Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India.djvu/258

 Tuluva, and the Bairasu Wodears of Kārakal, whose inscriptions have been found at Kalasa as early as the twelfth century, may have exercised power throughout Tuluva or the greater part of it. But, when the Vijayanagar dynasty became the overlords of Canara in 1336,there were then existing a number of minor chiefs who had probably been in power long before, and the numerous titles still remaining among the Bants and Jains, and the local dignities known as Pattam and Gadi, point to the existence from very early times of a number of more or less powerful local chieftains. The system peculiar to the west coast under which all property vests in females, and is managed by the seniors of the family, was also favourable to the continuance of large landed properties, and it is probable that it is only within comparatively recent times that sub-division of landed property became anything like as common as it is now. All the Bants, except the Parivāra and a few Jains follow this aliya santāna system of inheritance,* a survival of a time when the military followers of conquering invaders or local chiefs married women of the local land-owning classes, and the most important male members of the family were usually absent in camp or at court, while the women remained at the family house on the estate, and managed the farms. The titles and the pattams or dignities have always been held by the male members, but, as they also go with the landed property, they necessarily devolve on the sister's son of a deceased holder, whence has arisen the name aliya santāna, which means sister's son lineage. A story is embodied in local traditions, attributing the origin of the system to the fiat of a king named Bhūtal Pāndya, until whose time makkala santāna,