Page:Castes and tribes of southern India, Volume 5.djvu/304

NAYADI lowest position in the social scale, and consequently-labour under the greatest disadvantage. The Nāyādis live mostly in isolated huts on the tops of hills, and generally select a shōla, or glade, where there is a pond or stream. Some families live on the land of their landlords, whose crops they watch by night, to guard them against the attacks of wild beasts. Sometimes they are engaged in ploughing, sowing, weeding, transplanting, and reaping, the rice crop, or in plantain (banana) gardens. I take exception to the comparison by a recent author of the British Empire to the banana (Musa) throwing out aerial roots. The banyan (Ficus bengalensis) must have been meant.

The male members of the community are called Nāyādis, and the females Nāyādichis. The boys are called Molayans, and the young girls Manichis. Succession is in the male line (makkathāyam).

A thatched shed with palm-leaf walls, a few earthen pots, and a chopper, constitute the Nāyādi's property. He occasionally collects honey and bees-wax, and also the gum (matti pasai) from the mattipāl tree (Ailanthus malabarica), which, when burnt, is used as temple incense and for fumigating the bed-chamber. He receives toddy in exchange for the honey and wax, and copper coins for the gum, with which he purchases luxuries in the shape of salt, chillies, dried fish, tobacco, and liquor. He makes rough ropes from the malanar plant, and the bark of the kayyūl tree (Baukinia).The bark is soaked in water, sundried, and the fibre manufactured into rope. He also makes slings of fibre, wherewith he knocks over birds, and mats from a species of Cyperus.

According to custom, the Nāyādi has to offer four ropes, each eight yards long, to every Nambūtiri illam,