Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 6.djvu/423

Rh before a Shānār, and demanded food. The Shānār said he was a poor man with nothing to offer but toddy, which he gave in a palmyra leaf. Āmâda drank the toddy, and performing a mantram (consecrated formula) over the leaf, it turned into gold coins, which bore on one side the pictures of Āmâda, the Shānār, and the tree, and these he gave to the Shānār as a reward for his willingness to assist him."

In a petition to myself from certain Shānāns of Nazareth, signed by a very large number of the community, and bearing the title "Short account of the Cantras or Tamil Xātrās, the original but down-trodden royal race of Southern India," they write as follows. " We humbly beg to say that we are the descendants of the Pāndya or Dravida Xatra race, who, shortly after the universal deluge of Noah, first disafforested and colonized this land of South India under the guidance of Agastya Muni. The whole world was destroyed by flood about B.C. 3100 (Dr. Hale's calculation), when Noah, otherwise called Vaivasvata-manu or Satyavrata, was saved with his family of seven persons in an ark or covered ship, which rested upon the highest mountain of the Āryāvarta country. Hence the whole earth was rapidly replenished by his descendants. One of his grandsons (nine great Prajāpatis) was Atri, whose son Candra was the ancestor of the noblest class of the Xatras ranked above the Brahmans, and the first illustrious monarch of the post-diluvian world."

"Apparently," the Census Superintendent continues,"judging from the Shānān's own published statements of their case, they rest their claims chiefly upon etymological derivations of their caste name Shānān, and of Nādān and Grāmani, their two usual titles. Caste titles and names are, however, of recent origin, and little