Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/131

Rh putative father of a child of two or three. [In this connection, Mr. J. H. Nelson writes* that Madura Collectors have sometimes been puzzled not a little by evidence adduced to show that a child of three or four years was the son or daughter of a child of ten or twelve.] When a man has no children except a girl, and his family is in danger of coming to an end, a curious practice, called keeping up the house, is followed. The girl cannot be claimed by her maternal uncle's son as usual, but may be married to one of the door-posts of the house. A silver bangle is put on her right wrist instead of a tāli (marriage badge) round her neck; she is allowed to consort with any man of her caste; her earnings go to her parents; she becomes their heir, and, if she has a son, the boy inherits their property through her. The custom is a close parallel to the system of making girls Basavis, which is so common in the western part of Bellary and the neighbouring parts of Dharwar and Mysore. Divorce is readily obtained, on the petitioner paying the amount of the bride-price, but the children all go to the father. Divorcées and widows may remarry, and they do so with a frequency which has made the caste a byword among its neighbours. The Kunnuvans worship the usual deities of the plains. They generally burn their dead."

It is recorded, in the Manual of the Madura district, that the Kunnuvans of the western parts of the Palni hills differ in many of their customs from those of the eastern. With both divisions, incompatibility of temper is a sufficient ground for divorce, and a husband can at any time get rid of his wife by taking her to her parents together with a pair of oxen if he be an eastern Kunnuvan, and a vatti or round metal dish if he be a western.