European missionaries resided regularly at Dummagúdem till 1874, but since then, with an interval from 1879 to 1882, the Rev. J. Cain has been stationed there. The field of the mission is practically confined to the Bhadráchalam taluk, and the work lies mainly among the Kóyas and Málas. The converts number 900, and the mission maintains at Dummagúdem a dispensary, a lower secondary boys' school, a girls' day school and boys' and girls' boarding schools, besides seventeen day schools in other parts of the district. The lacework done by the converts at Dummagúdem is referred to in Chapter VI.
The Roman Catholic Mission was started about 50 years ago by French priests of Savoy belonging to the mission of St. Francis of Sales. It is included in the Diocese of Vizagapatam. The convent in Yanam was built by Bishop Neyret in 1850, the church at Cocanada in 1854 by Bishop Tissot, and the church at Yanam in 1859. Chapels have been erected at Samalkot, Dowlaishweram and Rajahmundry. Two European priests are working in the district at Cocanada and Rajahmundry. The Roman Catholic congregation numbers some 900, of whom about one-third are Europeans and Eurasians and most of the others Tamils. Want of funds has hampered attempts to convert the Telugus.
The mission owns a handsome convent at Cocanada which is in charge of seven European Sisters, is used as a lower secondary school, and gives instruction to some eighty or ninety European and Eurasian girls, about half of whom are boarders. The convent at Yanam is used as a Hindu girls' school and teaches some 150 pupils; and the mission manages a boys' lower primary school at Cocanada and a small dispensary at the same town.
The very large majority of the population of the district are Hindus or Animists, and these require more lengthy treatment. The Animists, those who reverence animistic deities, and not the gods of the Hindu pantheon, are almost all found in the Agency. An attempt will first be made to describe the salient features of the religious and social life of the Hindus of the low country (customs in the Agency are referred to in the accounts below of the Kóyas and hill Reddis) and then to give some description of the castes which are charac- teristic of the district or occur in it in unusual numbers.
The villages of the district, unlike those in the Deccan, were seldom fortified, and consequently (except in the delta) the houses are not closely crowded together, but are built with plenty of room between them, like those in southern villages.
