134 The Ethnology of India. 
three-year-olds and four-year-olds in Ireland. The Canarese Bani- 
jagas seem to be the chief of the right hand castes, with the lower 
cultivating classes of Hollayers and Kallars under them—while the 
better classes connected with the land appear to be the left hand, with 
the Pariah serfs under them. The Abbé Dubois seems rather to 
reverse this arrangement as respects right and left, but the more recent 
statements are probably the better. The artisans seem to be divided, 
I think that the subject deserves farther inquiry. Possibly these 
factions may represent two different streams of civilisation and domi- 
nation meeting in the south. 
The old dominant tribe of the South Western Coast are the Nairs, 
who seem long to have dominated that country from the Western Ghats. 
These Nairs are the chief people of Malabar and Travancore, and the 
Bunts, who occupy a similar position in Canara, are cognate to them, 
as are the Coorgs above them. They are chiefly notorious for the 
singular custom of polyandry, and the consequent order of succession 
through females. Polyandry is not now universally practised (though 
not uncommon), but the rule of succession through females is at this 
day the actual unvarying law of this people. They are a good-sized 
well-featured race, but rather dark, especially compared to the other 
inhabitants of this Coast. They are not only soldiers and landholders, 
but are also often educated, and are then considered to be remarkably 
good accountants. I have mentioned the prevalence of Bramins in 
this part of India. They seem to get on very well with the Nairs, and 
share the land with them. Indeed, it is said, that the Nair women 
are not always satisfied with their own polyandrical arrangements, 
and that a good deal of Bramin blood has been infused into the Nair 
aristocracy by the channel of female descent. 
There seem to be a considerable number of the Agrestic slaves of 
Malabar, the black aboriginal Chermars, to whom, as well as to the 
Nagadies (if possible still lower), I have already alluded. The re- 
maining important sections of the population of this part of India 
I shall soon come to, but with regard to the effect of immigration 
upon them, I shall class them under the head of Borderers. 
The system of village communities does not prevail on this Western 
Coast. The land is there considered to be the private property, in full 
right, of private landholders who hold separately, more alter a modern 
