The Ethnology of India. 131 
people and language is ‘“‘ Arabee,”’ but I have been unable to trace 
the origin or derivation of that name. There are some vague tradi- 
tions of former Arab conquest in those parts, but I have not been 
able to connect them with the Canarese name. The language is 
certainly, like the other languages of the South of India, Dravidian 
with Sanscrit super-imposed, but it is an undoubted fact (as we shall 
see when we come to the Western Coast) that a succession of immi- 
grations has occurred there, and one of them seems to a considerable 
extent to have flowed over into the Canarese country. Perhaps still 
more ancient immigrations may have flowed farther, and it might be 
well worth while minutely to inquire whether any Himyaritic or 
Hegyptian importations can be traced in the Canarese tongue. 
In the Tamul country there is little suspicion of Western blood. 
The dominant tribe is of a very decided Northern character, while 
the mass of the lower classes is probably more aboriginal than in 
any other part of India. Consequently most of the Tamul people 
are small and black, and there seem to be among them frequent 
traces of aboriginal features. 
The superior agricultural class, owning and cultivating most of the 
land and in possession of many chiefships, &. are the ‘ Vellallers,” 
a people of whom their own traditions of immigration from the North, 
coupled with their laws and institutions, leave in my mind no doubt 
that they belong to the class of later democratic tribes. Much has 
been done to dissolve the old communal system, but the early descrip- 
tions of Vellaller villages, their apportionment of the lands and mode 
of self-government are exactly such as would describe a Jat village 
of the present day. 
The term Vellaller, like the Canarese Wokul, seems to be used to 
express a cultivator of the soil, in fact may be translated zemindar 
or cultivator, just as “Jat” is synonymous with zemindar in the 
Punjab. Whether the Vellallers are directly connected with the 
Velmas of the Telagoo country or with the Bellalla Rajas (who, 
ruling in the Canarese country, carried their arms into the south), I 
am unable to say. They appear to burn their dead, but are Hindus 
of the looser sort in their religious observances, and in their rules 
respecting marriage, &c. Like most of these tribes, they do not 
ordinarily marry more than one wife, unless the first fails to bring 
