Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/482

MALAYALI wide open and tail erect, round Yercaud, preceded by tom-toms, and with men dancing around. The Malaiāli men on the Shevaroys wear a turban and brown kumbli (blanket), which does duty as great coat, mackintosh, and umbrella. A bag contains their supply of betel and tobacco, and they carry a bill-hook and gourd water-vessel, and a coffee walking-stick. As ornaments they wear bangles, rings on the fingers and toes, and in the nose and ears. The women are tattooed by Korava women who come round on circuit, on the forehead, outside the orbits, cheeks, arms, and hands. Golden ornaments adorn their ears and nose, and they also wear armlets, toe-rings, and bangles, which are sometimes supplemented by a tooth-pick and ear-scoop pendent from a string round the neck. For dress, a sari made of florid imported cotton fabric is worn. I have seen women smoking cheroots, made from tobacco locally cultivated, wrapped up in a leaf of Gmelina arborea. Tattooing is said to be forbidden among the Malaiālis of the Javādi hills in North Arcot.

Concerning the Malaiālis of the Trichinopoly district, Mr. F. R. Hemingway writes as follows. "As far as this district is concerned, they are inhabitants of the Pachaimalais and Kollaimalais. The Malaiālis of the two ranges will not intermarry, but have no objection to dining together. For purposes of the caste discipline, the villages of both sub-divisions are grouped into nadus. Each nādu contains some twenty or thirty villages. Each village has a headman called on the Pachaimalais Mūppan, and on the Kollaimalais UrKavundan or Kutti-Māniyam. Again, on the Pachaimalais, every five or ten villages make up a sittambalam, over which is a Kavundan, and each nādu is ruled by a Periya Kavundan. In the Kollaimalais there are no