Goa and the Blue Mountains; or, Six months of sick leave

by Sir Richard Francis Burton

Even in India, the land of ethnologic marvels, there are few races so strange and remarkable in their customs as the people of Malabar. The soil or the climate seems to have exercised some peculiar effect upon its inhabitants: Hindoos as well as Moslems abound in peculiarities unknown to their tenets and practices in other parts of the world. The correctness of our observation will appear in the following sketches of the different castes.

The priesthood of Malabar is at present divided into two great classes; the Numboory, Numoodree or Malabar Brahmans, and the Puttur, or families of the pontifical stock that do not originally belong to the country.

The Numboory is the scion of an ancient and celebrated tree. The well known polemic Sankaracharya belonged to this race; he was born in the village of Kaludee, in the 3501st, or, according to others, the 3100th year of the Kali Yug. His fame rests principally upon his celebrated work, the sixty-four anacharun, or Exceptions to Established Rules, composed for the purpose of regulating and refining the customs of his fellow religionists.[101] No copy of the institutes which have produced permanent effects upon the people exists in Malabar. There is a history of the saint’s life called Sankaracharya Chureedun, containing about seven hundred stanzas, written by a disciple.

The Numboory family is governed by several regulations peculiar to it: only the eldest of any number of brothers takes a woman of his own caste to wife. 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 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. As might be supposed, the birth of female children is considered an enormous evil by these Brahmans; their daughters frequently live and die unmarried, and even when a suitable match has been found for them, their nuptials are seldom celebrated till late in life, owing to the extraordinary expense of the ceremony. Throughout India the marriage of a girl is seldom delayed after her twelfth year; in Malabar, few Numboory women are married before they reach the age of twenty-five or thirty. They are most strictly watched, and all faux pas are punished by a sort of excommunication pronounced by the hereditary Brahman, with the consent of the Rajah. The relations of the female delinquent are also heavily fined, and such mulcts in ancient times formed one of the items of the ruler’s revenue.

There is nothing striking in the appearance of the Numboory. He is, generally speaking, a short, spare man, of a dark olive-coloured complexion, sharp features, and delicate limbs. His toilette is not elaborate; a piece of white cotton cloth fastened round the waist, and a similar article thrown loosely over the shoulders, together with the cord of the twice-born, compose the tout ensemble. These Brahmans are solemn in their manners and deportment, seldom appear in public, and when they do, they exact and receive great respect from their inferiors in caste. A Nair meeting a Numboory must salute him by joining the palms of the hands together, and then separating them three successive times.[102]

The Nairs[103] are a superior class of Shudra, or servile Hindoos, who formerly composed the militia,[104] or landwehr, of Malabar. Before the land-tax was introduced they held estates rent free; the only prestation required from them was personal service; to attend the rajah, or chief, on all official and religious occasions, and to march to battle under his banner. When absent from their homes, they were entitled to a daily subsistence, called Kole. Their arms were sword and shield, spear and matchlock, with a long knife or dagger suspended behind the back by a hook attached to a leathern waistband. Being now deprived of their favourite pastimes—fighting and plundering—they have become cultivators of the soil, and disdain not to bend over the plough, an occupation formerly confined to their slaves. And yet to the present day they retain much of their old military character, and with it the licentiousness which in Eastern countries belongs to the profession of arms. In fact, “war, wine, and women” appear to be the three ingredients of their summum bonum, and forced abstinence from the first, only increases the ardour of their affection for the last two. 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, 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. But the gentleman is not entitled to the privileges of a husband, nor has he any authority over the said matron’s person or property. She is at liberty to make choice of the individual with whom she intends to live—her Bhurtao, as her protector is called, she becoming his Bharya. The connection is termed Goonadoshum, words which literally signify “good and bad,” and imply an agreement between the parties to take each other for better and worse; it cannot be dissolved without the simple process of one party “giving warning” to the other. In former times, the lady used always to reside in her mother’s house, but this uncomfortable practice is now rapidly disappearing.

Another peculiar custom which prevails among the Nairs, is the murroo-muka-tayum,[105] hereditary succession by sisters’ sons; or in case of their failing, by the male nearest in consanguinity from the father’s grandmother. The ancient ordinances of Malabar forbade a Nair to leave his property by will to his offspring, and it was considered unbecoming to treat a son with the affection shown to a nephew. Of late years some heads of families have made a provision for their own children during life time, but it has been necessary to procure the assent of the rightful heirs to bequests thus irregularly made. When property is left to sons, the division follows the general Hindoo law, with two essential points of difference. In the first place, children inherit the estate of the mother only; and, secondly, a daughter is, in certain cases, entitled to preference to a son. Thus, a female can, a male cannot, mortgage or sell land inherited from his maternal progenitor: after his death it must revert to those who were co-heirs with him; and though a man is entitled to the same share as his sister, his right to it continues only as long as they live in the same house.

The origin of this extraordinary law is lost in the obscurity of antiquity. The Brahmans, according to some, were its inventors; others suppose that they merely encouraged and partially adopted it. Its effects, politically speaking, were beneficial to the community at large. The domestic ties, always inconvenient to a strictly military population, were thereby conveniently weakened, and the wealth, dignity, and unbroken unity of interests were preserved for generations unimpaired in great and powerful families, which, had the property been divided among the several branches, according to the general practice of Hinduism, would soon have lost their weight and influence. As it was unnecessary that a woman should be removed from her home, or introduced into a strange family, the eldest nephew on the sister’s side, when he became the senior male member of the household, succeeded, as a matter of course, to the rights, property, and dignity of Karnovun.[106]