Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 6.djvu/332

SAMANTAN "A consideration of all the evidence," the Judge writes, "appears to me to prove conclusively that the plaintiff is a Nāyar by caste . . . What appears to me, from a consideration of the evidence, to be the safe inference to draw is that the members of the plaintiff's family, and also the descendants of certain other of the old Nāyar chieftains, have for some time called themselves, and been called by others, Sāmantas, but that there is no distinctive caste of that name, and that the plaintiff is, as the defendant has described him, a Nāyar by caste."*

The Sāmantans are summed up as follows in the Gazetteer of Malabar. " Sāmantan is the generic name of the group of castes forming the aristocracy of Malabar, and it includes the following divisions: — Nambiyār, Unnitiri, Adiyōdi, all belonging to North Malabar; and Nedungādi, Vallōdi, Ērādi, and Tirumulpād, all belonging to South Malabar. There are also Nāyars with the title of Nambiyar and Adiyōdi. Nedungādi, Vallōdi and Ērādi, are territorial names applied to the Sāmantans indigenous to Ernād, Walavanād, and Nedunganād respectively; or perhaps it may be more correct to say that the tracts in question take their names from the ruling classes, who formerly bore sway there. Ērādi is the caste to which belongs the Zamorin Raja of Calicut. It is also the name of a section of Kiriyattil Nayars. The Rāja of Walavanād is a Vallōdi. Tirumulpād is the title of a class of Sāmantans, to which belong a number of petty chieftains, such as the Karnamulpād of Manjeri and the Tirumulpād of Nilambūr. The ladies of this class are called Kolpāds or Koilammāhs. Many Nambiyārs in North Malabar claim to belong to