Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/519

Rh that a Qāzi derived the name from Mā (mother) and pilla a (puppy) as a term of reproach! Maclean, in the Asiatic Researches, considered that the word came from mahā or mohai (mocha) and pilla (child), and therefore translated it into children or natives (perhaps outcasts) of Mohai or Mocha. A more likely, and perhaps more correct derivation is given by Mr. Percy Badger in a note to his edition of the Varthema. "I am inclined to think," he says, "that the name is either a corruption of the Arabic muflih (from the root fallah, to till the soil), meaning prosperous or victorious, in which sense it would apply to the successful establishment of those foreign Mussalmans on the western coast of India; or that it is a similar corruption of maflih (the active participial form of the same verb), an agriculturist — a still more appropriate designation of Moplahs, who, according to Buchanan, are both traders and farmers. In the latter sense, the term, though not usually so applied among the Arabs, would be identical with fella'h." By Mr. C. P. Brown the conviction was expressed that Māppilla is a Tamil mispronunciation of the Arabic mu'abbar, from over the water.

"The chief characteristic of the Māppillas," Mr.Govinda Nambiar writes, "as of all Mussalmans, is enthusiasm for religious practices. They are either Sunnis or Shiahs. The Sunnis are the followers of the Ponnani Tangal, the chief priest of the orthodox party, while the Shiahs acknowledge the Kondōtti Tangal as their religious head. There are always religious disputes between these sects, and the criminal courts are not seldom called in to settle them." In an account of the Māppillas,* Mr.P. Kunjain, a Māppilla Government official (the first