him called milavu, whose bass sound resembles the echo of distant thunder. The Nambiyar is indispensable for the Chakkiyarkuttu, and sounds his mighty instrument at the beginning, at the end, and also during the course of his recitation, when the Chakkiyar arrives at the middle and end of a Sanskrit verse. The Nangayar, a female of the Nambiyar caste, is another indispensable element, and sits in front of the Chakkiyar with a cymbal in hand, which she sounds occasionally. It is interesting to note that, amidst all the boisterous merriment into which the audience may be thrown, there is one person who has to sit motionless like a statue. If the Nangayar is moved to a smile, the kuttu must stop, and there are cases where, in certain temples, the kuttu has thus become a thing of the past. The Chakkiyar often makes a feint of representing some of his audience as his characters for the scene under depictment. But he does it in such a genteel way that rarely is offence taken. It is an unwritten canon of Chakkiyarkuttu that the performance should stop at once if any of the audience so treated should speak out in answer to the Chakkiyar, who, it may be added, would stare at an admiring listener, and thrust questions on him with such directness and force as to need an extraordinary effort to resist a reply. And so realistic is his performance that a tragic instance is said to have occurred when, by a cruel irony of fate, his superb skill cost a Chakkiyar his life. While he was explaining a portion of the Mahabharata with inimitable theatrical effect, a desperate friend of the Pandavas rose from his seat in a fit of uncontrollable passion, and actually knocked the Chakkiyar dead when, in an attitude of unmistakable though assumed heartlessness, he, as personating Duryodhana, inhumanely refused to allow even a pin-point of ground to his exiled cousins. This, it is believed, occurred in a private house, and thereafter kuttu was prohibited except at temples. It is noted, in the Gazetteer of Malabar, that "Chakkiyars or Slaghyar-vakukar are a caste following makkattayam (inheritance from father to son), and wear the punul (thread). They are recruited from girls born to a Nambudiri woman found guilty of adultery, after the date at which such adultery is found to have commenced, and boys of similar origin, who have been already invested with the sacred thread. Boys who have not been invested with the punul when their mother is declared an adulteress, join the class known as Chakkiyar Nambiyars, who follow marumakkattayam (inheritance in the female line), and do not wear the thread. The girls join either caste indifferently. Chakkiyars may marry Nangiyars, but Chakkiyar Nambiyars may not marry Illotammamar."