Mandādan Chetti
This article is an excerpt from Government Press, Madras |
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.”
