232 J. HORNEIvL ON 



73 "0. The broadest headed of these Malayalis were of the Mukkuvan or fisher caste 

 (75'i), a point of some importance as it indicates possible admixture with some 

 broader-headed race. 



Very striking and pertinent are the data I recently obtained upon the cranial 

 index of the Parawa fishermen of the Tinnevelly coast. So far as I know no anthropo- 

 metric measurements of this caste have hitherto been published, and it has been 

 inferred that the}^ agreed in long-headedness with the overwhelming majority of 

 Tamil-speaking people to the northward whereto Mr. Thurston's investigations were 

 chiefly directed. M}^ investigation shows this conclusion to be entirely erroneous 

 and proves them to be distinctly brachy cephalic on the average of the first 50 mea- 

 sured. (For details see tabulations appended). Of these as many as 24 had a cranial 

 index of 80 and over, whilst the average was 79-4 ; the maximum was, however, as 

 high as 92 5, the minimum being 70-9. These Parawas are often tall and well-made 

 men, of muscularit}^ distinctly greater than the ordinary Tamil ryot engaged in rice 

 and cotton cultivation. (PI. I, fig. i). 



The roundheadedness of Marathas and other races in the Bombay Presidency has 

 been referred by Risley to a strong strain of Scythic or Hun blood in these people ; 

 even assuming this to be so, a hypothesis denied by Crooke ' and others, a similar 

 explanation is impossible in the case of the Tinnevelly caste above cited, as there has 

 never been any suggestion of Scythic invasion of the extreme south of the Peninsula 

 I incline to think that these Parawas represent a part of that fierce Naga race des- 

 cribed by ancient Tamil writers as in possession of the coast districts and with Nega- 

 patam as their chief town when the Tamils first arrived in the south. ^ If so, I would 

 then identify the Nagas with an ancient coastal people of Polynesian affinity. 



In this connection, are notable the frequent allusions in early Tamil poems'^ to 

 voyages made by merchants and others to Nagapuram in " Chavakam" whereby 

 Sumatra and Java are known in the Tamil classics. To-day Negapatam (Nagapat- 

 tanam), " the city of the Nagas," is the nearest port on the Tamil coast to Sumatra; 

 it conserves the tradition of long trade relation with the Straits and China ; its harbour 

 still forms the southern gate to India from the East. The legend of Asoka's naval 

 punitive expedition against the Naga pirates who had plundered Indian ships has 

 already been referred to (p. 213). 



A point of great importance is the current traditional belief among the Parawas 

 themselves, that they are incomers in the parts they now inhabit and not of indigen- 

 ous stock. They claim high descent and boast of being allied to the lunar race ; they 

 believe that their original country was Ayodhya or Oudh and that previous to the war 

 of the Mahabharata they inhabited the territory bordering on the river Jumna. One 

 of their legends * states that at the close of the last kalpa, when the whole earth was 

 covered with a deluge, they constructed a dhoni or boat, and by it escaped the general 

 destruction; when dry land appeared they settled on the spot where the dhoni rested. 



i Crooke, W., Man, 1917, 91. 2 Kanakasabai Pillai, The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years ^go, Madras. 



3 Kanakasabai Pillai, loc. cit. •* Thurston, E., Castes and Tribes of South India, vi, p. 141. 



