Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 6.djvu/508

SYRIAN CHRISTIAN (5) In rural parts especially, the Ōnam festival of the Malayāli Hindus is celebrated with great éclat, with feasting, making presents of cloths to children and relatives, out-door and in-door games, etc.

(6) Vishu, or new-year's day, is likewise a gala day, when presents of small coins are made to children, relatives, and the poor.

(7) The ceremony of first feeding a child with rice (annaprāsanam or chōrūnu of the Hindus) is celebrated generally in the sixth month after birth. Parents often make vows to have the ceremony done in a particular church, as Hindu parents take their children to particular temples in fulfilment of special vows. (8) The Syrians do not admit within their premises low-castes, e.g., Pulayans, Paraiyans, etc., even after the conversion of the latter to Christianity. They enforce even distance pollution, though not quite to the same extent as Malāyali Hindus do. Iluvans are allowed admission to their houses, but are not allowed to cook their meals. In some parts, they are not even allowed to enter the houses of Syrians. There are no intermarriages between Syrians of the various denominations and Latin Catholics. Under very exceptional circumstances, a Romo-Syrian contracts a marriage with one of Latin rite, and vice versâ, but this entails many difficulties and disabilities on the issues. Among the Latins themselves, there are, again, no intermarriages between the communities of the seven hundred, the five hundred, and the three hundred. The difference of cult and creed has led to the prohibition of marriages between the Romo-Syrians and Jacobite Syrians. The Jacobite Syrians properly so called, St.Thomas' Syrians, and the Syro-Protestants do, however, intermarry. The Southerners and Northerners do not