"In the pre-survey period, the Holeya or Madig Kulvadi, in the maidan or eastern division, was so closely identified with the soil that his oath, accompanied by certain formalities and awe-inspiring solemnities, was considered to give the coup de grâce to long existing and vexatious boundary disputes. He had a potential voice in the internal economy of the village, and was often the fidus Achates of the patel (village official). In the malnad, however, the Holeya had degenerated into the agrestic slave, and till a few decades ago under the British rule, not only as regards his property, but also with regard to his body, he was not his own master. The vargdar or landholder owned him as a hereditary slave. The genius of British rule has emancipated him, and his enfranchisement has been emphasized by the allurements of the coffee industry with its free labour and higher wages. It is, however, said that the improvement so far of the status of the outcastes in the malnad has not been an unmixed good, inasmuch as it is likewise a measure of the decadence of the supari (betel) gardens. Be that as it may, the Holeya in the far west of the province still continues in many respects the bondsman of the local landholder of influence; and some of the social customs now prevailing among the Holeyas there, as described hereunder, fully bear out this fact. "In most of the purely malnad or hilly taluks, each vargdar, or proprietor of landed estate, owns a set of servants called Huttalu or Huttu-Alu and Mannalu or Mannu-Alu. The former is the hereditary servitor of the family, born in servitude, and performing agricultural work for the landholder from father to son. The Mannalu is a serf attached to the soil, and changes with it. These are usually of the Holeya class, but in some places men of the Hasalar race have been entertained. To some estates or vargs only Huttu-alus are attached, while Mannu-alus work on others. Notwithstanding the measure of personal freedom enjoyed by all men at the present time, and the unification of the land tenures in the province under the revenue survey and settlement, the traditions of birth, immemorial custom, ignorance, and never-to-be-paid-off loads of debt, tend to preserve in greater or less integrity the conditions of semi-slavery under which these agrestic slaves live. It is locally considered the acme of unwisdom to loosen the immemorial relations between capital and labour, especially in the remote backwoods, in which free labour does not exist, and the rich supari cultivation whereof would be ruined otherwise. In order furthermore to rivet the ties which bind these hereditary labourers to the soil, it is alleged that the local capitalists have improvised a kind of Gretna Green marriage among them. A legal marriage of the orthodox type contains the risk of a female servant being lost to the family in case the husband happened not to be a Huttalu or Mannalu. So, in order to obviate the possible