Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/472

MALAYALI the headman, and receives annually from every hut two ballams of grain. When disputes occur, e.g, between two brothers regarding a woman or partition of property, the headman summons a panchāyat (village council), which has the power to inflict fines in money, sheep, etc., according to the gravity of the offence. For every group often villages there is a Pattakāran (head of a division), who is expected to attend on the occasion of marriages and car festivals. A bridegroom has to give him eight days before his marriage a rupee, a packet of betel leaves, and half a measure of nuts. Serving under the Pattakāran is the Maniakāran, whose duty it is to give notice of a marriage to the ten villages, and to summon the villagers thereto. In April 1898, on receipt of news of a wedding at a distant village, I proceeded thither through coffee estates rich with white flowers bursting into flower under the grateful influence of a thunderstorm. En route, a view was obtained of the Golden Horn, an overhanging rock with a drop of a thousand feet, down which the Malaiālis swing themselves in search for honey. On the track through the jungle a rock, known from the fancied resemblance of the holes produced by weathering to hoof-marks as the kudre panji (horse's footprints), was passed. Concerning this rock, the legend runs that a horse jumped on to it at one leap from the top of the Shēvarāyan hill, and at the next leap reached the plains at the foot of the hills. The village, which was the scene of the festivities, was, like other Malaiāli villages, made up of detached bee-hive huts of bamboo, thatched with palm-leaves and grass, and containing a central room surrounded by a verandah — the home of pigs, goats, and fowls. Other huts, of similar bee-hive shape, but smaller, were used as storehouses for the grain