Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 7.djvu/418

VELLALA that a person of the caste should put the crown on the king's head at the coronation. They next invested him with the yegnōpavitam or string, and, in order that he might propagate his caste, they gave him in marriage the daughters of the gods Indra and Kubēra. At this time, the god Siva was mounted on a white bullock, and the god Dharmarāja on a white buffalo, which they gave him to plough the ground, and from which circumstance the caste became surnamed Vellal Wārus or those who plough with white bullocks. After the nuptials, the deities departed to their celestial abodes. Murdaka Pālakulu had fifty-four sons by the daughter of the god Indra, and fifty-two by the daughter of the god Kubēra, whom he married to the one hundred and six daughters of Nala Kubarudu, the son of Kubēra, and his sons-in-law made the following agreement with him, viz., that thirty-five of them should be called Bhūmi Pālakulu, and should till the ground; thirty-five of them named Vellal Shetti, and their occupation be traffic; and thirty-five of them named Gōvu Shetlu, and their employment breeding and feeding of cattle. They gave the remaining one the choice of three orders, but he would not have any connexion with either of them, from whence they surnamed him Agmurdi or the alien. The Agmurdi had born to him two thousand five hundred children, and became a separate caste, assuming the appellation of Agmurdi Vellal Wāru. The other brothers had twelve thousand children, who intermarried, and lived together as one caste, though their occupations were different .... During the reign of Krishna Rāyalu, whose capital was the city of Vijayanagaram or city of victory, a person of the Vellal caste, named Umbhi or Amultan Mudaliyar, was appointed sarvadhikari or prime minister, who had a samprati or secretary of the