A GENERAL SKETCH OF SUMATRA. 
364 
their civilization came. The females are considered the 
representatives of the family, they do notenter their husbands 
suku or quarter of the clan (lara) but retain their own, and 
transmit it with their heritage to their children ; the husband 
remaining a member of his own suku, his family (buaprnt> in 
which is represented by his sisters, considering their house 
as his proper domicile, and transmitting his heritage to their 
children and not to his own. This extraordinary law of 
inheritance is the same as that of the higher families of Malayala 
or Malaya (Malabar) and there can be no doubt has been 
introduced by Malayan or Malayalan colonists or emigrants. 
No rational explanation can be given of the indigenous origin 
of such a custom amongst the Malays of Sumatra.^ It arose 
amongst the Malayas of Malabar from the circumstance of 
marriage being prohibited, or where customary never con¬ 
summated, in the families of the chiefs. Sisters live in. the 
same houses with their brothers and manage their families, 
but the brothers’ children do not represent their fathers. The 
children of the sisters, whose paternity is unknown or unre¬ 
cognized, are the successors to the position and heritage of 
the family,■}* I conceive therefore that adventurers beiong- 
Tamil being Nayar, But the Mahamadans of Southern India seem to have 
preserved it in Aynthw ar and those of N. India in jEfwar, On the west coast 
although Nayar or Naeti is the name in common use, Adiii is also sometimes 
used. Angara again does not appear to be anywhere current in India, hut it 
is in Ceylon, which is further distinguished by the use of Erie (from Surye ?) 
and Sandu (Chandu) for Sunday and Monday. The Siamese Chan seems im¬ 
mediately referable to the Singalese name. The days are, in all these cases, named 
from the same objscts, the sun, moon aud 5 planets or their regents, but as 
these have several names in Sanskrit there was room for difference in choice in 
different parts of India. The AdityaB are the gods, the children of Aditi. The 
Daityas were the children of Dili. The sun-god (Ravi, Surya) is called Adilya 
from his mother. 
* Their traditions on the subject are full of absurdities and physical 
impossibilities. 
f “The Nairs marry before they are ten years of age, but the husband 
never afterwards cohabits with his wife. Such a circumstance, indeed, 
would be considered as vevy indecent. He allows her oil, clothing, orna¬ 
ments, and food ; but she lives in her mother's house, or, after her parents' 
death, with her brothers, and cohabits with any person that she chooses of 
an equal or higher rank than her own. If detected in bestowing her favours 
on any low man, she becomes an outcast. It is no kind of leflectionon a 
woman’s character to say, that she has formed the closest intimacy witli many 
persons; on the contrary, the Nair women are proud cf reckoning among 
their favoured lovers many Brahmans , Raj as t or other persons of high birth. 
In consequence of this strange manner of propagating the species, no 
Nair knows his father ; and every man looks upon his sisters’ children as his 
heirs. He, indeed, looks upon them with the same fondness that fathers 
in other pai ls of ihe world have for their own children; and he would be 
considered as an unnatural jfmonster, were he to show such signs of grief at 
the death of a child, which, from long cohabitation and love with its mother, 
he might suppose to be his own, as lie did at the death of a child of his sister. 
A man's mother manages his family ; and after her death his eldest sister 
