The Kuruma community having indigenous knowledge of shepherding, blanket weaving and narrating Oggu Kathalu (traditional stories).
Paper long abstract
Kuruma community is a pastoral nomad community in India whose traditional caste occupation is sheep rearing and blanket weaving with sheep wool. Shepherd communities in India hails from different tribal communities and castes. For example, Gaddi tribe from Himachal Pradesh, Bharwad from Gujarat, Kuruba from Karnataka, Kurumbar from Tamil Nadu etc., are shepherd communities in India. Kuruma is a shepherd community in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. They have their own indigenous knowledge in sheep rearing, blanket weaving and telling Oggu (traditional) stories. Kuruma community livelihood depends on forest and natural resources as they are rearing sheep. Sheep rearing activity is semi-nomadic in nature. This paper describes the indigenous knowledge of shepherding, blanket weaving with sheep wool and Oggu Kathalu (traditional stories) ethnographically.