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The material for this thesis was collected in the company of my husband, Eric J. Miller, during twenty months of sociological field-work on the Malabar-Coast, between November 1947 and July 1949. The subject of my husband's research was "An analysis of the Hindu caste system in its interaction with the total social structure in certain parts of the Malabar coast". The data for my own work we re collected in the same villages and from many of the same informants, and our field-work necessarily involved much co-operation. Each subject is however complete in itself, and the actual compilation of field-notes and the writing have been carried out independently. My field-work was made possible by the grant of a William Wyse Studentship from Trinity College, Cambridge, and of an Anthony Wilkin Studentship from the Board of the Faculty of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge. The first six months of the period were spent in Feerintalmanna, a market-town with a population of 5,000 in Walluvanad talug, South Malabar District. Here I collected data on the kinship system of the Nayars and certain other matrilineal Hindu castes, and also on the patrilineal Mappillas ( Muslims) of South Malabar. Very little of the material collected in South Malabar is presented in this thesis. My data on South Malabar Nayar kinship were, I found later, incomplete in many respects, since I had been studying Nayars in an urban setting, outside their traditional village structure. Such tentative conclusions as I was able to reach were much better substantiated by my later study of the Nayars of Cochin State, whose kinship system closely resembles that of the Nayars of South Malabar. My material on Mappilla kinship in Perintalmanna was fuller, but is not dealt with here, since the Mappillas of this area are a patrilineal people with a cultural tradition very different from that of any Hindu caste, and their kinship system falls outside the scope of this essay. I hope to record this material separately at a later date, in a comparative study of patrilineal Mappilla kinship in South Malabar and matrilineal Mappilla kinship in the North of the District. The second period of six months was spent in Pattanur, a village with a population of 1200 in Kottayam talug, North Malabar District, a Lout 80 miles northwest of Perintalmanna. Here I studied the kinship system of the Nayars and other matrilineal Hindus of North Malabar. Some of the material from Pattanur is incorporated in Part V of this paper. From Pattanur we came south again to Puthurkkara, a village of similar size in the Trichurtalug of Cochin State, about 35 miles south of Perintalmanna, and roughly in the centre of the Malayalam-speaking area. The last eight months of our stay were spent in Puthurkkara, and the material collected in a village-survey there forms the basis for Parts II and III of this thesis. Part IV deals with the kinship system of the royal lineages of Kerala, and the material for it was collected from literature and from visits to palaces of the old Malabar ruling families of Kolattiri, Vellatiri and the Zamorin of Calicut. In addition to our village-surveys my husband and I paid short visits to the town of Palghat in South Malabar District, to a few small villages in Central Travancore, and to a number of towns on the coast, including (from north to south) Payyannur, Cannanore, Tellicherry, Mahe, Calicut, Ponnani, Ernakulam, Cochin, Quilon and Trivandrum. I had hoped to spend some months on a study of Nayar kinship in Central Travamore, but illness prevented me from doing this, so that my research was confined to the northern half of Kerala. The literature on the Malabar Coast, both in Malayalam and English, is rich, but I have used very little of it in this paper. This is because I am concerned to present a picture of matrilineal kinship as it exists now under modern conditions of change, In any case the literature which deals with kinship is much scantier than that, for example, which deals with the political history of the coast. A short bibliography, of English works on Malabar, useful for the student of matrilineal kinship, is included at the end of the paper.

This thesis, for the most part, is a discussion of the Indian press discussing the policies of the Government of India. I believe that, within the limits set by its sources, it is an attempt at a comprehensive understanding of the Indian press in the 1870's. We have so far only a very few general statements of the subject and as they cover a much longer period, they are necessarily sketchy. There are a few articles dealing with particular aspects of the subject, but they are necessarily incomplete. In dealing with this subject, I have derived great benefit from my study of what are called Part B Proceedings of the Government of India, now preserved at New Delhi. These records were not considered important enough to be sent to London, but they give details of circulation, editorship etc. of the Indian papers which are new and unexplored. Together with that I have studied the 'native newspaper reports' compiled by government translators, which give a total picture of the Indian press. This series of documentation has also not been used intensively by researchers so far. In addition to these two kinds of records, I have tried to understand the implementation and effects of official policy by examining the relevant volumes of proceedings, private papers, local reports, especially those kept now in Calcutta, and old sets of newspapers preserved in India and England. It has been my attempt to show that a study of the Indian press in the 1870's helps us in an important way to understand this missing decade of Indian history. There were no exciting events in this period, but there was an important process. The government by a flow of legislation touched Indian life at different levels over wider areas than before. The local, regional societies, spread over the subcontinent were stirred up. Although there were considerable variations in the reactions, there was a new awareness among Indians of the government, and in a certain sense a new feeling of common purpose. This was something broader and less articulate than nationalism; it was something more political and precise than the cultural discussion of the earlier decades of the century. I have tried to understand this diffuse phenomenon, by examining the public discussions round official policy which came to a definable focus in the decade. Thus the attempt to persist with the income tax provoked a unified outburst in India. The Indian and the Anglo-Indian press were at one and there was support for them from sections of the British press as well. It has been said that the Indian zamindar and the British planter were the people behind this agitation but the documentation shows that ordinary people were affected just as much and resented this new imposition. A second theme for discussion was the expansion of municipal government. The Government of India was concerned not merely with better sanitation but also with new methods of raising local taxes. In certain areas like Bombay and Calcutta, the Indian public attempted to turn this to political advantage but from much of the country the reaction was once again of resentment against a new attempt on the purse of the ratepayer. A third theme which was concerned with revenue was the controversy regarding the import duties on cotton. These duties which were thought to be protecting the infant Indian textile industry and earning good revenue for the Government of India were removed at the instance of Manchester. Public reactions in India were sharp and the country rallied to the mill-owners of Bombay. These mill-owners however retained their unimpeded progress to prosperity, and were unaffected by the change. A fourth major controversy in this decade came over wftat was called the Baroda affair. The Gaekwar of Baroda, an altogether unworthy ruler, attempted to poison, or so it was alleged, the British Resident at his court. He was tried by a judicial commission, and deposed. This caused intense annoyance to the public which had little doubt that the G-aekwar was worthless, but would not have him removed because he was an Indian prince. A fifth topic for discussion was provided by the criminal procedure bill of 1873. Through this the government attempted to tighten up its administration of justice. Most men in India however saw in it a reinforcement of the police and the magistrate who were their natural antagonists. In this lively debate the Indian public reassessed as it were the whole system of justice and found it wanting. Lastly by passing the vernacular press act in 1878 the government attempted to control the Indian language papers. For the first time it acknowledged how seriously it was taking the criticisms in the Indian press. This in turn obliged the Indian papers to take stock of the situation, and see how far they had strayed from the earlier discussions of culture. The stage was thus set for the tensions of the nationalist decades.