Castes and Tribes of Southern India/Kadaiyan

by Edgar Thurston

Kadaiyan.—The name, Kadaiyan, meaning last or lowest, occurs as a sub-division of the Pallans. The Kadaiyans are described †^[1] as being lime (shell) gatherers and burners of Rāmēsvaram and the neighbourhood, from whose ranks the pearl-divers are in part recruited at the present day. On the coasts of Madura and Tinnevelly they are mainly Christians, and are said, like the Paravas, to have been converted through the work of St. Francis Xavier.‡^[2]

1. † J. Hornell. Report on the Indian Pearl Fisheries of the Gulf of Manaar, 1905.
2. ‡ Madras Diocesan Mag., 1906.