Note 29 — B (continued 2)

Bant.—For the following account of the Bants I am mainly indebted to Mr. H. A. Stuart’s description of them in the Manual of South Canara. The name Bant, pronounced Bunt, means in Tulu a powerful man or soldier, and indicates that the Bants were originally a military class corresponding to the Nāyars of Malabar. The term Nādava instead of Bant in the northern portions of South Canara points, among other indications, to a territorial organisation by nāds similar to that described by Mr. Logan as prevailing in Malabar. “The Nāyars,” he writes, “were, until the British occupied the country, the militia of the district. Originally they seem to have been organised into ‘Six Hundreds,’ and each six hundred seems to have had assigned to it the protection of all the people in a nād or country. The nād was in turn split up into taras, a Dravidian word signifying originally a foundation, the foundation of a house, hence applied collectively to a street, as in Tamil teru, in Telugu teruvu, and in Canarese and Tulu terāvu. The tara was the Nāyar territorial unit for civil purposes.” It has been stated that “the Malabar Nair chieftain of old had his nād or barony, and his own military class; and the relics of this powerful feudal system still survive in the names of some of the tāluks (divisions) of modern Malabar, and in the official designations of certain Nair families, whose men still come out with quaint-looking swords and shields to guard the person of the Zamorin on the occasion of the rice-throwing ceremony, which formally constitutes him the ruler of the land. Correspondingly, the Bants of the northern parts of Canara still answer to the territorial name of Nād Bants, or warriors of the nād or territory. It is necessary to explain that, in both ancient Kēralam and Tulu, the functions of the great military and dominant classes were so distributed that only certain classes were bound to render military service to the ruling prince. The rest were lairds or squires, or gentleman farmers, or the labourers and artisans of their particular community, though all of them cultivated a love of manly sports.”29