Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 6.djvu/238

PILLAI for good, they seem to have long owned there a madathummuri (a room in a series, in which Brāhmins from abroad once lived and traded), and are said to be still entitled daily to a measure of pālpayasom from the temple, a sweet pudding of milk, rice and sugar, celebrated all over Malabar for its excellence. The progeny of the family now count in all about ninety members, who live in eight or nine different houses."  Pillai.— Pillai, meaning child, is in the Tamil country primarily the title of Vellālas, but has, at recent times of census, been returned as the title of a number of classes, which include Agamudaiyan, Ambalakāran, Golla, Idaiyan, Nāyar, Nōkkan, Panisavan, Panikkan, Paraiyan, Saiyakkāran, Sembadavan and Sēnaikkudaiyāns. Pilla is further used as the title of the male offspring of Dēva-dāsis. Many Paraiyan butlers of Europeans have assumed the title Pillai as an honorific suffix to their name. So, too, have some criminal Koravas, who pose as Vellālas.  Pillaikūttam.——Recorded, in the Manual of the North Arcot district, as a bastard branch of Vāniyan.  Pillaiyarpatti (Ganēsa village). — An exogamous section or kōvil of Nāttukōttai Chetti.  Pilli (cat). — An exogamous sept of Chembadi, Māla, and Mēdara.  Pindāri.——In the Madras Census Report, 1901, fifty-nine Pindāris are returned as a Bombay caste of personal servants. They are more numerous in the Mysore province, where more than two thousand were returned in the same year as being engaged in agriculture and Government service. The Pindāris were formerly celebrated as a notorious class of freebooters, who, in the seventeenth century, attached themselves to the Marāthas in their revolt against Aurangzīb, and for a long 