    19

    The Kota craftsmen not only made household goods, they were

    accomplished musicians.  To obtain their meat, they played their tunes

    at the rituals of their herdsmen neighbors--the Toda.  In exchange for

    music that soothed the gods, the Toda cattle-raisers gave the Kota

    artisan/musicians meat from the sacrifice of a buffalo.  So the Kota

    lived in cozy economic interdependence with the Toda

    livestock-breeders and Badaga farmers, swapping handicrafts and

    music for steaks and bread.

    But of all four tribes, the one with the greatest economic power

    was the Kurumba.  Living in the jungle, the Kurumba did not raise

    wheat, did not make household utensils, and did not provide meat.

    They never even set forth to sell their wares.  Yet the work they offered

    brought the Kota craft-folk trekking through the dense foliage to the

    Kurumba village, begging for a service that was totally intangible, one

    whose value cannot even be proven to exist.  The Kurumba were

    sorcerers.

    The Kota utensil makers paid regular insurance to these forest

    magicians.  After all, the Kurumba spell-weavers controlled the dark

    forces that could snatch you in the middle of the night and bring you

    down with dropsy, epilepsy, or sleeping sickness.  Says Melville J.

    Herskovits, in his classic book Economic Anthropology:

     The Kurumba exacted all the market would bear, and on

    occasion their demands were anything but modest.  When a Kota fell

    ill, for example, his relatives, indicating how they had been regular and

    generous in sending gifts to their Kurumba worker of magic, would

    complain that he had not fulfilled his part of the agreement to keep

    them from harm.  The customary reply would be that some especially

    powerful Kurumba sorcerer had been insulted by a Kota, or had

    become envious of their good fortune, and was therefore sending

    unusually strong magic against his victim.  Only sustained effort, to be

    called forth by the giving of extra gifts, might counteract this influence;

    and since there was no other recourse, the Kota would have to give

    more and more lavishly.25

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