Page:Castes and tribes of southern India, Volume 5.djvu/36

MARAVAN consideration of protection afforded against armed invasion. The Maravars are chiefly the agricultural servants or sub-tenants of the wealthier ryots, under whom they cultivate, receiving a share of the crop. An increasing proportion of this caste are becoming the ryotwari owners of land by purchase from the original holders." Though the Mara vans, Mr. Francis writes,* "are usually cultivators, they are some of them the most expert cattle-lifters in the Presidency. In Madura they have a particularly ingenious method of removing cattle. The actual thief steals the bullocks at night, and drives them at a gallop for half a dozen miles, hands them over to a confederate, and then returns and establishes an alibi. The confederate takes them on another stage, and does the same. A third and a fourth man keep them moving all that night. The next day they are hidden and rested, and thereafter they are driven by easier stages to the hills north of Madura, where their horns are cut and their brands altered, to prevent them from being recognised. They are then often sold at the great Chittrai cattle fair in Madura town. In some papers read in CO., No. 535, Judicial, dated 29th March 1899, it was shown that, though, according to the 1891 census, the Maravans formed only 10 per cent, of the population of the district of Tinnevelly, yet they had committed 70 per cent, of the dacoities which have occurred in that district in the previous five years. They have recently (1899) figured prominently in the anti-Shānār riots in the same district." (See Shānān.) "The Maravans," Mr. F. S. Mullaly writes, † " furnish nearly the whole of the village police (kāvilgars, watchmen), robbers and thieves of the Tinnevelly district.