dried, and made into cakes for export. it once formed a valuable addition to the industries but Few of the vats are now in use, and of the country. most are being allowed to fall into ruins. Among other the

distress a fluctuation of extraordinary found adds the greatly to is it it till falls away into holes Once, was the indigo largest of Now the trade has been The synthetic dyes. The mission district These are often not vats. all the dye They are always built near a good The cut indigo plant, just The by water the dye. is the sediment is allowed ; The work looks uncleanly, district may be the crops of

THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE

mentioned sugar cane, tobacco, spices—especially chillies or red pepper—turmeric, and manufactured from the sap of date palms. when manufactured, are used both lighting. The manufactures of the region are miportant being those connected with cloth. a few cotton factories, but nearly aU the cloth made is hand-woven, and as a considerable amount of European imported, the produce of cloth is for the most part, of the coarsest kind only. a places special of articles neighbourhood of Cuddapah, old kinds of muslin are both woven and stamped. besides the manufacture of cloth, and that of sugar and indigo as mentioned above, there is nothing of importance. Some districts yield a very quarried and exported, and in some parts salt is manu- out the factured of earth. salt procured at of the Nallamalla the foot cheap iron from abroad the introduction of become a decaying industry. from one the time obtained lacquer work beautiful kind of But Nandyal and Kurnool. of support, this art also wiU die out. The India depend crops in a few words on the that irrigation Mission area wUl be practised in the S.P.G. methods There are three of tanks, and by canals.

17 Sugar is also seeds. oil The oUs, food and for for Manu- few, the most There are the hand-looms is, In a few made. In the are sort for instance, some of the But stone which fine, hard is was Formerly iron hills, but with this has Diamonds, too, were at

A

Yerramalla hUls. carried on in is still it is feared that, for want so much on artificial Irri- ^* '°"' different systems in place. irrigation—by wells, by

MISSIONS IN THE TELUGU COUNTRY

i8 Irrigation by wells is widespread. Wells. paratively little value unless they have access to a well. During the time that a crop depends on rain falling not only in but at proper intervals. much may be wanted, At least the crops, which would otherwise artificially. die, may be kept alive untU the belated rain falls. In order to be irrigated at size, must be absolutely taken into cultivation, The Indian farmer level. it by running narrow channels accomplishes When over the surface. it continues so with little trouble, so long as it levelled remains under cultivation. is then divided into small plots field a few yards broad, and surrounded by a tiny ridge of earth sufficient to hold water long enough for it to soak into the ground. Watercourses, with banks of earth, are then made along the edge of and across the slightly elevated above the level of the field, so that when water is running in them, by opening the earthen banks, it may be directed into every one of the small plots turn. If the water is obtained from a procure a good stream of water to flow along the water- is necessary courses it considerable quantities at a time. very large bag of leather this is let down into the well

Fields are of com- growing progress its is sufiicient quantity, fail to come when Should it done by watering the fields all, the fields, of whatever Lands, therefore, when level. first reduced a to are perfect He this work. is clever at of water ground been has once the The whole surface of the of ground, each field, in order in well, to of the weU take it out to in For this purpose a The rope by which is used. passes over a wheel, and

THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE

its other end to a yoke of oxen. is attached at oxen do not walk along level ground in order to pull the bucket, which would be severe work for them. up

A

fairly steep road has been cut right down into the earth, with room to turn at the bottom, and an ascent, first road, by which to return. parallel to the oxen go down, their weight to pull up the bucket of water, and the driver, by sitting on the rope as they go down, adds his own weight to When the bucket, full of water, reaches the top, theirs. into a receptacle which communicates it is tipped over with aU the watercourses, and the water is directed into The oxen then turn, and on the ascent the one desired. have no more than their own weight to bring up, the bucket meanwhile going down into the well. a second man is required to stand by the well's mouth and tip the bucket over the receptacle. an ingenious contrivance is used. like a funnel, and the smaller end, as well as the bigger, The smaller end is drawn up by a separate is left open. rope and, during the ascent But when the bucket reaches a level with the bigger. the top, the small open end the receptacle, while the bigger end continues to ascend. Consequently the whole of the water reservoir, and the matically into the man only, to drive the oxen, are required the common mode This is effective mode more is by means readers must get out of their minds, when Indian tanks of an are in question, the idea

19 These As the is almost alone sufficient Generally But sometimes The bucket is shaped of the bucket, remains on is drawn by its rope into is poured auto- one services of but the of irrigation, Tanks, English tanks. of iron box for holding

MISSIONS IN THE TELUGU COUNTRY

20 In India a tank liquids. considerable possibly size, is uncertain whether the word It of the Indian vernaculars, as for instance the ' tankh ' or a similar Marathi word, and introduced into English by Anglo-Indian usage; ' tanque,' or pond, connected with from the Portuguese ' and English ' stagnum the Latin made store up are to rainfall falls on the higher parts water which and which cannot soak flows down to the lower ground. the ground permits, a dam is erected to check its course and turn it into an artificial pond. The dam is commonly made of mud strengthened a tank. Strong sluices are made in it by which the with stone. water can be let out at pleasure. tank can then be irrigated as required so long as there water the tank. in is the bed of the tank is hollowed artificial^. the dam occupies only a portion tank the the of rest ; But almost always the top of the dam ground. public path or road, which is most necessary, especially for crossing the wet country. in the rainy season, the rain falls sufficiently in the rainy season, the tank full of water, and the supply lasts for several becomes months, and insures at least one harvest. Tanks are most easily Where there are ridges running parallel and near to each other, the conditions are ideal for their construction.

is an artificial lake, often of miles length. several in is derived from one Gujerati it comes or whether ' stagnant.' Tanks The future for use. of the country ground, the into necessarily Where the nature of This is what is called The ground below the Sometimes, but not alwaj-s, As a rule of the of the circuit circumference the natural is is the If constructed near the hills. In

THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE

the region of the Eastern Ghauts and the Nallanialla tanks were made under hills some great before British government began. the Gundlakamma in the Kurnool district, dammed, and a tank constructed covering an area and square miles irrigating fifteen The Badvel which taluq, in Kalasapad lies, having the Eastern Ghauts on the and the NaUamalla hUls on the west, is a district particu- This taluq is similar in shape to a larly rich in tanks. parallelogram forty miles long and twenty broad. it has one tank miles four another two miles long, and above forty long, ordinary size—that is, from about half a mile to one mUe From these facts may be judged the importance long. of this simple method of irrigation in a country specially suitable to it. The third method of irrigation, that by canals, is not much these practised in districts. service, need a fairly abundant supply of water in the The rivers of the Madras Presidency are drier months. not like the great rivers fed, summer months by snows therefore, only the largest rivers have sufficient water to There is one such work in these districts feed a canal. the canal from Kurnool to Cuddapah. was made across the Tungabhadra, eighteen miles above Kurnool, and a canal, fed from the waters so stored up, This has since b^en bought by the was constructed. now Goverimient. irrigates It expected is not Nevertheless, it

; 21 native rule at Cumbum Thus, river was of 8000 over acres. mission the of district east Yet another three miles long, of the Canals, be Canals, to of of North in the India, on mountains the lying In i860 a weir over 47,000 acres. ever be that will it

MISSIONS IN THE TELUGU COUNTRY

22 financially productive, and herein it differs from the great tanks which easily yield a profit. like some others in India, insurance against famine. famine the canals 1896-7, of cultivation of over 27,000 square miles in India, and that this particular one irrigated 87,000 acres, that canals may justify their existence, even not commercially profitable.

The canal, in fact, is rather to be regarded as an When it is added that, in the secured the general in it will be seen if they are