Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 2.djvu/18

CHAKKIYAR for the scene under depictment. But he does it in such a genteel way that rarely is offence taken. It is an unwritten canon of Chākkiyarkūttu that the performance should stop at once if any of the audience so treated should speak out in answer to the Chākkiyar, who, it may be added, would stare at an admiring listener, and thrust questions on him with such directness and force as to need an extraordinary effort to resist a reply. And so realistic is his performance that a tragic instance is said to have occurred when, by a cruel irony of fate, his superb skill cost a Chākkiyar his life. While he was explaining a portion of the Mahābhārata with inimitable theatrical effect, a desperate friend of the Pāndavas rose from his seat in a fit of uncontrollable passion, and actually knocked the Chākkiyar dead when, in an attitude of unmistakable though assumed heartlessness, he, as personating Duryōdhana, inhumanely refused to allow even a pin-point of ground to his exiled cousins. This, it is believed, occurred in a private house, and thereafter kūttu was prohibited except at temples.

It is noted, in the Gazetteer of Malabar, that "Chākkiyars or Slāghyar-vakukar are a caste following makkattāyam (inheritance from father to son), and wear the pūnūl (thread). They are recruited from girls born to a Nambūdiri woman found guilty of adultery, after the date at which such adultery is found to have commenced, and boys of similar origin, who have been already invested with the sacred thread. Boys who have not been invested with the pūnūl when their mother is declared an adulteress, join the class known as Chākkiyar Nambiyars, who follow marumakkattāyam (inheritance in the female line), and do not wear the thread. The girls join either caste indifferently. Chākkiyars may