en
vessel for some days; warm water may at any time be mixed with it,
and in a few hours it ferments and is ready for use."

When the attention of English officers was first drawn to them in 1770
the Males of the Rajmahal hills were a tribe of predatory freebooters,
raiding and terrorising the plain country from the foot of the hills to
the Ganges. It was Mr. Augustus Cleveland, Collector of Bhagalpur, who
reduced them to order by entering into engagements with the chiefs for
the prevention and punishment of offences among their own tribesmen,
confirming them in their estates and jurisdiction, and enrolling a
corps of Males, which became the Bhagalpur Hill Rangers, and was not
disbanded till the Mutiny. Mr. Cleveland died at the age of 29, having
successfully demonstrated the correct method of dealing with the wild
forest tribes, and the Governor-General in Council erected a tomb and
inscription to his memory, which was the original of that described
by Mr. Kipling in _The Tomb of his Ancestors_, though the character
of the first John Chinn in the story was copied from Outram. [151]

Mala

_Mala._--A low Telugu caste of labourers and cotton-weavers. They
numbered nearly 14,000 persons in the Central Provinces in 1911,
belonging mainly to the Chanda, Nagpur, Jubbulpore, and Yeotmal
Districts, and the Bastar State. The Marathas commonly call them Telugu
Dhers, but they themselves prefer to be known as 'Telangi Sadar Bhoi,'
which sounds a more respectable designation. They are also known as
Mannepuwar and Netkani. They are the Pariahs of the Telugu country,
and are regarded as impure and degraded. They may be distinguished
by their manner of tying the head-cloth more or less in a square
shape, and by their loin-cloths, which are worn very loose and not
knotted. Those who worship Narsinghswami, the man-lion incarnation
of Vishnu, are called Namaddar, while the followers of Mahadeo are
known as Lingadars. The former paint their foreheads with vertical
lines of sandal-paste, and the latter with horizontal ones. The Malas
were formerly zealous partisans of the right-handed sect in Madras,
and the description of this curious system of faction given by the
Abbe Dubois more than a century ago may be reproduced: [152]

"Most castes belong either to the left-hand or right-hand faction. The
former comprises the Vaishyas or trading classes, the Panchalas or
artisan classes and some of the low Sudra castes. It also contains
the