Note 46 — M (continued 2)

It is noted by Mr. Garstin46 that “in his time (1878) the Malaiālis of the South Arcot district kept the accounts of their payments of revenue by tying knots in a bit of string, and that some of them once lodged a complaint against their village headman for collecting more from them than was due, basing their case on the fact that there were more knots in the current year’s string than in that of the year preceding. The poligars, he adds, used to intimate the amount of revenue due by sending each of the cultivators a leaf bearing on it as many thumb-nail marks as there were rupees to be paid.”