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Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 3 of 7

Note 5 — K

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Kadaiyan.—The name, Kadaiyan, meaning last or lowest, occurs as a sub-division of the Pallans. The Kadaiyans are described5 as being lime (shell) gatherers and burners of Rāmēsvaram and the neighbourhood, from whose ranks the pearl-divers are in part recruited at the present day. On the coasts of Madura and Tinnevelly they are mainly Christians, and are said, like the Paravas, to have been converted through the work of St. Francis Xavier.6

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