Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 6.djvu/78

PANIYAN been the name of the country whence they came originally; but they are ignorant as to where Ippimala, as they call it, is situated. Kapiri (Africa or the Cape ?) is also sometimes suggested as their original habitat, but only by those who have had the remarks of Europeans communicated to them. The Paniyan himself, though he occasionally puts forward one or other of the above places as the home of his forefathers, has no fixed tradition bearing on their arrival in Malabar, beyond one to the effect that they were brought from a far country, where they were found living by a Rāja, who captured them, and carried them off in such a miserable condition that a man and his wife only possessed one cloth between them, and were so timid that it was only by means of hunting nets that they were captured. The number of Paniyans, returned at the census, 1891, was 33,282, and nine sub-divisions were registered; but, as Mr. H. A. Stuart, the Census Commissioner, observes: — "Most of these are not real, and none has been returned by any considerable number of persons." Their position is said to be very little removed from that of a slave, for every Paniyan is some landlord's 'man'; and, though he is, of course, free to leave his master, he is at once traced, and good care is taken that he does not get employment elsewhere.

In the fifties of the last century, when planters first began to settle in the Wynād, they purchased the land with the Paniyans living on it, who were practically slaves of the land-owners. The Paniyans used formerly to be employed by rich receivers as professional coffee thieves, going out by night to strip the bushes of their berries, which were delivered to the receiver before morning. Unlike the Badagas of the Nīlgiris, who are also coffee thieves, and are afraid to be out after dark, the Paniyans