Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/276

KAPU the Reddis of Tinnevelly," Dr. J. Shortt writes, " a young woman of sixteen or twenty years of age is frequently married to a boy of five or six years, or even of a more tender age. After marriage she, the wife, lives with some other man, a near relative on the maternal side, frequently an uncle, and sometimes with the boy -husband's own father. The progeny so begotten are affiliated on the boy-husband. When he comes of age, he finds his wife an old woman, and perhaps past child-bearing. So he, in his turn, contracts a liaison with some other boy's wife, and procreates children." The custom has doubtless been adopted in imitation of the Maravans, Kallans, Agamudaiyans, and other castes, among whom the Reddis have settled. In an account of the Ayōdhya Reddis of Tinnevelly, Mr. Stuart writes that it is stated that "the tāli is peculiar, consisting of a number of cotton threads besmeared with turmeric, without any gold ornament. They have a proverb that he who went forth to procure a tāli and a cloth never returned." This proverb is based on the following legend. In days of yore a Reddi chief was about to be married, and he accordingly sent for a goldsmith, and, desiring him to make a splendid tāli, gave him the price of it in advance. The smith was a drunkard, and neglected his work. The day for the celebration of the marriage arrived, but there was no tāli. Whereupon the old chief, plucking a few threads from his garment, twisted them into a cord, and tied it round the neck of the bride, and this became a custom.* In the Census Report, 1891, Mr. Stuart states that he was informed that polyandry of the fraternal type exists among the Panta Kāpus, but the statement