Page:Castes and tribes of southern India, Volume 5.djvu/143

Rh When she reaches puberty, a girl does up her hair in a knot called koppu. In the case of confinement, pollution ends on the tenth day. But, if a woman loses her infant, especially a first-born, the pollution period is shortened, and, at every subsequent time of delivery, the woman bathes on the seventh or ninth day. Every woman who visits her on the bathing day brings a pot of warm water, and pours it over her head.  Mūttāl (substitute). — A sub-division of Mārān.  Mūttān.— In the Madras Census Report, 1901, the Mūttāns are summed up as "a trading caste in Malabar. The better educated members of it have begun to claim a higher social status than that usually accorded them. Formerly they claimed to be Nāyars, but recently they have gone further, and, in the census schedules, some of them returned themselves as Vaisyas, and added the Vaisya title Gupta to their names. They do not, however, wear the sacred thread, or perform any Vēdic rites, and Nāyars consider themselves polluted by their touch." It is recorded, in the Madras Census Report, 1891, under the conjoint heading Mūttān and Tarakan, that "these two are allied castes, but the latter would consider it a disgrace to acknowledge any affinity with the former. Tarakan literally means a broker. Dr.Gundert says that these were originally warehouse-keepers at Pālghat. Mūttān is probably from Mūttāvan, an elder. Tarakans have returned Mūttān as a sub-division, and vice versa, and both appear as sub-divisions of Nāyar. We have in our schedules instances of persons who have returned their caste as Tarakan, but with their names Krishna Mūttān (male) and Lakshmi Chettichiār (female). A Mūttān may, in course of time, 