Page:Castes and tribes of southern India, Volume 5.djvu/17

Rh is most clearly marked in North Travancore, while to the south of Alleppey the boundary line may be said to remain only dim. In this part of the country, therefore, a fourfold division of the caste is the one best known to the people, namely Orunul, Irunul, Cheppat, and Kulanji. The Orunuls look upon themselves as higher than the Irunuls, basing their superiority on the custom obtaining among them of marrying only once in their lifetime, and contracting no second alliance after the first husband's death. Living, however, with a Brāhman, or one of a distinctly higher caste, is tolerated among them in the event of that calamity. The word Orunul means one string, and signifies the absence of widow marriage. Among the Irunuls (two strings) the tāli-tier is not necessarily the husband, nor is a second husband forbidden after the death of the first. Cheppat and Kulanji were once mere local varieties, but have now become separate sub-divisions. The males of the four sections, but not the females, interdine. With what rapidity castes sub-divide and ramify in Travancore may be seen from the fact of the existence of a local variety of Mārāns called Muttal, meaning substitute or emergency employee, in the Kalkulam tāluk, who are believed to represent an elevation from a lower to a higher class of Mārāns, rendered necessary by a temple exigency. The Mārāns are also known as Asupānis, as they alone are entitled to sound the two characteristic musical instruments, of Malabar temples, called asu and pāni. In the south they are called Chitikans, a corruption of the Sanskrit chaitika, meaning one whose occupation relates to the funeral pile, and in the north Asthikkurichis (asthi, a bone), as they help the relations of the dead in the collection of the bones after cremation. The Mārāns are, further, in some places known as Potuvans,