Patnulkaran.--The Patnulkarans are described, in the Madras Census Report, 1901, as "a caste of foreign weavers found in all the Tamil districts, but mainly in Madura town, who speak Patnuli or Khatri, a dialect of Gujarati, and came originally from Gujarat. They have always been known here as Patnulkarans, or silk thread people. They are referred to in the inscriptions of Kumara Gupta (A.D. 473) at Mandasor, south of Gujarat, by the name of Pattavayaka, which is the Sanskrit equivalent of Patnulkaran, and the sasanam of Queen Mangammal of Madura, mentioned below, speaks of them by the same name, but lately they have taken to calling themselves Saurashtras from the Saurashtra country from which they came. They also claim to be Brahmans. They thus frequently entered themselves in the schedules as Saurashtra Brahmans. They are an intelligent and hard-working community, and deserve every sympathy in the efforts which they are making to elevate the material prosperity of their members and improve their educational condition, but a claim to Brahmanhood is a difficult matter to establish. They say that their claim is denied because they are weavers by profession, which none of the Southern Brahmans are, and because the Brahmans of the Tamil country do not understand their rites, which are the northern rites. The Mandasor inscriptions, however, represent them as soldiers as well as weavers, which does not sound Brahmanical, and the Tamil Brahmans have never raised any objections to the Gauda Brahmans calling themselves such, different as their ways are from those current in the south. In Madura their claim to Brahmanhood has always been disputed. As early as 1705 A.D. the Brahmans of Madura called in question the Patnulkarans' right to perform the annual upakarma (or renewal of the sacred thread) in the Brahman fashion. [Eighteen members of the community were arrested by the Governor of Madura for performing this ceremony.] The matter was taken to the notice of the Queen Mangammal, and she directed her State pandits to convene meetings of learned men, and to examine into it. On their advice, she issued a cadjan (palm leaf) sasanam (grant) which permitted them to follow the Brahmanical rites. But all the twice-born--whether Brahmans, Kshatriyas, or Vaisyas--are entitled to do the same, and the sasanam establishes little. The Patnuls point out that, in some cases, their gotras are Brahmanical. But, in many instances which could be quoted, Kshatriyas had also Brahmanical gotras."