Nayar.--"The Nayars," Mr. H. A. Stuart writes, [120] "are a Dravidian caste, or rather a community, for we find several distinct elements with totally different occupations among the people who call themselves by this title. The original Nayars were undoubtedly a military body, holding lands and serving as a militia, but the present Nayar caste includes persons who, by hereditary occupation, are traders, artisans, oilmongers, palanquin-bearers, and even barbers and washermen. The fact seems to be that successive waves of immigration brought from the Canarese and Tamil countries different castes and different tribes; and these, settling down in the country, adopted the customs and manners, and assumed the caste names of the more respectable of the community that surrounded them. This process of assimilation is going on even yet. Chettis of Coimbatore, for example, who settled in Palghat and Valluvanad within living memory, have developed by this time into Nayars. In the census schedules we find instances in which the males of a house affix the term Nayar to their names, while the names of the females end in Chettichi. Gollas entering the country from the north have similarly, in course of time, assumed Nayar customs and manners, and are now styled Nayars. Again the rajahs and chieftains of the country sometimes raised individuals or classes who had rendered them meritorious service to the rank of Nayars. These men were thereafter styled Nayars, but formed a separate sub-division with little or no communion with the rest of the Nayar class, until at least, after the lapse of generations, when their origin was forgotten. Nayar may thus at present be considered to be a term almost as wide and general as Sudra." According to the Brahman tradition, the Nayar caste is the result of union between the Nambudris with Deva, Gandharva and Rakshasa women introduced by Parasurama; and this tradition embodies the undoubted fact that the caste by its practice of hypergamy has had a very large infusion of Aryan blood. In origin the Nayars were probably a race of Dravidian immigrants, who were amongst the first invaders of Malabar, and as conquerors assumed the position of the governing and land-owning class. The large admixture of Aryan blood combined with the physical peculiarities of the country would go far to explain the very marked difference between the Nayar of the present day and what may be considered the corresponding Dravidian races in the rest of the Presidency. [121]