SECTION OF THE NAIRS OF MALABAR, WHO ARE THE GENTRY, AND THEIR CUSTOMS.
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. They do not associate with any peasant, and neither eat nor drink except in the houses of other nairs. These people accompany their lords day and night; little is given them for eating and sleeping, and for serving and doing their duty; and frequently they sleep upon a bare bench to wait for the person whom they serve, and sometimes they do not eat more than once a day; and they have small expenses for they have little pay. Many of them content themselves with about two hundred maravedis[221] each month for themselves and the servant that attends to them. These are not married nor maintain women or children; their nephews the sons of their sisters are their heirs. The nair women are all accustomed to do with themselves what they please with bramans or nairs, but not with other people of lower class under pain of death. After they are ten or twelve years old or more, their mothers perform a marriage ceremony for them in this manner. They advise the relations and friends that they may come to do honour to their daughters, and they beg some of their relations and friends to marry these daughters, and they do so. It must be said they have a small gold jewel made, which will contain half a ducat of gold, a little shorter than the tag of a lace, with a hole in the middle passing through it, and they string it on a thread of white silk; and the mother of the girl stands with her daughter very much dressed out, entertaining her with music and singing, and a number of people. And this relation or friend of hers comes with much earnestness, and there performs the ceremony of marriage, as though he married with her, and they throw a gold chain round the necks of both of them together, and he puts the above mentioned jewel round her neck, which she always has to wear as a sign that she may now do what she pleases.[222] And the bridegroom leaves her, and goes away without touching her nor having more to say to her, on account of being her relation; and if he is not so, he may remain with her if he wish it, but he is not bound to do so if he do not desire it. And from that time forward the mother goes begging some young men, "que le desvirguen aquella hija, porque lo an entre sy por cosa sucia y casi vileza a desvirgar mugeres." And after she is already a woman the mother goes about seeking who will take her daughter to live with him. But when she is very pretty three or four nairs join together and agree to maintain her, and to live all of them with her; and the more she has the more highly is she esteemed, and each man has his appointed day from mid-day till next day at the same hour, when the other comes; and so she passes her life without anyone thinking ill of it. And he who wishes to leave her, does so whenever he pleases, and goes to take another. And if she takes a dislike to any of them she dismisses him. The children which she has remain at the expense of the mother and of the brothers of the mother, who bring them up, because they do not know the fathers, and even if they should appear to belong to any persons in particular, they are not recognised by them as sons, nor do they give anything for them. And it is said that the kings made this law in order that the nairs should not be covetous, and should not abandon the king's service.[223] These nairs, besides being all of noble descent, have to be armed as knights by the hand of the king, or lord with whom they live, and until they have been so equipped they cannot bear arms nor call themselves nairs, but they enjoy the freedom and exemption and advantages of the nairs in many things. In general when these nairs are seven years of age they are immediately sent to school to learn all manner of feats of agility and gymnastics for the use of their weapons. First they learn to dance, and then to tumble, and for that purpose they render supple all their limbs from their childhood, so that they can bend them in any direction. And after they have exercised in this, they teach them to manage the weapons which suit each one most. That is to say bows, clubs, or lances; and most of them are taught to use the sword and buckler, which is of more common use among them. In this fencing there is much agility and science. And there are very skilful men who teach this art, and they are called Panicars;[224] these are captains in war. These nairs when they enlist to live with the king, bind themselves and promise to die for him; and they do likewise with any other lord from whom they receive pay. This law is observed by some and not by others; but their obligation constrains them to die at the hands of anyone who should kill the king or their lord: and some of them so observe it; so that if in any battle their lord should be killed, they go and put themselves in the midst of the enemies who killed him, even should those be numerous, and he alone by himself dies there: but before falling he does what he can against them; and after that one is dead another goes to take his place, and then another: so that sometimes ten or twelve nayrs die for their lord. And even if they were not present with him when he was killed, they go and seek him who killed him, or the king who ordered him to be killed: and so one by one they all die. And if anyone is in apprehension of another man, he takes some of these nairs, as many as he pleases, into his pay; and they accompany and guard him; and on their account he goes securely, since no one dares to molest him; because if he were molested they and all their lineage would take vengeance on him who should cause this molestation. These guards are called Janguada:[225] and there are some people who sometimes take so many of these nairs, and of such quality, that on their account they no longer fear the king, who would not venture to command the execution of a man who was guarded by these, in order not to expose many nairs to danger for it. And even if the nairs were not in his company when the man they guard was killed, they would not any the less revenge his death.
These nayrs live outside the towns, separate from other people, on their estates which are fenced in. They have there all that they require; they do not drink wine. 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 nayrs might kill them without penalty. If a young man of family who is very poor meets a rich and respectable peasant, one favoured by the king, he makes him get out of the road in the same manner, as if he were a king. These nayrs have great privileges in this matter, and the nayr women even greater with the peasants, and the nairs with the peasant women. This, they say, is done to avoid all opportunity of mixing their blood with that of peasants. And if a peasant were by misfortune to touch a nayr lady, her relations would immediately kill her and likewise the man that touched her, and all his relations. When these nayrs order any work to be done by the peasants, or buy anything of them which they take, being between man and man, they are not exposed to any other penalty on touching one another than the not being able to enter their houses without first washing themselves and changing their clothes for others that are clean. And likewise as regards the nair women and the peasant women: these practices are more observed in the country.
No nair woman ever enters the towns under pain of death except once a year, when they may go for one night with their nayrs wherever they like. On that night more than twenty thousand nair women enter Calicut to see the town, which is full of lamps in all the streets, which the inhabitants set there to do honour to the nairs, and all the streets are hung with cloth. And the nair women come in to see the houses of their friends and of their husbands, and there they receive presents and entertainment, and are invited to eat betel: and it is held to be a great politeness to receive it from friends. Some of them come wrapped up,[226] and others uncovered; and the women relations of the kings and great lords come also to see the city on this night, and to walk about it, looking at the property of the great merchants, from whom they receive presents, in order that they may favour them with the king.
Those nayrs whom the king has received as his, he never dismisses however old they may be; on the contrary, they always receive their pay and rations, and he grants favours to whoever has served well. And if some years should pass without their being paid, some four or five hundred of the aggrieved rise up, and go in a body to the palace, and send word to the king that they are going away dismissed, to take service with another king, because he does not give them food. Then the king sends to beg them to have patience, and that he will send and pay them immediately. And if he does not immediately give them a third part of what is due, and an order for the payment of the rest, they go away to another king, wherever it appears to them that they can best suit themselves; and they engage with him, and he receives them willingly, and gives them food for thirteen days before he has them enrolled for pay. And during this time this king sends to inquire of their king if he intends to send and pay them; and if he does not pay them, then he receives them in his pay, and gives them the same allowances which they had in their own country, from which and from their king in such a case they remain disnaturalized. And many undertake, but few perform this, because their king grants them a remedy, and holds it to be a great disgrace should they go away.
"When these nayrs go to the wars their pay is served out to them every day as long as the war lasts; it is four taras per day each man, which are worth five maravedis each,[227] with which they provide for themselves. And during the time that they are at war, they may touch any peasant, and eat and drink with them in their houses, without any penalty. And the king is obliged to maintain the mother and family of any nayr who may die in the war, and those persons are at once written down for their maintenance. And if these nayrs are wounded, the king has them cured at his expense, besides their pay, and has food given them all their lives, or until they are cured of their wounds.
These nayrs show much respect to their mothers,[228] and support them with what they gain, because besides their allowances, most of them possess houses and palm trees and estates, and some houses let to peasants, which have been granted by the king to them or to their uncles, and which remain their property. They also have much respect for their elder sisters, whom they treat as mothers. And they do not enter into a room with those that are young girls, nor touch them nor speak to them, saying that it would give occasion to sin with them, because they are younger and have less understanding, which could not happen with the elder ones, on account of the respect they have for them. These nair women every month set themselves apart in their houses for three days without approaching anyone; at which time a woman has to prepare her food in separate pots and pans. And when the three days are ended, she bathes with hot water which is brought there, and after bathing dresses in clean clothes, and so goes out of the house to a pool of water and bathes again, and again leaves those clean clothes, and takes other fresh ones, and so returns home, and talks with her mother and sisters and the other people. And the room where she was for those three days is well swept and wetted, and plastered with cow dung, because otherwise no one would dwell there. These women when they are confined, three days afterwards are washed with hot water, and after getting up from their confinement they bathe many times each day from head to foot. They do no business, eat the bread of idleness, and only get their food to eat by means of their bodies: because besides each one having three or four men who provide for them, they do not refuse themselves to any braman or nayr who pays them. They are very clean and well dressed women, and they hold it in great honour to know how to please men. They have a belief amongst them that the woman who dies a virgin does not go to paradise.[229]
SECTION OF THE BRABARES WHO ARE MERCHANTS OF THE KINGDOM OF MALABAR, OF THEIR CUSTOMS AND SECT.
In this kingdom of Calicut, and in all the other Malabar kingdoms, there is a sect of gentile merchants who are called amongst them brabares, who trafficked also before foreign persons came to port or navigated in these seas. These still deal, especially in the interior, in all sorts of goods, and collect all the pepper and ginger from the nayrs and cultivators, and frequently buy them in advance in exchange for cotton stuffs, and other goods which come from beyond the sea. These people are also great changers, and gain much upon coin. They enjoy such freedom in this country that the kings cannot sentence them to death, but the chief men of these brabares assemble together in council, and having arrived at the knowledge that the offender deserves death, they kill him, the king having information thereof: and if the king knows first of the offence before them, he informs them of it, and they kill him with dagger or lance thrusts. For the most part they are very rich people, and possess in the country many estates inherited from old times. They marry only one wife in our fashion, and their sons are their immediate heirs; and when they die their bodies are burned, and their wives accompany the body weeping for him: and she takes from her neck a small gold jewel which he gave her when he married her, and she throws it into the fire upon him, and then returns to her house, and never more can be married, however young she may be. And if she were to die before her husband he has her burned, and may marry again.