Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 2.djvu/111

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95
CHETTI
Nāyar. Occupational title of some Nāyars of Malabar.
Pattanavan. Tamil fishermen.
Pattapu. Fishermen in the Telugu country.
Sēnaikkudaiyān. Tamil betel-vine growers and traders.
Shānān. The great toddy-drawing class of the Tamil country.
Sonar. Goldsmiths.
Toreya. Canarese fishermen.
Uppiliyan. Salt-workers. Some style themselves Karpura (camphor) Chetti, because they used to manufacture camphor.
Vāniyan. Tamil oil-pressers.
Wynaadan Chetti.

Of proverbs relating to Chettis,*[1] the following may be quoted: —

He who thinks before he acts is a Chetti, but he who acts without thinking is a fool.
When the Chetti dies, his affairs will become public.
She keeps house like a merchant caste woman, i.e., economically.
Though ruined, a Chetti is a Chetti, and, though torn, silk is still silk.
The Chetti reduced the amount of advance, and the weaver the quantity of silk in the border of the cloth.
From his birth a Chetti is at enmity with agriculture.

In a note on secret trade languages Mr. C. Hayavadana Rao writes as follows, †[2] "The most interesting of these, perhaps, is that spoken by petty shopkeepers and cloth merchants of Madras, who are mostly Moodellys and Chettis by caste. Their business mostly consists in ready- money transactions, and so we find that they have

  1. * Rev. H. Jensen, Classified Collection of Tamil Proverbs, 1897.
  2. † Madras Mail, 1904.