Pisharati.--The Pisharatis or Pisharodis are summed up in the Madras Census Report, 1901, as being a sub-caste of Ambalavasis, which makes flower garlands, and does menial service in the temples. As regards their origin, the legend runs to the effect that a Swamiyar, or Brahman ascetic, once had a disciple of the same caste, who wished to become a Sanyasi or anchorite. All the ceremonies prior to shaving the head of the novice were completed, when, alarmed at the prospect of a cheerless life and the severe austerities incidental thereto, he made himself scarce. Pishara denotes a Sanyasi's pupil, and as he, after running away, was called Pisharodi, the children born to him of a Parasava woman by a subsequent marriage were called Pisharatis. In his 'Early Sovereigns of Travancore,' Mr. Sundaram Pillay says that the Pisharati's "puzzling position among the Malabar castes, half monk and half layman, is far from being accounted for by the silly and fanciful modern derivation of Pisharakal plus Odi, Pisharakal being more mysterious than Pisharati itself." It is suggested by him that Pisharati is a corruption of Bhattaraka-tiruvadi. According to the Jati-nirnaya, the Bhattarakas are a community degraded from the Brahmans during the Treta Yuga. As far as we are able to gather from mediæval Travancore inscriptions, an officer known as Pidara-tiruvadi was attached to every temple. It is known that he used to receive large perquisites for temple service, and that extensive rice-lands were given to the Bhattakara of Nelliyur. It is noted, in the Gazetteer of Malabar, that "the traditional etymology of the name Pisharodi refers it to a Sanyasi novice, who, deterred by the prospects of the hardship of life on which he was about to enter, ran away (odi) at the last moment, after he had been divested of the punul (thread), but before he had performed the final ceremony of plunging thrice in a tank (pond), and of plucking out, one at each plunge, the last three hairs of his kudumi (the rest of which had been shaved off). But the termination 'Odi' is found in other caste titles such as Adiyodi and Vallodi, and the definition is obviously fanciful, while it does not explain the meaning of Pishar."