Note 49 — P (Continued)

The late Bishop Caldwell derived the name Paraiyan from the Tamil word parai a drum, as certain Paraiyans act as drummers at marriages, funerals, village festivals, and on occasions when Government or commercial announcements are proclaimed. Mr. H. A. Stuart, however, seems to question this derivation, remarking49 that “it is only one section of Paraiyans that act as drummers. Nor is the occupation confined to Paraiyans. It seems in the highest degree improbable that a large, and at one time powerful, community should owe its name to an occasional occupation, which one of its divisions shares with other castes. The word Paraiyan is not found in Divākaram, a Tamil dictionary of the eleventh century A.D., and the word Pulayan was then used to denote this section of the population, as it is still in Malayālam to this day.” In the legend of the Saivite saint, Nandan is, in the prose version of the Periya Purānam, called a Pulayan, though a native of Shōlamandalam, which was a distinctly Tamil kingdom. Mr. W. Francis writes50 that “the old Tamil poems and works of the early centuries of the Christian era do not mention the name Paraiyan, but contain many descriptions of a tribe called the Eyinas, who seem to have been quite distinct from the rest of the population, and did not live in the villages, but in forts of their own. Ambūr and Vellore are mentioned as the sites of two of these. They may perhaps have been the ancestors of the Paraiyans of to-day.”