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90 Paraiyans, who now form about 50 per cent. of that labouring class. They had to work in the fields all day long without having any access to the Brahman lord. They, toiling and moiling on the fields, which were once their own but were wrested from them by the Tamil kings to encourage and support the Brahman advisers and their religious institutions, became as it were, a part and parcel of their rice fields. Their masters changed with the change of ownership of land. Thus arose the predial slavery which, however, was put down when the country passed luckily into the hands of the British.

With the exception of the dog-eating Nâyâdis of Malabar, the Paraiyas are supposed to carry with them a high degree of pollution, so that even the Pulaiyas and Holayas of the West Coast and the Khonds of Vizagapatam think they will be defiled by the mere touch of a Paraiya. What is pollution then according to the Hindu notion? It is something imaginary, flowing out of the social gravitation which exists between an Aryan and a non-Aryan Hindu. The degree of the pollution varies inversely with the degree of adoption of the Brahmanical customs and manners. The Paraiyas were stubborn and the least inclined to adopt them, and consequently their approach within a radius of thirty yards has been considered polluting to a high caste Hindu. The hatred which existed between the early Dravidians and Aryans is best