Part of the peoples here alluded to as practising polyandry on the Malabar coast, are called Nair,. Dr. Buchanan, writing regarding their social customs and the result(' (ruin dna praetice of polyandry in his time, states that they marry before they are ten years of age, but the husband never afterwards cohabits with his wife. Such e circumstance, indeed, would be considered as vi ry indecent. Ile allows her oil, clothing, or:laments, and food ; but she lives in her mother's house, and after her parents' death, with her brothers, and cohabits with any person that she chooses of an equal or higher rank Bum her own. If de tected associating with tiny man of low caste, she becomes an out-caste. It is no kind of reflection on a woman's character to ray that she has formed the closest intimacy with many persons; on the contrary, the Nair women are proud of reckoning among their favoured lovers many Brahmans, rajas, and other persons of high birth. In con sequence of this, no Nair knows his father; every man looks upon his sister's children as his heirs, and it is not easy to see the inducement to tho Nair to many, as he has the burden without any of the enjoy ments of wedded life. But this legal or authorized practice mutt have its check in the social or natural state of Man, which, as of most creatures, is one of true monogamy ; and proof of this, and yet also of the lateral descent law, is furnished by the account given of the death of a raja of Travancore, who in 18Cti died of a decline at the age of 46, after a reign of thirteen years. lie had been much affected by the death of a lady of his family, and made a pilgrimage to several shrines, practising great austerities and fastings. His medical attendants (native and European) warned him of the risk in his feeble health, hut he persevered, and sank of exhaustion and weakness. He took an affec tionate leave of his family, and showed Iris solici tude for his people by requesting that the custom of shutting the shops for fifteen (lays when a raja dies, might be dispensed with on this occasion, on account of the dearth and distress from which the people were then suffering. On account of the imbecility of the first nephew,—sister's son,— the second nephew had long been acknowledged as the first prince by the family and the British Government, and then ascended the throne.
The royal family of Travancore seem, however, . in 1883 to be recognising their own children ; for three daughters of the maharaja Hama Vanua were married on the 18th May with great pomp, all the great officers of the State joining in the marriage procession. Behind them came Nair ladies decked with jewels, and wearing jessamine wreaths. Each of these carried in her left hand a silver salver containing rice, a piece of folded silk, a red little box with red powder, and two green balls. Behind these. Tanjore nautch After them came young Nair women dressed in kimkhah, with jewels from head to foot, sonic in Tanjore fashion, and others in the fashion of the Malayali. After them Nair ladies of Trevandrum, gorgeously dressed, with various kinds of jewels, and with roses and jeksamines in their hair. After these were three elephants in a row, richly capar isoned, and with golden head-ornaments, and with howdahs, in each of which was seated the bride groom, dressed alike in kimkhabs. with brilliant ear-rings, gold chains with diamond pendants, and with gold bangles set with precious stones given by the maharaja to his sons-in-law. The bride grooms had all of them a sword in their right hand and umbrella-bearers behind. Numerous other elephants then followed.
As this custom is of interest ethnologically, the following description of it is given. Kookel
Keloo, Nair, district munsiff in Malabar (Madras Lit. Soc. Jour. No. 48, p. 52, 1859), says the Eeyoover or Teeyer (toddy-drawers) are a section of the servile class of people who, during the time of the Brahmans and Perumals, came to Malabar from Ceylon to earn their livelihood. It cannot, however, be accounted for, how they in many parts, though not throughout the whole of Malabar, came to adopt the beastly custom of the Kummaler of the country, of a single girl being married to three and four brothers ; and likewise, in some parts of the country, where this sad cus tom is not so generally prevalent among them, the practice of taking their deceased brothers' widows for wives as the Musalman Mopilla do. It is only in the taluks of Nidunganad, Kut tanad, Chowghat, and some parts of Vettutnad, and a few adjoining spots in South Malabar alone, that a woman among the Nair is kept at the same time by two or three different men, who are, though, never brothers. It is, though, very pos sible that the Teeyer may have taken the idea from this latter error, and themselves fallen into the other and more shameful one ; or perhaps they observe the custom, as they in general are, as a document in its beginning shoWs, sprung from the Kummaler or the Kummalers from them, through their then frequent intermarriages. The document calls them also Eeyoovahaiyer, a word equally low and contemptuous in Malabar, and of the same meaning as the word Kummaler. More over, amongst the Nair of the whole of North Malabar (that is to say, from part of Cooroom branad as far as Mangalore), though sometimes unchaste practices occur in their families, yet I can, he says, most confidently assert that the above abominable custom of one woman being kept by two or three men at the same time, never in ancient or modern times was once known. A Nair there will, though, occasionally marry two or three women in succession, if the first or second prove barren, or all the children born die, Or from any other like cause or domestic difference. Many of the Teeyers also of that part of the country do in some measure follow the custom of the Nairs ; but the Teyettees (Teeyer women) of the remaining Teeyers there are notorious harlots, and become the concubines of strangers of any caste or religion, and this without the least preju dice to their own caste, or any loss of esteem in society ; on the other hand, any such act proved against any females of the other castes, subjects the person to excommunication from caste, banish ment from society, and all religious advantages. The Teeyer females of South Malabar do not, though, so readily as those of the north, yield themselves to this disgraceful practice. Owing to the very great number of castes, and the peculiar and different manners and customs of various parts of the country, the superficial inquiries of most foreigners have led them into error, and in their works they generally ascribe the same per nicious practices to all castes and parts of the country indiscriminately. However, the Nairs, Teeyers, and indeed all the other ittimerous castes of Malabar (including the Cochin and Travancore countries, these being indeed the most striking in this respect), are in some way or other in a greater or less degree of error; and reformation there fore is indeed much needed among them all. It is, though, very lamentable to find them dormant in their original state of depression, and not seek ing for reformation rather than growing blindly proud of their vain and different castes and privi leges, and ready to run any risk, even that of hazarding their lives, only to preserve their castes.