Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India.djvu/482

BRAHMAN presumably added to when the differences between the Kōlattunāt Royal Family and the Brahmins of the Perinchellūr grāmam became so pronounced as to necessitate the importing of Canarese and Tulu Brahmins for priestly services at their homes and temples. The first immigration of Brahmins from the east coast, called Aryapattars, into Malabar appears to have been under the circumstances above detailed, and at the instance of the Rajas of Cranganore. With the gradual lowering of the Brahminical ideal throughout the Indian Peninsula, and with the increasing struggle for physical existence, the Nambūtiris entered or reentered the field, and ousted the Aryapattars first from consortship, and latterly even from the ceremony of tāli-tying in families that could pay a Nambūtiri. The Aryapattar has, in his turn, trespassed into the ranks of the Nāyars, and has begun to undertake the religious rite of marriage, i.e., tāli-tying, in aristocratic families among them. There are only two families now in all Travancore, and they live in the Karunagapalli taluk. Malayālam is their household tongue; in dress and personal habits, they are indistinguishable from Malayāla Brahmins. The males marry into as high a class of Brahmins as they could get in Malabar, which is not generally higher than that of the Pōtti. The Pōtti woman thus married gets rather low in rank on account of this alliance. The daughter of an Aryapattar cannot be disposed of to a Brahminical caste in Malabar. She is taken to the Tinnevelly or Madura district, and married into the regular Aryapattar family according to the rites of the latter. The girl's dress is changed into the Tamil form on the eve of her marriage."

''III. Āndhra''. — The Telugu-speaking Brāhmans are all Āndhras, who differ from Tamil Brāhmans in some