Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 7.djvu/390

VELAMA position some rose to be Poligars. Now they are chiefly the hangers-on of poligars or cultivators. To distinguish them from the Vellālas in the southern tāluks, they call themselves Telugu Vellālas, but it seems very improbable that the Velamas and Vellālas ever had any connection with one another. They are styled Naidus." [The Velamas style themselves Telugu Vellālas, not because of any connection between the two castes, but because they are at the top of the Telugu castes as the Vellālas are of the Tamil castes. For the same reason, Vellālas are sometimes called Arava (Tamil) Velamalu.] The most important sub-divisions returned by the Velamas at the census, 1891, were Kāpu, Koppala, Padma, Ponnēti, and Yānādi. "It is," the Census Superintendent writes, "curious to find the Yānādi sub-division so strongly represented, for there is at the present day a wide gulf between Velamas and Yānādis " (a Telugu forest tribe). In the Vizagapatam Manual, a class of cultivators called Yānādulu is referred to; and, in the Madras Census Report, 1901, it is recorded that entries under the name Yānāti "were clubbed with Yānādi; but it has since been reported that, in Bissam-cuttack tāluk of the Vizagapatam Agency, there is a separate caste called Yānāti or Yēnēti Dora which is distinct from Yānādi." It would appear that, as in the south, the Velamas call themselves Telugu Vellālas, so in the north they call themselves Yānātis.

Concerning the Gūna Velamas, the Rev. J. Cain writes* that "in years gone by, members of this class, who were desirous of getting married, had to arrange and pay the expenses of two of the Palli (fisherman) caste, but now it is regarded as sufficient to hang up a net in