Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 6.djvu/14

PALLI OR VANNIYAN of the Pālār in the Cauvery delta, between the Pālār and Pennar. They have written a Purānam and a drama bearing on this tale. They declare that they are superior to Brāhmans, since, while the latter must be invested with the sacred thread after birth, they bring their sacred thread with them at birth itself." "The Vanniyans," Mr. Nelson states,* " are at the present time a small and obscure agricultural caste, but there is reason to believe that they are descendants of ancestors who, in former times, held a good position among the tribes of South India. A manuscript, abstracted at page 90 of the Catalogue raisonné (Mackenzie Manuscripts), states that the Vanniyans belong to the Agnikula, and are descended from the Muni Sambhu; and that they gained victories by means of their skill in archery. And another manuscript, abstracted at page 427, shows that two of their chiefs enjoyed considerable power, and refused to pay the customary tribute to the Rayar, who was for a long time unable to reduce them to submission. Armies of Vanniyans are often mentioned in Ceylon annals. And a Hindu History of Ceylon, translated in the Royal As. Soc. Journal, Vol. XXIV, states that, in the year 3300 of the Kali Yuga, a Pandya princess went over to Ceylon, and married its king, and was accompanied by sixty bands of Vanniyans."

The terms Vanni and Vanniyan are used in Tamil poems to denote king. Thus, in the classical Tamil poem Kallādam, which has been attributed to the time of Tiruvalluvar, the author of the sacred Kural, Vanni is used in the sense of king. Kamban, the author of the Tamil Rāmāyana, uses it in a similar sense. In