Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 6.djvu/82

PANIYAN not effective, but will do a certain amount of damage. The nearest hamlet to this place is called Torappalli,occupied by a few fisher people called Paniyans. These are no doubt the makers of the traps, and, from information I received, they are said to possess better fry and other traps. They are also accredited with having fine-mesh nets, which they use when the waters are low."

In 1907, rules were issued, under the Indian Fisheries Act, IV of 1897, for the protection of fish in the Bhavāni and Moyar rivers. These rules referred to the erection and use of fixed engines, the construction of weirs, and the use of nets, the meshes of which are less than one and a half inches square for the capture or destruction of fish, and the prohibition of fishing between the 15th March and 15th September annually. Notice of the rules was given by beat of tom-tom (drum) in the villages lying on the banks of the rivers, to which the rules applied.

The Paniyan language is a debased Malayālam patois spoken in a curious nasal sing-song, difficult to imitate; but most of the Paniyans employed on estates can also converse in Kanarese. Wholly uneducated and associating with no other tribes, the Paniyans have only very crude ideas of religion. Believing in devils of all sorts and sizes, and professing to worship the Hindu divinities, they reverence especially the god of the jungles, Kād Bhagavadi, or, according to another version, a deity called Kūli, a malignant and terrible being of neither sex, whose shrines take the form of a stone placed under a tree, or sometimes a cairn of stones. At their rude shrines they contribute as offerings to the swāmi (god) rice boiled in the husk, roasted and pounded, half-a-cocoanut, and small coins. The banyan and a lofty tree, apparently of