129 and sisters and everyone else. The house where she spent those three days is then smeared with dung and swept. It has to be smeared with ox dung, otherwise nobody else will go in it. When these women give birth, they are immediately washed thoroughly with plenty of hot water and for the first three days, and then many other times from head to toe. They have no other occupation than to prepare their own food and earn their bread with their bodies, because even though they have three of four friends each who feed them, they do not refuse any Brahmin or nair who offers them money; they are very clean women who look after themselves very well. They consider knowing how to give men pleasure to be a great honour and service to them and pride themselves on it. They believe that any woman who dies a virgin is doomed. The nairs deeply respect their relatives and brothers. The younger of them pays great courtesy to the others, by holding his hand over his mouth in their presence as a mark of silence, and only answers when he is spoken to. They also deeply respect their teachers, to the extent that the king stands up when his teacher enters the room and they both greet the other, the teacher reveres him because he is king and the king reveres him because he is a teacher. When nairs die, they order their corpse be burned in their gardens or yards, where their mothers and relatives weep for them, and their ashes are thrown into aflowing river; his nephew or heir goes into a year of mourning, in the same way as the prince does for a king. He makes his own food or it is made for him by a Brahmin. He washes himself very carefully before he eats and changes his clothes. He claps his hands before eating, attracting a flock of crows that he feeds. He performs many other religious acts and gives alms to the poor and the Brahmin, in accordance with his means; once the year is over, he comes out of mourning and performs certain ceremonies in order to mark this occasion. All these nairs are great warriors; they believe in many ghosts; they have good and bad days: on the bad ones, they do not start anything nor
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