endogamous sections. Four of them are said to be Muttiriyan or Mutracha, Kavalgar, Vanniyan, and Valaiyan. A member of any one of these is usually prohibited by the panchayats from marrying outside it on pain of excommunication. Their customs are a mixture of those peculiar to the higher castes and those followed by the lower ones. Some of them employ Brahmans as purohits (priests), and wear the sacred thread at funerals and sraddhas (memorial services for the dead). Yet they eat mutton, pork, and fowls, drink alcohol, and allow the marriage of widows and divorced women." Muttiriyan and Kavalgar both mean watchman. Vanniyan is certainly a separate caste, some members of which take Ambalakkaran as a title. The mbalakkarans are apparently Valaiyans, who have separated themselves from the main stock on account of their prosperity.
For the following note, I am indebted to Mr. F. R. Hemingway. The Ambalakkarans or Muttiriyans are more numerous in the Trichinopoly district and Pudukkottai than in any other part of the Presidency. Though they have been treated as separate castes, they appear to be one and the same in this district, generally calling themselves Muttiriyan in the Trichinopoly taluk, and Ambalakkaran elsewhere, and having no objection to either name. They admit they are called Valaiyans, but repudiate any connection with the caste of that name, and explain the appellation by a story that, when Siva's ring was swallowed by a fish in the Ganges, one of their ancestors invented the first net (valai) made in the world. As relics of their former greatness they point to the thousand-pillared mantapam at Srirangam, which is called muttarasan koradu, and a big matam at Palni, both of which, they say, were built by their kings. To the latter every household of the caste subscribes four annas
