# Castes and Tribes of Southern India/Nāyādi

​Nāyādi.—In the Malabar Manual, the Nāyādis are briefly summed up as follows. "Of the Nāyādis, or lowest caste among the Hindus — the dog-eaters — nothing definite is known. They are most persistent in their clamour for charity, and will follow at a respectful distance, for miles together, any person walking, driving, or boating. If anything is given to them, it must be laid down, and, after the person offering it has proceeded a sufficient distance, the recipient comes timidly forward,and removes it."
The subjects, whom I examined and measured at Shoranūr, though living only about three miles off, had, by reason of the pollution which they traditionally carry with them, to avoid walking over the long bridge which spans the river, and follow a circuitous route of many miles. Eventually they had to climb, or be ignominiously hoisted over the wall of the Bungalow. Ignorant of the orthodox manner of using a chair, the first victim of the craniometer, who had to sit while his head was under examination, assumed the undignified position with which Eton boys who have been swished are familiar. Measurements concluded, men, women, and children sat down on the grass to an ample feast. And, before they departed homeward, copious blessings were invoked on me, to a chorus composed of the repetition of a single shrill note, not unlike that of the first note of a jackal cry. To quote the newspaper account of my doings, which refers to the 'monograms' issued by me on matters ethnological: " In the evening the kind gentleman gave them a sumptuous treat of canji and curry, and gave them also copper coins, toddy, and arrack. The poor people left the place immensely pleased, and were safely escorted to the British side of the river from the Cochin territory."
NĀYĀDIS
The name Nāyādi is equivalent to Nāyattukar, i.e., hunter. The Nāyādis are, in fact, professional hunters, and are excellent shots. The Nāyars, and other higher classes, used formerly to take them with them on hunting and shooting expeditions. But, since the Arms Act came into force, the Nāyādis find this occupation gone. They are also good archers, and used to kill deer, pigs, hares, etc., and eat them. These animals are now difficult to get, as the forests are reserved by Government, and private forests are denuded of their trees for use as fuel, and for house-building by a growing population, and for consumption on the railway. The suggestion has been made that the name Nāyādi is derived from the fact of their eating otters, which live in hill streams, and are called nir-nai (water-dog).
The approach of a Nāyādi within a distance of three hundred feet is said to contaminate a Brāhman, who has to bathe and put on a new sacred thread, to cleanse himself "of the pollution. The Nāyādis, in fact, hold the ​lowest position in the social scale, and consequently-labour under the greatest disadvantage.
The Nāyādis live mostly in isolated huts on the tops of hills, and generally select a shōla, or glade, where there is a pond or stream. Some families live on the land of their landlords, whose crops they watch by night, to guard them against the attacks of wild beasts. Sometimes they are engaged in ploughing, sowing, weeding, transplanting, and reaping, the rice crop, or in plantain (banana) gardens. I take exception to the comparison by a recent author of the British Empire to the banana (Musa) throwing out aerial roots. The banyan (Ficus bengalensis) must have been meant.
The male members of the community are called Nāyādis, and the females Nāyādichis. The boys are called Molayans, and the young girls Manichis. Succession is in the male line (makkathāyam).
A thatched shed with palm-leaf walls, a few earthen pots, and a chopper, constitute the Nāyādi's property. He occasionally collects honey and bees-wax, and also the gum (matti pasai) from the mattipāl tree (Ailanthus malabarica), which, when burnt, is used as temple incense and for fumigating the bed-chamber. He receives toddy in exchange for the honey and wax, and copper coins for the gum, with which he purchases luxuries in the shape of salt, chillies, dried fish, tobacco, and liquor. He makes rough ropes from the malanar plant, and the bark of the kayyūl tree (Baukinia).The bark is soaked in water, sundried, and the fibre manufactured into rope. He also makes slings of fibre, wherewith he knocks over birds, and mats from a species of Cyperus.
According to custom, the Nāyādi has to offer four ropes, each eight yards long, to every Nambūtiri illam, ​and two ropes to every Nāyar house near his settlement, on the occasion of the Vishu and Ōnam festivals. In return he receives a fixed measure of paddy (rice). The ropes are used for tethering cattle, and for drawing water from the well. By a wise dispensation of the ancient local chieftains, to each Nāyādi is assigned a desom (portion of a parish), within which he enjoys certain privileges. And no Nāyādi has any business to poach on his preserves. The privileges are these. On birthdays, anniversaries, and festive occasions, the Nāyādi receives his share of curry and rice, tied up in an old cloth. When a person is sick, a black country-made kambli (blanket), with gingelly (Sesamum), mustard, turmeric, and cocoanut tied up in the four corners, is passed three times over the patient and presented to a Nāyādi, together with a palm umbrella, a stick, and a cucumber. This is called kala-dhānam, or offering to Yama, the god of death, whose attack has to be warded off by propitiatory offerings. The Nāyādi accepts the gifts, and prays for the long life and prosperity of the giver. Placing them before his own family god, he prays that the life of the sick person may be spared, and that the disease may not be transferred to him.
Like the Cherumans, the Nāyādis drink, but they cannot afford to buy as much toddy as the former, for the Cheruman works regularly for a daily wage. Monkeys, which are very troublesome in gardens, are shot down by the higher classes, and given to the Nāyādis to eat. Their dietary includes rats, mungooses, pigs, deer, paraquets, the koel (cuckoo), doves, quails, fowls, paddy-birds, hares, tortoises, Varanus (lizard), crocodiles, and fish. They abstain from eating the flesh of dogs, cats, snakes, land-crabs, shell-fish, and beef. Among vegetables, the tubers of yams (Dioscorea) and Colocasia are included. ​They produce fire by friction with two sticks of Litsœa sebifera, in the shorter of which a cavity is scooped out. They do not, like the Todas, put powdered charcoal in the cavity, but ignite the cloth rag by means of the red-hot wood dust produced by the friction.
When a woman is pregnant, she craves for the flesh of a monkey or jungle squirrel during the sixth month. During the seventh month, a ceremony is performed, to relieve her of the influence of devils, who may be troubling her. It is called ozhinnukalayuka. Abortion is attributed to the malign influence of evil spirits. To ward off this, they tie round the neck a magic thread, and invoke the aid of their hill gods and the spirits of their ancestors. They erect a special hut for delivery, to which the woman retires. When she is in labour, her husband shampooes his own abdomen, while praying to the gods for her safe delivery — a custom which seems to suggest the couvade. As soon as his wife is delivered, he offers thanks to the gods "for having got the baby out." The woman observes pollution for ten days, during which her husband avoids seeing her. Any deformity in the child is attributed to the evil influence of the gods. On the twenty-eighth day after birth, the ceremony of naming the child takes place. The name given to the first-born son is that of the paternal grandfather, and to the first-born daughter that of the maternal grandmother. In the fifth year, the ear-boring ceremony takes place, and the operation is performed by the child's uncle. A piece of brass wire takes the place of ear-rings. Girls wear a plug of wood in the lobes. The Nāyādichis do not, like the Cheruman women, wear bracelets, but have many rows of beads round their necks, and hanging over their bosoms.
When a girl reaches puberty, a Nāyādichi leads her to a tank (pond), in which she bathes, after a ​pāndi, composed of several pieces of plantain leaf tied together, has been carried three or four times round her. She must not touch any utensils, and must abstain from touching her head with the hand, and, if the skin itches, the body must be scratched with a small stick.
Concerning a very interesting form of marriage, Mr. T. K. Gopal Panikkar writes as follows.* "A large hut is constructed of 'holly' and other leaves, inside which the girl is ensconced. Then all the young men and women of the village gather round the hut, and form a ring about it. The girl's father, or the nearest male relative, sits a short distance from the crowd, with a tom-tom in his hands. Then commences the music, and a chant is sung by the father, which has been freely translated as follows: —
    Take the stick, my sweetest daughter,
    Now seize the stick, my dearest love.
    Should you not capture the husband you wish for.
    Remember, 'tis fate decides whom you shall have.
"All the young men, who are eligible for marriage, arm themselves with a stick each, and begin to dance round the hut, inside which the bride is seated. This goes on for close on an hour, when each of them thrusts his stick inside the hut through the leafy covering. The girl has then to take hold of one of these sticks from the inside, and the owner of the stick which she seizes becomes the husband of the concealed bride. This ceremony is followed up by feasting, after which the marriage is consummated."
A photograph by Mr. F. Fawcett shows a young man with a ring hanging round his neck, as a sign that he was ​still unattached. But he was soon about to part with it, for a present of a rupee enabled him to find a girl, and fix up a marriage, within two days.
Adultery is regarded with abhorrence, and there is a belief that those who are guilty of it are liable to be attacked by wild beasts or demons. On the occasion of the marriage of a divorced woman's son or daughter, the mother attends the festivities, if she receives a cordial invitation from her children. But she does not look her former husband straight in the face, and returns to her home the same evening.
NĀYĀDIS MAKING FIRE.
manner they are purified. Some time during the seventh month after death, according to another account, the grave, in which the corpse has been buried, is dug up, and the bones are carefully collected, and spread out on a layer of sticks arranged on four stones placed at the corners of a pit. The bones are then covered with more sticks, and the pile is lighted. The partially burnt bones are subsequently collected by the eldest son of the deceased, and carried to the hut in a new pot, which is tied to a branch of a neighbouring tree. This rite concluded, he bathes, and, on his return, the adiyanthiram (death ceremony) day is fixed. On this day, the eldest son removes the pot, and buries it by the side of a stream, near which a heap of sand is piled up. On this all the agnates pour water three times, prostrate themselves before it, and disperse. The ceremony is brought to a close with a square meal. Some time ago an old Nāyādi, who had the reputation of being a good shot, died. His son obtained a handful of gunpowder from a gun-license holder, and set fire to it near the grave, with a view to satisfying the soul of the deceased.
The chief gods of the Nāyādis are Mallan, Malavazhi, and Parakutti, to whom offerings of toddy, rice, and the flesh of monkeys are made. Parakutti it is who aids them in their hunting expeditions, bringing the game to them, and protecting them from wild beasts. If they do not succeed in bagging the expected game, they abuse him.
The Nāyādis are also ancestor worshippers, and keep representations of the departed, to which offerings ​of rice and toddy are made during the Ōnam, Vishu, and other festivals. Beneath a mango tree in a paramba (garden) were forty-four stones set up in a circle round the tree. One of the stones was a beli-kal (beli stone), such as is placed round the inner shrines of temples. The remainder resembled survey stones, but were smaller in size. The stones represented forty-four Nāyādis, who had left the world. On the ceremonial occasions referred to above, a sheep or fowl is killed, and the blood allowed to fall on them, pūja (worship) is performed, and solemn prayers are offered that the souls of the departed may protect them against wild beasts and snakes. A Nāyādi asserted that, if he came across a tiger, he would invoke the aid of his ancestors, and the animal would be rendered harmless.
Whenever the Nāyādis labour under any calamity or disease, they consult the Parayan astrologer. And, when a woman is possessed by devils, the Parayan is summoned. He is furnished with a thread and some toddy. Muttering certain prayers to Parakutti and other deities, he ties the thread round the woman's neck, drinks the toddy, and the devil leaves her. When a person is believed to be under the influence of a devil or the evil eye, salt, chillies, tamarind, oil, mustard, cocoanut, and a few pice (copper coins) in "a vessel are waved thrice round the head of the affected individual, and given to a Nāyādi, whose curse is asked for. There is this peculiarity about a Nāyādi's curse, that it always has the opposite effect. So, when he is asked to curse one who has given him alms, he does so by invoking misery and evil upon him. By the Nāyādi money is called chembu kāsu (copper coin), food elamāttam (exchange of leaves), and having no food nakkān illa (nothing to lick on). As a protection against ​snake-bite, the Nāyādis wear a brass toe-ring. And, when engaged in catching rats in their holes, they wear round the wrist a snake-shaped metal ring, to render them safe against snakes which may be concealed in the hole.
The Nāyādis who live within the jurisdiction of the Kavalapāra Nāyar near Shoranūr wear the kudumi (front lock of hair), as there are no Māppillas (Muhammadans) to molest them. The Kavalapāra Nāyar was at one time an important chief, and directed all Nambūtiri jenmis (landlords) who held land within his jurisdiction to bind themselves not to let the land to Māppillas. Nāyādis of other parts are not allowed by the Māppillas to wear the kudumi, and, if they do so, they are taken for Parayans and professional sorcerers, and beaten.
Some Nāyādis have become converts to Christianity, others to Muhammadanism, and maintain themselves by begging for alms from Muhammadans. They are called Thoppyitta (cap-wearing) Nāyādis.
The priest of the Nāyādis is called Mūppan. His appointment is hereditary, and he enquires into all matters affecting the community, and can excommunicate a guilty person.*
Average height, 155 cm.; nasal index, 86.
* ↑ * Malabar and its Folk.
* ↑ * Malabar and its Folk.
* ↑ * This note is based mainly on articles by Mr. S. Appadorai Aiyar and Mr, L. K. Anantha Krishna Aiyar.