Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/559

Rh tradition that Kōyas were originally Brāhmans also confirms the opinion that they belong to the priestly class."

In a note on the Laccadives and Minicoy,* Mr.C. W. E. Cotton writes that "while it would appear that the Maldives and Minicoy were long ago peopled by the same wave of Aryan immigration which overran Ceylon, tradition ascribes the first settlements in the northern group to an expedition shipwrecked on one of the Atolls so late as 825 A.D. This expedition is said to have set out from Kodungalur (Cranganore) in search of the last of the Perumal Viceroys of Malabar, a convert either to Buddhism or Islam, and included some Nambudris, commonly employed, as Duarte Barbosa tells us, on account of their persons being considered sacrosanct, as envoys and messengers in times of war, and perhaps also for dangerous embassies across the seas. Some support may be found for this tradition in the perpetuation of the name illam for some of the principal houses in Kalpeni, and in the existence of strongly marked caste divisions, especially remarkable among communities professing Mahomedanism, corresponding to the aristocrats, the mariners, and the dependants, of which such an expeditionary force would have been composed. The Tarwad islands, Ameni, Kalpeni, Androth, and Kavarathi, were probably peopled first, and their inhabitants can claim high-caste Hindu ancestry. There has been no doubt everywhere considerable voluntary immigration from the coast, and some infusion of pure Arab blood; but the strain of Negro introduced into the Maldives by Zanzibar slaves is nowhere traceable in Minicoy or the northern Archipelago."