Description
The authors have prepared the text of this multivolume book. It is the aim of this essay to put in order some facts about the Paraiyans, which he has learned in almost daily intercourse with them since 1892. If the meagerness of these notes is criticized, he can only plead that, so far as he knows, this is the first attempt to give a general account of this people, and that it has been very difficult to gather any but partial information from them or about them. The general outline of this paper is the same as that of the series of questions prepared by Edgar Thurston in connection with the Ethnographic Survey of the Madras Presidency, part of the Ethnographic Survey of India. The table of contents will show the more important headings, under which the facts given are arranged. The index will enable readers to find such matters as are not clearly indicated by the headings of the sections. The anglicised term ?Pariah? is ordinarily applied to all the lowest classes of fieldlabourers, and indeed to most day labourers in the Madras Presidency. It contains leatherworkers, cobblers, weavers of grassmats, the hunting castes, and all the miscellaneous folk who are neither Musalmans, nor included in the regular social system of Hinduism, are often carelessly referred to by this name. But Hindus do not speak in this indiscriminate fashion; by ?Pariah? they mean only the/special Dravidian tribes called, in Tamil, Paraiyan and, in Telugu, Mala to avoid any confusion, the word ?Paraiyan? will be used throughout this paper, to designate the Tamil section of the ?Pariah? class that calls itself, and is called in Tamil, Paraiyan; and his statements will refer to them only. It notices The Paraiyan and the legends of Nandan; and, some agricultural ceremonies in Malabar. It was first published in 1906.
