the same restrictions as regards residence as are those of most of the other clans; so, in these days of free communications, when Malayalis travel, and frequently reside far from their own country, they often prefer to select wives from this Akattu Charna clan. But the old order changeth everywhere, and nowadays Malayalis who are in the Government service, and obliged to reside far away from Malabar, and a few who have taken up their abode in the Presidency town, have wrenched themselves free of the bonds of custom, and taken with them their wives who are of clans other than the Akattu Charna. The interdiction to travel, and the possible exception to it in the case of Akattu Charna women, has been explained to me in this way. The Nayar woman observes pollution for three days during menstruation. While in her period, she may not eat or drink with any other member of the taravad, and on the fourth day she must be purified. Purification is known as mattu (change), and it is effected by the washerwoman, who, in some parts of South Malabar, is of the Mannan or Vannan caste, whose métier is to wash for the Nayars and Nambutiris, but who is, as a rule, the washerwoman of the Tiyan caste, giving her, after her bath, one of her own cloths to wear (mattu, change of raiment) instead of the soiled cloth, which she takes away to wash. Pollution, which may come through a death in the family, through child-birth, or menstruation, must be removed by mattu. Until it is done, the woman is out of caste. It must be done in the right way at the right moment, under pain of the most unpleasant social consequences. How that the influential rural local magnate wreaks vengeance on a taravad by preventing the right person giving mattu to the women is well known in Malabar. He could not, with all the sections of the Penal Code at his disposal, inflict greater injury. Now the Nayar woman is said to feel compelled to remain in Malabar, or within her own part of it, in order to be within reach of mattu. My informant tells me that, the Vannan caste being peculiar to Malabar, the Nayar women cannot go where these are not to be found, and that mattu must be done by one of that caste. But I know, from my own observation in the most truly conservative localities, in Kurumbranad for example, where the Nayar has a relative superiority, that the washerman is as a rule a Tiyan; and I cannot but think that the interdiction has other roots than those involved in mattu. It does not account for the superstition against crossing water, which has its counterparts elsewhere in the world. The origin of the interdiction to cross the river southwards has been explained to me as emanating from a command of the Kolatirri Rajah in days gone by, when, the Arabs having come to the country about Calicut, there was a chance of the women being seized and taken as wives. The explanation is somewhat fanciful. The prohibition to cross the river to the northwards is supposed to have originated in much