Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 7.djvu/455

Rh respectively. The priests who officiate at their ceremonials are selected from among their own tribesmen or Enangers, whose express recognition is necessary to give validity to the performance of the ceremony. Their marriage customs are very like those of the Tiyyars, excepting that the feasting and revelry are not so pompous in their case. Like the Nairs, they retain the front knot. The only offences of general occurrence among them are petty cases of theft of cocoanuts, plantains, areca nuts, and roots of common occurrence. The Vettuvans believe in a Supreme Creator, whom they name and invoke as Paduchathampuram, i.e., the king who created us. Likewise, they believe in certain evil deities, to whom they make offerings at particular times of the year. They are not, like the other classes, distinguished by loyalty to their masters, but are a very ungrateful sect, and their very name, viz., Nambu Vēttuvan, has passed into a bye-word for ingratitude of all kinds."

It is recorded, in the Gazetteer of Malabar, that "the Vēttuvans of Chirakkal taluk are a low caste of jungle cultivators and basket makers, distinguished by the survival amongst their women of the custom of dressing in leaves, their only clothing being a kind of double fan-shaped apron of leaves tied round the waist with a rolled cloth. They live in huts made of split bamboo and thatched with elephant grass, called kudumbus. The Vēttuvans are divided into fourteen illams, which seem to be named after the house names of the janmis (landlords) whom they serve. Their headmen, who are appointed by their janmis, are called Kirān, or sometimes Parakutti (drummer). Amongst the Vēttuvans, when labour begins, the woman is put in a hole dug in a corner of the hut, and left there alone with some water till the cry of the child is heard."