Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 7.djvu/218

TOTTIYAN the family circle, but a liaison with an outsider involves expulsion from the caste. It is said that their newly married girls are even compelled to cohabit with their husband's near relatives. [It is further said to be believed that ill-luck will attend any refusal to do so, and that, so far from any disgrace attaching to them in consequence, their priests compel them to keep up the custom, if by any chance they are unwilling.* ] The pongu tree (Pongamia glabra) is the sacred tree of the caste. Suttee was formerly very common, and the remarriage of widows is discouraged, if not actually forbidden. The dead are generally burned. Both men and women are supposed to practice magic, and are on that account much dreaded by the people generally. They are especially noted for their power of curing snake-bites by means of mystical incantations, and the original inventor of this mode of treatment has been deified under the name Pāmbalamman. They are allowed to eat flesh. The majority speak Telugu in their houses." The traditional story of the migration of the Tottiyans to the Madura district is given in several of the Mackenzie manuscripts, and is still repeated by the people of the caste. " Centuries ago, says this legend, the Tottiyans lived to the north of the Tungabhadra river. The Muhammadans there tried to marry their women, and make them eat beef. So one fine night they fled southwards in a body. The Muhammadans pursued them, and their path was blocked by a deep and rapid river. They had just given themselves up for lost when a pongu (Pongamia glabra) tree on either side of the stream leant forward, and, meeting in the middle, made