Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/440

MALA ARAYAN hill tribes, who are a little more civilized than the Mannāns, and have fixed abodes on the slopes of high mountain ranges. Their villages are fine-looking, with trees and palms all round. They are superior in appearance to most other hill tribes, but are generally short in stature. Some of the Arayans are rich, and own large plots of cultivated grounds. They seldom work for hire, or carry loads. A curious custom with them is that every man in the family has his own room separate from the rest, which only he and his wife are permitted to enter. They are very good hunters and have a partiality for monkey flesh. As wizards they stand very high,and all the low-country people cherish a peculiar dread for them. Makkathāyam is the prevailing form of inheritance (from father to son),but among a few families narumakkathāyam (inheritance through the female line)obtains as an exception. Their language is a corrupt form of Malayalam. Their marriage ceremony is simple. The bridegroom and bride sit and eat on the same plantain leaf, after which the tāli (marriage badge) is tied. The bride then seizes any ornament or cooking vessel in the house, saying that it is her father's. The bridegroom snatches it from her, and the marriage rite is concluded. Birth pollution is of considerable importance. It lasts for a whole month for the father, and for seven days for the mother. The Arayans bury their dead. Drinking is a very common failing." It is recorded by Mr. M. J. Walhouse * that " on the higher ranges in Travancore there are three of Parasurāma's cairns, where the Mala Arraiyans still keep lamps burning. They make miniature cromlechs of small slabs of stone, and place within them a long pebble to represent