Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 7.djvu/345

Rh Valiyatān (valiya, great, tān, a title of dignity). — Recorded, in the Travancore Census Report, 1901, as a title of Nāyar.  '''Vallabarayan. —''' A title of Ōcchan.  '''Vallamban. —''' The Vallambans are a small Tamil cultivating class living in the Tanjore, Trichinopoly, and Madura districts. They are said * to be "the offspring of a Vellālan and a Valaiya woman, now a small and insignificant caste of cultivators. Some of them assert that their ancestors were the lords of the soil, for whose sole benefit the Vellālans used to carry on cultivation. Tradition makes the Vellambans to have joined the Kallans in attacking and driving away the Vellālans. It is customary among the Vallambans, when demising land, to refer to the fact of their being descendants of the Vallambans who lost Vallam, i.e., the Vallama nādu in Tanjore, their proper country." Some Vallambans claim to be flesh-eating Vellālas, or to be superior to Kallans and Maravans by reason of their Vellāla ancestry. They call themselves Vallamtōtta Vellālas, or the Vellālas who lost Vallam, and say that they were Vellālas of Vallam in the Tanjore district, who left their native place in a time of famine.

Portions of the Madura and Tanjore districts are divided into areas known as nādus, in each of which a certain caste, called the Nāttar, is the predominant factor. For example, the Vallambans and Kallans are called the Nāttars of the Pālaya nādu in the Sivaganga zemindari of the Madura district. In dealing with the tribal affairs of the various castes inhabiting a particular nādu, the lead is taken by the Nāttars, by whom certain privileges are enjoyed, as for example in the distribution 