Note 67 — V (continued 2)

The Malabar Vēttuvans are summed up by Mr. T. K. Gopal Panikkar67 as being “not exactly slaves, but their social position justifies their classification amongst the slave races. They live on the cocoanut plantations of the Nairs, and other well-to-do classes. They lead a hand-to-hand existence on the wages which they obtain for hedging and fencing cocoanut plantations, plucking cocoanuts, tilling, and other allied work. They live, with their wives and children, and sometimes other relations as well, in houses small but more decent-looking than the mere huts of the other lower classes. In point of caste restrictions they are certainly better circumstanced; and their daily contact with the higher classes in the ordinary concerns of life affords them greater facilities for increased knowledge and civilisation than their brother citizens of the slave races enjoy. They are much addicted to toddy-drinking, but their principal food is rice. Their condition is never so intolerably wretched as that of the other classes. They are sometimes employed by cultivators for agricultural purposes. Their females occupy themselves in the fields during the harvest season, but they also make thatch for houses of cocoanut leaves woven after a set model during the thatching season about December or January. Their males wear ear-rings of brass, and their females adorn themselves with nose, finger, and neck ornaments of brass or beads. The one piece of cloth supplied annually by the masters, to whose plantations they are attached, forms the dress both for males and females, which they tie round their waists. They do not eat carrion, but are exceedingly fond of fish, the flesh of the civet, and the rat, and of some other animals not generally eaten by other classes. They observe death pollution like the higher classes of Malabar, and the period of observance varies according to the particular class or caste, to which their masters belong. For instance, if they belong to a Nair’s plantation, such period is fifteen days, and, if to a Brahmin’s, it is ten days; Nairs and Brahmins observing pollution for these periods respectively. The priests who officiate at their ceremonials are selected from among their own tribesmen or Enangers, whose express recognition is necessary to give validity to the performance of the ceremony. Their marriage customs are very like those of the Tiyyars, excepting that the feasting and revelry are not so pompous in their case. Like the Nairs, they retain the front knot. The only offences of general occurrence among them are petty cases of theft of cocoanuts, plantains, areca nuts, and roots of common occurrence. The Vettuvans believe in a Supreme Creator, whom they name and invoke as Paduchathampuram, i.e., the king who created us. Likewise, they believe in certain evil deities, to whom they make offerings at particular times of the year. They are not, like the other classes, distinguished by loyalty to their masters, but are a very ungrateful sect, and their very name, viz., Nambu Vettuvan, has passed into a bye-word for ingratitude of all kinds.”