Page:Castes and tribes of southern India, Volume 5.djvu/196

NAMBUTIRI BRAHMAN As a father supports his sons, so let the eldest support his younger brothers, and so let them, in accordance with the law, behave towards their eldest brother as sons behave towards their father.

Should a Nambūtiri eldest son die, the next marries, and so on. Women join the family of their husband, and to this too her children belong. Self-acquired property, that is property acquired by any junior member of the family through his own efforts outside the taravād,* lapses to the taravād at his death, unless he has disposed of it in his lifetime. This is the custom, which our law has not yet infringed. The taravād is the unit, and, as the senior male succeeds to the management, it may happen that a man's sons do not succeed directly as his heirs. The arrangement is an excellent one for the material prosperity of the family, for there is no dispersion. Every circumstance tends towards aggrandizement, and the family is restricted to no more than a requisite number by one member only marrying, and producing children. Impartibility is the fundamental principle. It is seldom that a Nambūtiri family comes to an end; and such a thing as a Nambūtiri's estate escheating to Government has been said on eminent authority never to have been known. It happens sometimes that there is no male member to produce progeny, and in such a case the sarvasvadānam marriage is performed, by which a man of another family is brought into the family and married to a daughter of it, who, after the manner of the " appointed daughter " of old Hindu law, hands on the property through her children. The man so brought in is henceforth a member of the family which he has joined, and as such he performs the srāddha or