Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/164

 1 48 Reviews.

The most important question in the ethnology of South India is to fix the approximate date for the Brahman emigration from the north. That many of the southern Brahmans, with perhaps an exception in the case of the Nambutiris, are, to some extent at least, " Aryanized " Dravidians, is fairly certain. What we desire to know is the length of the period during which this process of racial absorption and the amalgamation of Brahmanical Hinduism with the indigenous idolatries were partially completed. A popular astrological formula states that the Nambutiri immigration occurred 1346 years ago. Of course, Hindu influence in the south was even earlier than this, because the Periplus, probably written in the first century a.d., speaks of Komar, the modern Cape Comorin, which represents Kumarl, " the damsel," the goddess Durga. Recently discovered copper-plate grants testify to the existence of Brahman colonies in the fourth or fifth century, and the late Dr. Burnell was probably correct in fixing the main southward movement of the Brahmans in the seventh century. By this time, the Dravidians had established powerful monarchies, and pre-Brahmanic forms of belief were able successfully to resist the new learning, with the result that in our day South Indian Brahmanism is very different from the Hinduism of the north.

It is impossible here to follow the writer through his careful account of the leading tribes of the state, — the Nayars with their abnormal matrimonial system, and their connection with that strange class of Brahman Puritans, the Nambutiris, who by a rigid system of tabu promoting complete isolation represent at the present day, more absolutely than any of the northern branches, the ideals of ancient Hinduism. The elaborate account given of Brahman ic rites, when compared with the classical description of Vedic ceremonies by H. T. Colebrooke, written more than a century ago, will be useful for reference.

Except the Beni Israels of Bombay, who through contact metamorphosis have become, to a large extent, Hinduized, Cochin alone contains a Jewish population which, in the case of the White Jews, has resisted absorption. The racial distinction between them and the Black Jews, who are apparently, to a large extent, of local origin, is well illustrated by good photographs.

Mr. Anantha Krishna Iyer and the Government of the Cochin