Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/504

MANDADI usually burnt, but those who have been killed by accidents or epidemics are buried. When any one is at death's door, he or she is made to swallow a little water from a vessel in which some rice and a gold coin have been placed. The body is bathed and dressed in a new cloth, sometimes music is played and a gun fired, and in all cases the deceased's family walk three times round the pyre before it is fired by the chief mourner. When the period of pollution is over, holy water is fetched from the Nambalakōd temple, and sprinkled all about the house. These Chettis are Saivites, and worship Bētarāyasvāmi of Nambalakōd, the Airu Billi of the Kurumbas, and one or two other minor gods, and certain deified ancestors. These minor gods have no regular shrines, but huts provided with platforms for them to sit upon, in which lamps are lit in the evenings, are built for them in the fields and jungles. Chetti women are often handsome. In the house they wear only a waist-cloth, but they put on an upper cloth when they venture abroad. They distend the lobes of their ears, and for the first few years after marriage wear in them circular gold ornaments somewhat resembling those affected by the Nāyar ladies. After that period they substitute a strip of'rolled-up palm leaf. They have an odd custom of wearing a big chignon made up of plaits of their own hair cut off at intervals in their girlhood."  Mandādi. — A title of Golla.  Mandai.— An exogamous section of Kallan named after Mandai Karuppan, the god of the village common (Mandai).  Mandha.__Mandha or Mandhala, meaning a village common, or herd of cattle collected thereon, has been recorded as an exogamous sept of Bēdar, Karna Sālē, and Mādiga. 