Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 6.djvu/9



ALLI OR VANNIYAN.—Writing concerning this caste the Census Superintendent, 1871, records that "a book has been written by a native to show that the Pallis (Pullies or Vanniar) of the south are descendants of the fire races (Agnikulas) of the Kshatriyas, and that the Tamil Pullies were at one time the shepherd kings of Egypt." At the time of the census, 1871, a petition was submitted to Government by representatives of the caste, praying that they might be classified as Kshatriyas, and twenty years later, in connection with the census, 1891, a book entitled 'Vannikula Vilakkam: a treatise on the Vanniya caste,' was compiled by Mr. T. Aiyakannu Nayakar, in support of the caste claim to be returned as Kshatriyas, for details concerning which claim I must refer the reader to the book itself. In 1907, a book entitled Varuna Darpanam (Mirror of Castes) was published, in which an attempt is made to connect the caste with the Pallavas.

Kulasēkhara, one of the early Travancore kings, and one of the most renowned Ālwars reverenced by the Srī Vaishnava community in Southern India, is claimed by the Pallis as a king of their caste. Even now, at the Parthasarathi temple in Triplicane (in the city of Madras), which according to inscriptions is a Pallava