Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 2.djvu/19

Rh marry Nangiyars, but Chākkiyar Nambiyars may not marry Illōtammamar."  Chāliyan. — The Chāliyans are a caste of Malayālam cotton weavers, concerning whom Mr. Francis writes as follows* : — " In dress and manners they resemble the artisan castes of Malabar, but, like the Pattar Brāhmans, they live in streets, which fact probably points to their being comparatively recent settlers from the east coast. They have their own barbers called Potuvāns, who are also their purōhits. They do not wear the sacred thread, as the Sālē weavers of the east coast do. They practise ancestor worship, but without the assistance of Brāhman priests. This is the only Malabar caste which has anything to do with the right and left-hand faction disputes, and both divisions are represented in it, the left hand being considered the superior. Apparently, therefore, it settled in Malabar some time after the beginnings of this dispute on the east coast, that is, after the eleventh century A.D. Some of them follow the marumakkatāyam and others the makkatāyam law of inheritance, which looks as if the former were earlier settlers than the latter."

The Chāliyans are so called because, unlike most of the west coast classes, they live in streets, and Teruvan (teru, a street) occurs as a synonym for the caste name. The right-hand section are said to worship the elephant god Ganēsa, and the left Bhagavāti. The following account of the Chāliyans is given in the Gazetteer of the Malabar district: " Chāliyans are almost certainly a class of immigrants from the east coast. They live in regular streets, a circumstance strongly supporting this view. The traditional account 