Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/540

MAPPILLA themselves to death in the company of Nāyars for the honour of the Valluvanād Rāja. And probably the frantic fanatical rush of the Māppillas on British bayonets is the latest development of this ancient custom of the Nāyars."

The fanatical outbreaks of recent times have been exclusively limited to the Ernād and Walluvanād tāluks. There are quartered at the present time at Malappuram in the Ernād tāluk a special Assistant Collector, a company of British troops, and a special native police force. In 1905, Government threw open 220 scholarships, on the results of the second and third standard examinations, to Māppilla pupils of promise in the two tāluks mentioned above,to enable them to prosecute their studies for the next higher standard in a recognised school connected with the Madras Educational Department. Twenty scholarships were further offered to Māppillas in the special class attached to the Government School of Commerce, Calicut, where instruction in commercial arithmetic, book-keeping, commercial practice, etc., is imparted in the Malayalam language. In 1904, a Māppilla Sanskrit school was founded at Puttūr, some of the pupils at which belong to the families of hereditary physicians, who were formerly good Sanskrit scholars.

At a Loyalty meeting of Māppillas held at Ponnāni in 1908 under the auspices of the Mannath-ul- Islam Sabha, the President spoke as follows. " When the Moplahs are ranged on the side of order, the peace of the country is assured. But the Moplah is viewed with suspicion by the Government. He has got a bad name as a disturber of the peace. He is liable to fits, and no one knows when he may run amock. From this public platform I can assure the Government as well as the