Nayar

“ Now that the people of India are inconvenienced with an Arms Act which inhibits sword play of this kind, and with a law system under which high and low are rated alike, the Nāyar has to content himself with an imperious grunt-like shout for the way to be cleared for him as he stalks on imperturbed. ”

“ In dress and habits the caste resembles Nāyars, and they call themselves Nāyars in the south. Many returned their main caste as Nāyar. The females of this caste frequently act as midwives to Nāyars. In North Malabar, the Valinchiyan and Nāsiyan follow the Nāyar system of inheritance, whereas the Nāvidan has inheritance in the male line; but, even amongst the latter, tāli-kettu and sambandham are performed separately by different bridegrooms. In South Malabar the caste generally follows descent in the male line, but in some places the other system is also found. ”

“ Vattakādan. — Recorded as a sub-division of Nāyar, the occupation of which is expressing oil, chiefly for use in temples. Mr. F. Fawcett writes * [1] that, in North Malabar, he has frequently been told by Nāyars of the superior classes that they do not admit the Vattakādans to be Nāyars. ”

“ Cutaneous disorders are never observed except among slaves and the lowest orders, and the Nāyar women are remarkably careful, repeatedly washing with various saponaceous plants to keep their hair and skins from every impurity."The washerman is constantly in requisition. No dirty cloths are ever worn. When going for temple worship, the Nāyar women dress themselves in the tattu form by drawing the right corner of the hind fold of the cloth between the thighs, and fastening it at the back. ”

“ It may be added that Nāyar was also the term used in Malabar for the mahout of an elephant; and the fact that Nāyar and Nāyaka are of the same origin may be considered with the etymology which we have given of Cornac (see Garcia, 85v) .
NALKEE, s. Hind. nālkī. A kind of litter formerly used by natives of rank; the word and thing are now obsolete. ”

“ The sun is an object of universal worship. Though the Gayatri cannot be studied, or the Sandhyavandanam of the Brahmans performed, an offering of water to the sun after a bath, to the accompaniment of some hymn, is made by almost every pious Nāyar. The Panchakshara is learnt from an Ilayatu, and repeated daily. A large portion of the time of an old Nāyar is spent in reading the Rāmayana, Bhagavata and Mahābharata, rendered into Malayālam by Tunchattu Ezhuttachhan, the greatest poet of the Malabar coast. ”

“ H. A. Stuart writes,49 “are a Dravidian caste, or rather a community, for we find several distinct elements with totally different occupations among the people who call themselves by this title. The original Nāyars were undoubtedly a military body, holding lands and serving as a militia, but the present Nāyar caste includes persons who, by hereditary [284] occupation, are traders, artisans, oilmongers, palanquin-bearers, and even barbers and washermen. The fact seems to be that successive waves of immigration brought from the Canarese and Tamil countries different castes and different tribes ”

“ The former is performed by the Nāyars, who attend the festival first, and the latter by Tiyans. In May, all roads lead to Kottiyūr, and towards the middle of the month the ghee pourers, as the Nāyar pilgrims are called, who have spent the previous four weeks in fasting and purificatory rites, assemble in small shrines subordinate to the Kottiyūr temple. ”

“ According to the Brāhman tradition, the Nāyar caste is the result of union between the Nambūdris with Dēva, Gandharva and Rakshasa women introduced by Parasurāma; and this tradition embodies the undoubted fact that the caste by its practice of hypergamy has had a very large infusion of Aryan blood. In origin the Nāyars were probably a race of Dravidian immigrants, who were amongst the first invaders of Malabar, and as conquerors assumed the position of the governing and [285] land-owning class. ”

“ The children in the marumakkatayam family belong, of course, to their mother's family, clan, and caste. They are Nāyars, not Nambūtiris. The Nāyars of North Malabar are held to be superior all along the line, clan for clan, to those of South Malabar, which is divided from the north by the river Korapuzha, seven miles north of Calicut, so that a woman of North Malabar would not unite herself to a man of her own clan name of South Malabar. A Nāyar woman of North Malabar cannot pass northward beyond the frontier; she cannot pass the hills to the eastward ”

“ The Nāyars, who then formed the fighting race, were mostly trained by the Panikkans. In memory of this, the Kalari Panikkans of the northern portions of the State, and of South Malabar, profess even now a preceptorship to the Nāyars, and the Nāyars show them some respect, being present at their marriages and other ceremonies. The Pannikkans say that the Nāyars obtained their kalaris from them. There are still a few among the Panikkans, here and there, fit to teach young men various feats. ”

“ Concerning the religious worship of the Nāyars, Mr. Subramani Aiyar writes that "Buchanan notes that the proper deity of the Nāyars is Vishnu, though they wear the mark of Siva on their foreheads. By this is merely meant that they pay equal reverence to both Siva and Vishnu, being Smartas converted to the tenets of Sankaracharya. Besides worshipping the higher Hindu deities, the Nāyars also manifest their adoration for several minor ones, such as Mātan, Utayam, Yakshi, Chattan, Chantakarnan, Murti, Maruta, and Arukula. ”

“ Even now, among the Nāyars who form the Mahārāja's own Brigade, agriculture, to which they are enabled to attend during all their off-duty days, goes largely to supplement their monthly pay. Various other occupations, all equally necessary for society, have been, according to the Kēralavakasakrama, assigned to the Nāyars, and would seem to have determined their original sub-divisions. They are domestic servants in Brāhman and Kshatriya houses and temples, and deal in dairy-produce, as well as being engaged in copper-sheet roofing, tile-making, pottery, palanquin-bearing, and so on. ”

“ The term son of ten fathers is used as a term of abuse among Nāyars to this day.75 Tīpū Sultān is said to have issued the following proclamation to the Nāyars, on the occasion of his visit to Calicut in 1788. “And, since it is a practice with you for one woman to associate with ten men, and you leave your mothers and sisters unconstrained in their obscene practices, and are thence all born in adultery, and are more shameless in your connections than the beasts of the field ”

“ Munro, in the memorandum written by him in 180266 on the Poligars of the Ceded Districts, [293] when dealing with the cases of a number of Poligars who were direct descendants of men who had been chiefs under the kings of Vijayanagar, calls them throughout his report Naique or Nair, using the two names as if they were identical. Further investigation as to the connection of the Nayars of Malabar with the kingdom of Vijayanagar would, I believe, lead to interesting results. ”

“ Although quite opposed to the spirit of Hindoo law, intoxication and debauchery never degrade a Nair from his caste.
Wedlock can hardly be said to exist among the Nairs. They perform, however, a ceremony called kulleanum, which in other castes implies marriage, [217] probably a relic of the nuptial rite. The Nair woman has a Talee, or necklace, bound round her throat by some fellow-caste man, generally a friend of the family; a procession then ambulates the town, and by virtue thereof the lady takes the title of Ummah, or matron. ”

“ And in that world out of the teeming millions of the Dravidian population, akin perhaps in remote ages to the inhabitants of the South Seas, the nobility are the Nairs. Aristocracy they can hardly perhaps be called with propriety, since they themselves do not claim to rule as being best. Rather they derive their nobility, by their own showing, from the fact that they were deemed worthy by the Aryan priests, whom they acknowledge to be the highest of mankind. The Nairs are a community, rather than a caste or tribe, with powers of assimilation. ”

“ There are several matriarchates still extant in the world, and one of the best known, as well as the most advanced, as far as civilization and culture are concerned, is that of the Nairs, a people of India inhabiting that portion of the country lying between Cape Comorin and Mangalore, and the Ghâts and the Indian Ocean.
The Nairs are described as being the handsomest people in the world; the men being tall, sinewy and extraordinarily agile, while the women are slender and graceful, with perfectly modeled figures. ”

“ When they perceive pariahs, they call out to them, even at a great distance, to get out of their way, and, if any one of these unfortunate people approaches too near a Nair, and through inadvertence touches him, the Nair has a right to murder him, which is looked upon as a very innocent action, and for which no complaint is ever made. It is true that the pariahs have one day in the year when all the Nairs they can touch become their slaves, but the Nairs take such precautions to keep out of the way at the time, that an accident of that kind seldom happens. ”

“ The most important portion of the population is included in the eleven classes of Nairs, [390] a race of pure Sudra caste. They pretend to be born soldiers, and formed the armies of the Zamorin and Cochin Rajahs, the lower castes not being allowed to bear arms. The Nairs now hold most of the land in Malabar, and are frequently very rich. Both the Zamorin of Calicut and the Rajah of Cochin are Nairs ”

“ They live by the chase, and wield some influence over the ruder forest-folk. These hills abound in the great stone monuments (kistvaens and dolmens) which the ancient non-Aryans erected over their dead. The Nairs, or hillmen of South-Western India, still keep up the old system of polyandry, according to which one woman is the wife of several husbands, and a man's property descends not to his own sons, but to his sister's children. This system also appears among the non-Aryan tribes of the Himalayas at the opposite end of India. ”

“ These Nairs live outside the towns separate from other people on their estates which are fenced in. When they go anywhere, they shout to the peasants, that they may get out of the way where they have to pass; and the peasants do so, and, if they did not do it, the Nairs might kill them without penalty. ”

“ She remained in England, with an interval of travel in Italy, till 1898, studying first at King's College, London, then, till her health again broke down, at Girton. She returned to Hyderabad in September 1898, and in the December of that year, to the scandal of all India, broke through the bonds of caste, and married Dr. Naidu. "Do you know I have some very beautiful poems floating in the air," she wrote to me in 1904; "and if the gods are kind I shall cast my soul like a net and capture them, this year. If the gods are kind—and grant me a little measure of health. ”

“ Down to the time of Tippoo the whole of Malabar was governed by the descendants of the sisters of these thirteen Nair chiefs. The Zamorin of Calicut has some influence, though he is much reduced in wealth and importance since the days of Vasco de Gama.
The Nairs live under the remarkable institution called murroo-muka-tayum. Sisters never leave their homes, but [Pg 345] receive visits from male acquaintances, and the brothers go out to other houses, to their lady-loves, but live with their sisters. ”

“ In these kingdoms of Malabar there is another sect of people called nairs, who are the gentry, and have no other duty than to carry on war, and they continually carry their arms with them, which are swords, bows, arrows, bucklers, and lances. They all live with the kings, and some of them with other lords, relations of the king, and lords of the country, and with the salaried governors; and with one another. And no one can be a nair if he is not of good lineage. They are very smart men, and much taken up with their nobility. ”

“ India ink pressed into fantastic shapes, and writing-brushes made of deer’s hair, are carefully tied up in the pilgrim’s wallets, with the famous little Nara ningio, or images carved in wood. The Nara ningios always represent the legendary priests and people who founded Nara, and in these carvings the rural artists display great talent, giving wonderful expression to the tiny faces that are left rough faceted as first chipped off with the knife. ”

“ All the juniors must remain single except when the senior fails in having issue. This life of celibacy became so irksome to the Brahmans that they induced the Nair caste to permit unrestrained intercourse between their females and themselves, it being well understood that the [214] priesthood was conferring an especial honour upon their disciples. Probably in order to please the compliant Shudras the more, the Numboory in many parts of the country changed their regular mode of succession for the inheritance by nephews practised amongst the Nairs. ”

“ It is part of their religion to wash everything daily. My diary contains several pages of details regarding the villages we examined, but these are hardly worth reproducing here. I omit them as I do similar village inquiries made elsewhere, reserving the results for a separate chapter.
“Rangiar Naidu accompanied us to the railway station in the evening, and gave me letters to friends farther on. He is a highly educated man, was at school with Ragunath Rao, and maintains close friendship with him. He is of the Khastriah or military caste, which is not common in the Madras Presidency. ”