Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 7.djvu/441

Rh they fixed upon the forts, districts, and villages belonging to the Kurubavāru caste, which consisted of twenty-four forts, eighty-one districts, and one thousand and nine hundred villages. This country was formerly named Dandaka Aranya. Dandaka is the name of a famous Rakshasa or Giant, who is mentioned in the Rāmāyana and Aranya signifies a wilderness. It was also called Dhuntra Nādu, or the middle country, and the new Rāja named it Dhanda Mandalam, or country of the tree dhonda, alluding to the fruit of the adhonda or dhonda tree, which bore testimony to his descent. The emigrants of the Vellāla caste surnamed themselves Dhonda Mandala Vellāla vāru, and are now corruptly called Tondamandala Vellāla vāru."

In connection with the sub-divisions of the Vellālas, Mr. Hemingway, in a note on the Vellālas of the Trichinopoly district, gives some still further information. " The Kondaikattis are so-called from the peculiar way in which they used to wear their hair — a custom no longer observed. They are split into two sections, called Mēlnādu and Kīlnādu (westerns and easterns). The Dakshināttāns (south country men) are immigrants from Tinnevelly. The members of the Kāraikkāttar sub-division in the Udaiyarpālaiyam tāluk are rather looked down on by other Vellālans as being a mixed race, and are also somewhat contemptuously called Yeruttu-māttu (pack-bullocks), because, in their professional calling, they formerly used pack-bullocks. They have a curious custom by which a girl's maternal uncle ties a tāli (marriage badge) round her neck when she is seven or eight years old. The Panjukkāra Chettis live in the Udaiyarpālaiyam tāluk. The name is an occupational one, and denotes cotton-men, but they are not at the present day connected with the cotton trade. The