The approach of a Nayadi within a distance of three hundred feet is said to contaminate a Brahman, who has to bathe and put on a new sacred thread, to cleanse himself of the pollution. The Nayadis, in fact, hold the lowest position in the social scale, and consequently labour under the greatest disadvantage. The Nayadis live mostly in isolated huts on the tops of hills, and generally select a shola, or glade, where there is a pond or stream. Some families live on the land of their landlords, whose crops they watch by night, to guard them against the attacks of wild beasts. Sometimes they are engaged in ploughing, sowing, weeding, transplanting, and reaping, the rice crop, or in plantain (banana) gardens. I take exception to the comparison by a recent author of the British Empire to the banana (Musa) throwing out aërial roots. The banyan (Ficus bengalensis) must have been meant. The male members of the community are called Nayadis, and the females Nayadichis. The boys are called Molayans, and the young girls Manichis. Succession is in the male line (makkathayam). A thatched shed with palm-leaf walls, a few earthen pots, and a chopper, constitute the Nayadi's property. He occasionally collects honey and bees-wax, and also the gum (matti pasai) from the mattipal tree (Ailanthus malabarica), which, when burnt, is used as temple incense and for fumigating the bed-chamber. He receives toddy in exchange for the honey and wax, and copper coins for the gum, with which he purchases luxuries in the shape of salt, chillies, dried fish, tobacco, and liquor. He makes rough ropes from the malanar plant, and the bark of the kayyul tree (Bauhinia). The bark is soaked in water, sun-dried, and the fibre manufactured into rope. He also makes slings of fibre, wherewith he knocks over birds, and mats from a species of Cyperus.