Manchāla (cots).—An exogamous sept of Oddē. The equivalent mancham occurs as a sept of Panta Reddis, the members of which avoid sleeping on cots.
Manchi (good).—An exogamous sept of Padma Sālē and Yānādi.
Mandādan Chetti.—There are at Gudalūr near the boundary between the Nīlgiri district and Malabar, and in the Wynād, two classes called respectively Mandādan Chettis and Wynād Chettis (q.v.).
The following account of the Mandādan Chettis is given in the Gazetteer of the Nīlgiris. “They speak a corrupt Canarese, follow the makkatāyam law of inheritance (from father to son), and seem always to have been natives of the Wynaad. Mandādan is supposed to be a corruption of Mahāvalinādu, the traditional name still applied to the country between Nellakōttai and Tippakādu, in which these Chettis principally reside. These Chettis recognise as many as eight different headmen, who each have names and a definite order of precedence, the latter being accurately marked by the varying lengths of the periods of pollution observed when they die. They are supposed to be the descendants in the nearest direct line of the original ancestors of the caste, and they are shown special respect on public occasions, and settle domestic and caste disputes. Marriages take place after puberty, and are arranged through go-betweens called Madhyastas. When matters have been set in train, the contracting parties meet, and the boy’s parents measure out a certain quantity of paddy (unhusked rice), and present it to the bride’s people, while the Madhyastas formally solicit the approval to the match of all the nearest relatives. The bride is bathed and dressed in a new cloth, and the couple are then seated under a pandal (booth). The priest of the Nambalakōd temple comes with flowers, blesses the tāli, and hands it to the bridegroom, who ties it round the bride’s neck. Sometimes the young man is made to work for the girl as Jacob did for Rachael, serving her father for a period (generally of from one to four years), the length of which is settled by a panchāyat (council). In such cases, the father-in-law pays the expenses of the wedding, and sets up the young couple with a house and some land. Married women are not prohibited from conferring favours on their husbands’ brothers, but adultery outside the caste is severely dealt with. Adoption seems to be unknown. A widow may remarry. If she weds her deceased husband’s brother, the only ceremony is a dinner, after which the happy pair are formally seated on the same mat; but, if she marries any one else, a pandal and tāli are provided. Divorce is allowed to both parties, and divorcées may remarry. In their cases, however, the wedding rites are much curtailed. The dead are usually burnt, but those who have been killed by accidents or epidemics are buried. When any one is at death’s door, he or she is made to swallow a little water from a vessel in which some rice and a gold coin have been placed. The body is bathed and dressed in a new cloth, sometimes music is played and a gun fired, and in all cases the deceased’s family walk three times round the pyre before it is fired by the chief mourner. When the period of pollution is over, holy water is fetched from the Nambalakōd temple, and sprinkled all about the house. These Chettis are Saivites, and worship Bētarāyasvāmi of Nambalakōd, the Airu Billi of the Kurumbas, and one or two other minor gods, and certain deified ancestors. These minor gods have no regular shrines, but huts provided with platforms for them to sit upon, in which lamps are lit in the evenings, are built for them in the fields and jungles. Chetti women are often handsome. In the house they wear only a waist-cloth, but they put on an upper cloth when they venture abroad. They distend the lobes of their ears, and for the first few years after marriage wear in them circular gold ornaments somewhat resembling those affected by the Nāyar ladies. After that period they substitute a strip of rolled-up palm leaf. They have an odd custom of wearing a big chignon made up of plaits of their own hair cut off at intervals in their girlhood.”
Mandādi.—A title of Golla.
Mandai.—An exogamous section of Kallan named after Mandai Karuppan, the god of the village common (Mandai).
Mandha.—Mandha or Mandhala, meaning a village common, or herd of cattle collected thereon, has been recorded as an exogamous sept of Bēdar, Karna Sālē, and Mādiga.
Māndi (cow).—A sept of Poroja.
Māndiri.—A sub-division of Dōmb.
Mandula.—The Mandulas (medicine men) are a wandering class, the members of which go about from village to village in the Telugu country, selling drugs (mandu, medicine) and medicinal powders. Some of their women act as midwives. Of these people an interesting account is given by Bishop Whitehead,[48] who writes as follows. “We found an encampment of five or six dirty-looking huts made of matting, each about five feet high, eight feet long and six feet wide, belonging to a body of Mandalavāru, whose head-quarters are at Masulipatam. They are medicine men by profession, and thieves and beggars by choice. The headman showed us his stock of medicines in a bag, and a quaint stock it was, consisting of a miscellaneous collection of stones and pieces of wood, and the fruits of trees. The stones are ground to powder, and mixed up as a medicine with various ingredients. He had a piece of mica, a stone containing iron, and another which contained some other metal. There was also a peculiar wood used as an antidote against snake-bite, a piece being torn off and eaten by the person bitten. One common treatment for children is to give them tiles, ground to powder, to eat. In the headman’s hut was a picturesque-looking woman sitting up with an infant three days old. It had an anklet, made of its mother’s hair, tied round the right ankle, to keep off the evil eye. The mother, too, had a similar anklet round her own left ankle, which she put on before her confinement. She asked for some castor-oil to smear over the child. They had a good many donkeys, pigs, and fowls with them, and made, they said, about a rupee a day by begging. Some time ago, they all got drunk, and had a free fight, in which a woman got her head cut open. The police went to enquire into the matter, but the woman declared that she only fell against a bamboo by accident. The whole tribe meet once a year, at Masulipatam, at the Sivarātri festival, and then sacrifice pigs and goats to their various deities. The goddess is represented by a plain uncarved stone, about four-and-a-half or five feet high, daubed with turmeric and kunkuma (red powder). The animals are killed in front of the stone, and the blood is allowed to flow on the ground. They believe that the goddess drinks it. They cook rice on the spot, and present some of it to the goddess. They then have a great feast of the rest of the rice and the flesh of the victims, get very drunk with arrack, and end up with a free fight. We noted that one of the men had on an anklet of hair, like the woman’s. He said he had been bitten by a snake some time ago, and had put on the anklet as a charm.”