136 The Ethnology of India. 
pushed far ahead of their base of operations, possibly their baggage 
and most of their women had been cut off, and being left with a scant 
supply of wives in their new settlements, they may have adopted the 
present arrangement. Yet it seems one which has little to recom- 
mend it to permanence. The extraordinary thing then is, that it 
appears that in some parts of the Malabar Coast, parts of other tribes 
have actually to some degree borrowed the practice from the Nairs. 
There can be nothing about the country unfavourable to the propaga- 
tion of women. Any cause tending to female infanticide would also 
tend to polyandry, but this has not been assigned as the reason in 
Malabar. 
In the Canara districts the Jains are still numerous, many of the 
Bants, &c. being of this sect, and it appears that this country (known 
also as the Tulu or Tulava country) was formerly a great stronghold 
of the Jains and ruled by Jain Rajas. 
THEH BORDERERS. 
Tur TEERMEN OR IsLANDERS oF THE SoutH West Coast. 
On the Malabar Coast there is a numerous class called Teers or 
Teermen. They are generally a fair good-looking race, but considered 
to be of very low caste. Caste ideas are there carried to an extreme 
unknown in Hindustan, where, with the exception of the unclean 
scavenger caste, mere contiguity and general intercourse is not sup- 
posed to affect caste, and all classes mix freely together. In Malabar 
and Travancore, the Nairs do not pretend to be more than Soodras, 
but they make out the Teers and Shanars (who are much the same) to 
be so infinitely below them, that they must get out of the way when 
a Nair calls out to announce his approach in the public road. And 
yet the Teers are by no means a low and degraded caste; on the 
contrary they are, as I said, a good-looking, and they are also a thriving 
prosperous people, who are largely educated in the Government 
schools, obtain much public and private service, are acquiring land, 
and are in every way well-to-do. 
They have Gt seemed to me in Malabar) not the least aboriginal 
trace, but are fairer and in appearance more refined looking than the 
Nairs. The Shanar women of this class are those about whose 
liberty to cover themselves a disturbance was made in the Travancore 
