Pasupula (turmeric).—Pasula or Pasupula is an exogamous sept of Bōya and Dēvanga. Pasupulēti occurs as a sub-division of Balija. See Arashina.
Patābonka.—A sub-division of Bonka.
Pātāli.—An occupational name applied to priests of temples and bhūthasthanas (devil shrines), and Stānikas in South Canara.
Pātha (old).—A sub-division of Īdiga, and a sept of Togata.
Pathanchitannāya (green pea sept).—An exogamous sept of Bant.
Pathi (cotton).—A sub-division of Kurubas, who use a wrist-thread made of cotton and wool mixed during the marriage ceremony. Also an exogamous sept of Gūdala and Padma Sālē.
Pathinettan.—The Pathinettan or eighteen are carpenters in Malabar, who “are said to be the descendants of the smiths who remained to attend to the repairs to the eighteen temples, when the rest of the community fled to Ceylon, as related in the tradition of the origin of the Tiyans”.[83]
Paththar.—A section of Saivite Chettis, who wear the lingam, and have separated from the Acharapākam Chettis. They bury their dead in a sitting posture. A bamboo stick is tied to the kudumi (hair-knot) of the corpse, and the head pulled by its means towards the surface of the grave. Paththar is also a name given to goldsmiths by other castes.
Patnaik.—A title of Karnam.
Patnūlkāran.—The Patnūlkārans are described, in the Madras Census Report, 1901, as “a caste of foreign weavers found in all the Tamil districts, but mainly in Madura town, who speak Patnūli or Khatri, a dialect of Gujarāti, and came originally from Gujarāt. They have always been known here as Patnūlkārans, or silk thread people. They are referred to in the inscriptions of Kumāra Gupta (A.D. 473) at Mandasōr, south of Gujarāt, by the name of Pattavāyaka, which is the Sanskrit equivalent of Patnūlkāran, and the sāsanam of Queen Mangammāl of Madura, mentioned below, speaks of them by the same name, but lately they have taken to calling themselves Saurāshtras from the Saurāshtra country from which they came. They also claim to be Brāhmans. They thus frequently entered themselves in the schedules as Saurāshtra Brāhmans. They are an intelligent and hard-working community, and deserve every sympathy in the efforts which they are making to elevate the material prosperity of their members and improve their educational condition, but a claim to Brāhmanhood is a difficult matter to establish. They say that their claim is denied because they are weavers by profession, which none of the Southern Brāhmans are, and because the Brāhmans of the Tamil country do not understand their rites, which are the northern rites. The Mandasōr inscriptions, however, represent them as soldiers as well as weavers, which does not sound Brāhmanical, and the Tamil Brāhmans have never raised any objections to the Gauda Brāhmans calling themselves such, different as their ways are from those current in the south. In Madura their claim to Brāhmanhood has always been disputed. As early as 1705 A.D. the Brāhmans of Madura called in question the Patnūlkarans’ right to perform the annual upākarma (or renewal of the sacred thread) in the Brāhman fashion. [Eighteen members of the community were arrested by the Governor of Madura for performing this ceremony.] The matter was taken to the notice of the Queen Mangammāl, and she directed her State pandits to convene meetings of learned men, and to examine into it. On their advice, she issued a cadjān (palm leaf) sāsanam (grant) which permitted them to follow the Brāhmanical rites. But all the twice-born—whether Brāhmans, Kshatriyas, or Vaisyas—are entitled to do the same, and the sāsanam establishes little. The Patnūls point out that, in some cases, their gōtras are Brāhmanical. But, in many instances which could be quoted, Kshatriyas had also Brāhmanical gōtras.”