"During the reign of Vizia Ragoonada Saitooputty [34] a party of Colleries, having proceeded on a plundering excursion into the Ramnad district, carried off two thousand of the Raja's own bullocks. The Raja was so exasperated that he caused forts to be erected at five different places in the Shevagunga and Ramnad districts, and, on pretext of establishing a good understanding with these Nauttams, he artfully invited the principal men among them, and, having encouraged them by repeatedly conferring marks of his favour, caused a great number to be slain, and a number of their women to be transported to Ramiserum, where they were branded with the marks of the pagoda, and made Deva Dassies or dancing girls and slaves of the temple. The present dancing girls in that celebrated island are said to be the descendants of these women of the Culler tribe." In the eighteenth century a certain Captain Rumley was sent with troops to check the turbulent Colleries. "He became the terror of the Collerie Naud, and was highly respected and revered by the designation of Rumley Swamy, under which appellation the Colleries afterwards distinguished him." It is on record that, during the Trichinopoly war, the horses of Clive and Stringer Lawrence were stolen by two Kallan brothers. Tradition says that one of the rooms in Tirumala Nayakkan's palace at Madura "was Tirumala's sleeping apartment, and that his cot hung by long chains from hooks in the roof. One night, says a favourite story, a Kallan made a hole in the roof, swarmed down the chains, and stole the royal jewels. The king promised a jaghir (grant of land) to anyone who would bring him the thief, and the Kallan then gave himself up and claimed the reward. The king gave him the jaghir, and then promptly had him beheaded." [35] By Mr. H. A. Stuart [36] the Kallans are said to be "a middle-sized dark-skinned tribe found chiefly in the districts of Tanjore, Trichinopoly and Madura, and in the Pudukota territory. The name Kallan is commonly derived from Tamil kallam, which means theft. Mr. Nelson [37] expresses some doubts as to the correctness of this derivation, but Dr. Oppert accepts it, and no other has been suggested. The original home of the Kallans appears to have been Tondamandalam or the Pallava country, and the head of the class, the Raja of Pudukota, is to this day called the Tondaman. There are good grounds for believing that the Kallans are a branch of the Kurumbas, who, when they found their regular occupation as soldiers gone, 'took to maraudering, and made themselves so obnoxious by their thefts and robberies, that the term kallan, thief, was applied, and stuck to them as a tribal appellation.' [38] The Rev. W. Taylor, the compiler of the Catalogue Raisonné of Oriental Manuscripts, also identifies the Kallans with the Kurumbas, and Mr. Nelson accepts this conclusion. In the census returns, Kurumban is returned as one of the sub-divisions of the Kallan caste.'