Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/458

MALAYALI '''Malayāli. —''' The Malayālis or Malaiālis, whom I examined in the Salem district, dwell on the summits and slopes of the Shevaroy hills, and earn their living by cultivating grain, and working on coffee estates. Suspicious and superstitious to a degree, they openly expressed their fear that I was the dreaded settlement officer, and had come to take possession of their lands in the name of the Government, and transport them to the Andaman islands (the Indian penal settlement). When I was engaged in the innocent occupation of photographing a village, the camera was mistaken for a surveying instrument, and a protest raised. Many of them, while willing to part with their ornaments of the baser metals, were loth to sell or let me see their gold and silver jewelry, from fear lest I should use it officially as evidence of their too prosperous condition. One man told me to my face that he would rather have his throat cut than submit to my measuring operations, and fled precipitately. The women stolidly refused to entrust themselves in my hands. Nor would they bring their children (unwashed specimens of brown humanity) to me, lest they should fall sick under the influence of my evil eye. In the account which follows I am largely indebted to Mr. H. LeFanu's admirable, and at times amusing, Manual of the Salem district.

The word Malaiāli denotes inhabitant of the hills (malai = hill or mountain). The Malaiālis have not, however, like the Todas of the Nilgiris, any claim to be considered as an ancient hill tribe, but are a Tamil-speaking people, who migrated from the plains to the hills in comparatively recent times. As a shrewd, but unscientific observer put it concisely to me, they are Tamils of the plains with the addition of a kambli or blanket; which kambli is a luxury denied to the females,