Page:Castes and tribes of southern India, Volume 5.djvu/30

MARAVAN of them servants in the Rāja's palace. Whence they are also called Manimakkalu. They all call themselves Ghōrpades, and members of the Rāja's (the Kansika) gōtra. They thus cannot intermarry among themselves, but occasionally their girls are married to Kunbis. Their women are in no way gōsha." *

The cranial type of the Marāthas is, as shown by the following table, like that of the Canarese, mesaticephalic or sub-brachycephalic: —  '''Maravan. —''' "The Maravans," Mr. H. A. Stuart writes,† "are found chiefly in Madura and Tinnevelly, where they occupy the tracts bordering on the coast from Cape Comorin to the northern limits of the Rāmnād zemindari. The proprietors of that estate, and of the great Sivaganga zemindari, are both of this caste. The Maravars must have been one of the first of the Dravidian tribes that penetrated to the south of the peninsula, and, like the Kallans, they have been but little affected by Brāhmanical influence. There exists among them a picturesque tradition to the effect that, in consequence of their assisting Rāma in his war against the demon Rāvana, that deity gratefully exclaimed in 