Note 149 — K (continued 5)

A brief reference may be made to the part which the Kōmatis took, in bygone days, in the faction fights known as right and left-hand caste disputes. Some of the South Indian castes, including the Kōmatis, belong to the former, and others to the latter. Those belonging to the left-hand would not let those belonging to the right-hand pass through their streets with their marriage and other processions. The right-hand section was equally jealous of the left. The Kōmatis, who were among the early settlers in the town of Madras in the seventeenth century, were involved in faction disputes on two recorded occasions, once, in 1652 A.D., during the Governorship of Aaron Baker, and later on during that of William Pitt,149 in 1707. When a wedding procession of members of one section passed through the streets of the other section, Pitt summoned twelve of the heads of each section, and locked them up in a room together, until the dispute should be adjusted. An agreement was speedily arrived at, according to which the right-hand settled on the west side of the town, now known as Pedda Naikan Pettah, and the left-hand on the east side, in what is at present called Mutialu Pettah. The Kōmatis accordingly are now mainly found in the western part of the city of Madras.