To the Hindus the cow is a sacred animal as well as the bull, the Vahana of Siva, the killing and eating of which are abominable. Not less hateful is the use of intoxicating drinks. It was therefore natural that the people who ate beef and drank liquors should be treated by Brahmans as a filthy polluting Caste. From the Brahmanical standpoint the best recommendation for a non-Aryan tribe to rise higher in the social scale was the giving up of the above practice. The Kaikolans, Panans, Semmans and Kammalas did so, and we can see the good relation between them and the Brahmans.
But above all, the primary cause of the revolution in the organisation of the Paraiya tribes seems to have been the Brahman exclusiveness. They did not allow the Paraiyas and the polluting castes generally even to enter their agraharams and villages. A careful perusal of 'Nandan's Life' will give our readers some idea as to how these Paraiya labourers were treated by the Tamil Brahmans. The influence of the Brahmans is now gone; and their power is crippled by the stronger Anglo-Saxon race, who have assumed, as Leyden naively remarked, the character of Kshatriyas in the estimation of the subdued Brahmans, while the beef-eating Paraiyas are still looked down as being outside the Hindu social system though admitted to be Hindus in religion.
Among the Paraiyas the sub-division that first suffered from the Brahinan domination was the Ulavu
