the Mūppans of Kapistalam in Tanjore, have a bad reputation for criminality. A curious practice is that, before arranging a marriage, it is customary for the bride's party to go to the bridegroom's house, to dine with him, and test his health by seeing how much he can eat. They allow a boy, whose suit for the hand of a girl within certain degrees of relationship is refused by her parents, to marry the girl, notwithstanding, by tying a tāli (marriage emblem) round her neck. They also permit the betrothal of infants, the form observed being to present the child with a new cloth and a mat, and to apply sacred ashes to its forehead. At their funerals, the mourning party has to chew some rice and spit it out on the return from the burning-ground, and, on the sixteenth day, the widow is made to worship a light, and to touch a salt pot. The Nattamān women do not, as a rule, cover their breasts. The lobes of their ears are very distended, and they tattoo their chins and cheeks in the Paraiyan fashion. This is supposed to be in recollection of their origin. The Malaiyamān women wear their tāli on a golden wire instead of on a thread."
"The Udaiyāns," Mr. Francis writes,*[1] are a caste, which is specially numerous in South Arcot. Most of them are cultivators, and in Kallakurchi many are also money-lenders on a large scale. They adopt numerous different titles in an indiscriminate way, and four brothers have been known to call themselves respectively Nāyak, Pillai, Mudali, and Udaiyān. They have three sub-divisions — Malaiyamān, Nattamān, and Sudarmān — which all admit that they are descended from one common stock, will usually dine together, but do not intermarry. Some of the caste, however, are now turning
- ↑ * Gazetteer of the South Arcot district.
