In a note on the Udaiyans, Malaiyamans, Nattamans, and Sudarmans of the Trichinopoly district, Mr. F. R. Hemingway writes as follows. "Though, in the Census Report, 1901, they are shown as separate castes, in this district they are endogamous sub-divisions of one and the same caste, namely the Udaiyans. The three sub-divisions are unanimous in saying that they are the descendants of the three Paraiyan foster-daughters of the poetess Auvaiyar, all of whom became the wives of the king of Tirukkoyilur in South Arcot, a certain Daivika, who was warned that only by marrying these women could he save his family from disaster. The Chola, Pandya, and Chera kings were present at the wedding, and, on their blessing the bridegroom and his brides, they were themselves blessed by the poetess, to whom the Chera kingdom owes its unfailing rain, the Chola country its rice fields, and the Pandyan realm its cotton. The poorness of the last blessing is due to the fact that the Pandya king was slow to offer his good wishes. The three sub-divisions eat together, and recognise the tie of a common descent, but do not intermarry. The section called Arisakkara Nattaman is looked down upon by the rest, and may not intermarry with any of them. All have well-defined exogamous sub-divisions, called kanis, derived from places where their different ancestors are supposed to have lived, e.g., Kolattur, Kannanur, Ariyalur. The Udaiyans put on sacred threads at marriages and funerals, and some of them have recently begun to wear them always. They are generally cultivators, and, with the exception of the Sudarmans, who are supposed to have a turn for crime, are law-abiding citizens. One section of the Sudarmans, the Muppans of Kapistalam in Tanjore, have a bad reputation for criminality. A curious practice is that, before arranging a marriage, it is customary for the bride's party to go to the bridegroom's house, to dine with him, and test his health by seeing how much he can eat. They allow a boy, whose suit for the hand of a girl within certain degrees of relationship is refused by her parents, to marry the girl, notwithstanding, by tying a tali (marriage emblem) round her neck. They also permit the betrothal of infants, the form observed being to present the child with a new cloth and a mat, and to apply sacred ashes to its forehead. At their funerals, the mourning party has to chew some rice and spit it out on the return from the burning-ground, and, on the sixteenth day, the widow is made to worship a light, and to touch a salt pot. The Nattaman women do not, as a rule, cover their breasts. The lobes of their ears are very distended, and they tattoo their chins and cheeks in the Paraiyan fashion. This is supposed to be in recollection of their origin. The Malaiyaman women wear their tali on a golden wire instead of on a thread."