Page:Castes and tribes of southern India, Volume 5.djvu/531

Rh and Tinnevelly. They are also fairly numerous in parts of Salem and Coimbatore, but in the remaining Tamil districts they are found only in very small numbers." *

The name is said to be derived from pallam, a pit, as they were standing on low ground when the castes were originally formed. It is further suggested that the name may be connected with the wet cultivation,at which they are experts, and which is always carried out on low ground. In the Manual of the Madura district (1868), the Pallans are described as "a very numerous, but a most abject and despised race, little, if indeed at all, superior to the Paraiyas. Their principal occupation is ploughing the lands of more fortunate Tamils, and, though nominally free, they are usually slaves in almost every sense of the word, earning by the ceaseless sweat of their brow a bare handful of grain to stay the pangs of hunger, and a rag with which to partly cover their nakedness. They are to be found in almost every village, toiling and moiling for the benefit of Vellālans and others, and with the Paraiyas doing patiently nearly all the hard and dirty work that has to be done. Personal contact with them is avoided by all respectable men, and they are never permitted to dwell within the limits of a village nattam. Their huts form a small detached hamlet, the Pallachēri, removed from a considerable distance from the houses of the respectable inhabitants, and barely separated from that of the Paraiyas, the Parei-cheri. The Pallans are said by some to have sprung from the intercourse of a Sudra and a Brāhman woman. Others say Dēvendra created them for the purpose of labouring in behalf of Vellālans. Whatever may have been their origin, it seems to be tolerably certain that in ancient