Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/215

Rh resemble those of the Izhuvans. Fish and flesh are not forbidden as food, but there are many families, as those of Pazhūr and Onakkūru, which strictly abstain from meat. Marriage between families which eat and abstain from flesh is not absolutely forbidden. But a wife must give up eating flesh immediately on entering the house of her vegetarian husband. The profession of the Kaniyans is astrology. Marco Polo, writing as early as the thirteenth century about Travancore, says that it was even then pre-eminently the land of astrologers. Barbosa, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, has a detailed reference to the Kaniyans, of whom he writes that "they learn letters and astronomy, and some of them are great astrologers, and foretell many future things, and form judgments upon the births of men. Kings and great persons send to call them, and come out of their palaces to gardens and pleasure-grounds to see them, and ask them what they desire to know; and these people form judgment upon these things in a few days, and return to those that asked of them, but they may not enter the palaces; nor may they approach the king's person on account of being low people. And the king is then alone with him. They are great diviners, and pay great attention to times and places of good and bad luck, which they cause to be observed by those kings and great men, and by the merchants also; and they take care to do their business at the time which these astrologers advise them, and they do the same in their voyages and marriages. And by these means these men gain a great deal." Buchanan, three centuries later, alludes in the same glowing terms to the prosperity of the Kaniyans. He notes that they are of very low caste,a Nambūtiri coming within twenty-four feet of one being obliged to purify himself by prayer and ablution. " The