OF BHARATAVARSA OR INDIA. 
51 
The proper names of MaUayya and MaJIadu, common 
among the Sudra and Pariah population of Southern India, 
are occasionally like Kiippayya and Vembayya given 
among Brahmans and other high-caste people to a boy, 
when the parents have previously lost two or more children. 
By this act of humility, displayed in giving a low name 
to their child, they hope to propitiate the deity and obtain 
for their offspring the health of a poor man's child. With 
that object they even throw the infant into a dunghill or 
kuppa (Tamil hwppai) ; a practice which has given rise to the 
name of Kupj)ayya. 
Step by step the Dravidians receded from Northern India, 
though they never left it altogether. The Brahmanical 
supremacy deprived them of their independence, yet not all 
submitted to Aryan customs and manners. Scattered remains 
of the Mallas exist, aa we have seen, to this day in North- 
India. 
The immense chain of the Vindhya mountains acted as 
a protecting barrier, otherwise the Dravidians in the south, 
ganva tenye Mahara vddd. ' W berever there is a village there is the Mahar 
ward.' The Mahars are mentioned by the cognomen which they still bear 
that of Parwari {Tlapovapoi) by Ptolemy, in the second century of the Chris- 
tian era ; and in his days they were evidently a people of distinct geogra- 
phical recognition." See Dr. John Wilson's Notes on the Constituent 
Elements., of the Mardthl, Language, p. xxiii in the second edition of the 
Dictionary Marathi and English, compiled by J. T. Molesworth, Bombay, 
1857. — Consult too Dr. John Wilson's Indian Caste, vol. II, p. 48: "The 
Mahars, who form one of its (Maharashtra's) old degraded tribes, and are 
everywhere found in the province say, that IMaharashtra means the coimtry 
of the Mahars." Compare Notes on Castes in the Dekhan, by W. F. Sinclair, 
Indian Antiquary , vol. II (1874), p. 130. See also Col. Dalton's Ethnology 
of Bengal, p. 264 : " We have a tribe called Mai or Mar, scattered over 
Sirguja, Palamau, Belounja, &c." 
In the Vishnupurdna of H. H. Wilson, edited by Fitzedward Hall, vol. 
II, p. 16.5, Mallarastra is called Vallirdstra, and it is conjectured that 
Mallardstra may be identical with the Maharastra (the Mahi-atta country) of 
the Puranas. 
'^^ Vembayya is called after Vemhii, the Margosa tree, the representative of 
bitterness. Death should regard in consequence the child as too bitter and 
too worthless to carry it off. 
