Tradition says that one of the rooms in Tirumala Nāyakkan's palace at Madura "was Tirumala's sleeping apartment, and that his cot hung by long chains from hooks in the roof One night, says a favourite story, a Kallan made a hole in the roof, swarmed down the chains, and stole the royal jewels. The king promised a jaghir (grant of land) to anyone who would bring him the thief, and the Kallan then gave himself up and claimed the reward. The king gave him the jaghir, and then promptly had him beheaded."*[1]
By Mr. H. A. Stuart †[2] the Kallans are said to be"a middle-sized dark-skinned tribe found chiefly in the districts of Tanjore, Trichinopoly and Madura, and in the Pudukōta territory. The name Kallan is commonly derived from Tamil kallam, which means theft. Mr.Nelson ‡[3] expresses some doubts as to the correctness of this derivation, but Dr. Oppert accepts it, and no other has been suggested. The original home of the Kallans appears to have been Tondamandalam or the Pallava country, and the head of the class, the Rāja of Pudukōta, is to this day called the Tondaman. There are good grounds for believing that the Kallans are a branch of the Kurumbas, who, when they found their regular occupation as soldiers gone, 'took to maraudering, and made themselves so obnoxious by their thefts and robberies, that the term kallan, thief, was applied, and stuck to them as a tribal appellation.' § [4]The Rev. W. Taylor, the compiler of the Catalogue Raisonné of Oriental Manuscripts, also identifies the Kallans with the Kurumbas, and Mr. Nelson accepts this conclusion. In the census returns, Kurumban is returned as one of the sub-divisions of the Kallan caste.'
