Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/478

MALAYALI remarriages. Where there may be no relatives of the deceased husband forthcoming to take charge of the children, the duty of caring for them devolves on the Ūrgoundan, who is bound to receive and protect them. The Vellalars generally bury their dead, except in cases where a woman quick with child, or a man afflicted with leprosy has died, the bodies in these cases being burnt. No ceremony is performed at child-birth; but the little stranger receives a name on the fifteenth day. When a girl attains puberty, she is relegated to a hut outside the village, where her food is brought to her, and she is forbidden to leave the hut either day or night. The same menstrual and death customs are observed by the Peria Malaiālis, who bury their dead in the equivalent of a cemetery, and mark the site by a mound of earth and stones. At the time of the funeral, guns are discharged by a firing party, and, at the grave, handfuls of earth are, as at a Christian burial service, thrown over the corpse." If a woman among the Malaiālis of the Javādi hills commits adultery, the young men of the tribe are said to be let loose on her, to work their wicked way, after which she is put in a pit filled with cow-dung and other filth. An old man naively remarked that adultery was very rare. At a wedding among the Malaiālis of the South Arcot district, "after the tāli is tied, the happy couple crook their little fingers together, and a two-anna bit is placed between the fingers, and water is poured over their hands. The priest offers betel and nut to Kari Rāman, and then a gun is fired into the air." *

The father of a would-be bridegroom among the Malaiālis of the Yēlagiris, when he hears of the existence