Sambandham

The Chola-Chera war is said to have occurred in the 11th century. It is also known as 'Hundred years' War'. The battle was won by the Chola King Shri.Rajaraja Chola I. The Chera kingdom eventually became a tribute-paying vassal of Tanjore in c. 1018 AD. A prominent outcome of the Chola-Chera war during the eleventh century was the disintegration of the patrilineal or the Makkathayam system of inheritance and its eventual replacement by the Marumakkathayam or the matrilineal system. After the war, because the number of Nair men decreased to a large extent, the Nairs decided to have hypergamous relations in their community and follow matrilineality to save their community from extinction. 

The Nāgavanshi Nairs lived in Joint families. Because they followed the matrilineal system, the sons and daughters used to stay in their mother's house or Tharavādu, even after the marriage, and the children were accepted as the members of their mother's family. So a Nagavanshi Nair Tharavadu consisted of an old mother, her sisters, her brothers, her children, her nieces, her nephews, her grandchildren and her sisters' grandchildren. Men of the family were experts in martial arts and did various respected professions whereas women did household duties in their Tharavādu. Each Nāgavanshi Nair family owned a business because of which they became rich and wealthy. The married men were allowed to meet their spouses and children once in a month. The owner of the entire property was the eldest female member, but it was managed by the men of the Tharavādu. The property was never divided among the members. The positive side of this lifestyle was women always remained secured. Even if a woman became a widow, she lived a sociable or a non-isolated life in her Tharavādu. 

What was Sambandham?  

The word Sambandham(संबन्धम्) means both relationship and relative. In ancient Kerala, it was also the name of a ritual similar to marriage. Men were allowed to marry the women of their own caste and have Sambandhams with the women of castes inferior to their's according to the caste hierarchy of those days. The difference between Sambandham and marriage is that the Thaali(तालि) or Mangalsutra was not tied in Sambandham, children born of such relations never had any right on their father's property and the children were never accepted as the members of their father's community. Not only in Sambandhams, children born of hypergamous marriages were also not considered as the members of their father's community. For example, men of Hindu Royal families used to marry Nāgavanshi Nair women, but their children were not accepted as the members of Royal families because the Nāgavanshi Nair is a non-Royal community. 

Men of Malayali Brahmin(Nambudiri), Tamil Brahmin and Tulu Brahmin communities were allowed to have Sambandhams with Nāgavanshi Nair women. Similarly, men of Royal families and Nāgavanshi Nair men had Sambandhams with women of those castes which were considered inferior than theirs. 

The ritual and how the relation was kept  

Though Nāgavanshi Nair families were matrilineal, they were and are still patriarchial. When a Brahmin man decides to have Sambandham with a Nāgavanshi Nair woman, he used to express about it to the elder men of her family. Then the elder men used to discuss about the request of Sambandham with the eldest female member of the family and after that they ordered the younger female members to inform the woman with whom the Brahmin man wanted to have Sambandham. The woman was an unmarried, a widowed or a divorced, but not the life partner of another man. 
A date and time were decided for Sambandham. On that day, when the Brahmin man arrived, he was welcomed by the members of the Nair family. The ritual was conducted in the sitting room. A Vilakku or a traditional Kerala lamp was lit in the sitting room and then a Pudava (पुड़वा, an off-white coloured garment with a wide golden border) was given to the Nair woman by the Brahmin man. After that, she was called the Sambandham of that Brahmin man. The Nair woman and her children lived with her family members. Though the children never inherited their father's property and were not accepted as Brahmins, their father used to visit them at least once in a month to know about their welfare. 
The Brahmins never used to have food in non-Brahmin houses because they have a typical religious way of cooking and eating the food and also they have to keep themselves pure for the religious rituals. Even when a Hindu Temple gets slight impurity, the priests repeat all the Temple rituals they did right from the early morning, as a respect towards the deity. 
Gradually, when the number of Nāgavanshi Nair men began increasing so began the rising of cross-cousin marriages and same-caste marriages in the Nāgavanshi Nair community. 

Polyandry in Kerala 

Polyandry means having more than one husband at a time. When I was searching on the internet about polyandry in India, I read about two non-Nair communities in books, that they practiced fraternal polyandry. I don't know if it is true or not. In 'Marriage and Customs of Tribes of India by Shri.J. P. Singh Rana' it is written that "In case of Kaniyans and Panikkans, when the eldest brother has bought a wife, she and her husband's brothers are seated together and a sweet preparation is given to them, which signifies that she has become the common wife of all" and In 'Social Mobility In Kerala: Modernity and Identity in Conflict by Filippo Osella, Caroline Osella' it is written that "Polyandry is another arrangement once relatively popular among Izhavas, that has now almost disappeared. Valiyagramam Izhavas account for polyandry by reason for economic factors.  It is usually a temporary arrangement involving two brothers unable to bear the cost of two marriages and two households." Recently, I read an article on Wikipedia about polyandry in which there was a mention about the names of some castes of Kerala including Nair. 
Some people claim that Nairs practiced non-fraternal polyandry. I don't know about other castes which use the same surnames of Nāgavanshi Nairs but polyandry never existed in the Nāgavanshi Nair community or Kiriyathil and Illathu Nair castes. Undoubtedly, Kiriyathil and Illathu Nair castes were monoandrous. Men and women had the right to terminate their marriage if they had problems in their married lives. Likewise, widowed men and women had the right to get remarried. But that doesn't mean that men and women ended their marriage for small reasons to remarry again and again. Women with loose morals were ousted from the community. 
Princess Panchali is one of the most respected women in Hinduism. She never wished to have polyandrous relations. Such a life was given as punishment to her because in her previous life she had done Tapasya and asked God to give her a 100% perfect husband. Both her's and her husbands' families were patrilineal. Though the Pandavas had a common wife, they had separate wives too. After the Kurukshetra war, when Prince Yudhisthira was declared as the King of Hastinapura, Princess Panchali was declared as the Queen. Because Princess Panchali was the eldest among all the wives. 

Fallacy about matrilineal communities  

While searching about polyandry on the internet, I read about 'Nikah Ijtimah' on Wikipedia. Nikah Ijtimah means combined marriage. It was a form of polyandry that existed in the Pre-Islamic period in the Arabian peninsula.

Most people believe that all the matrilneal communities around the world were polyandrous. Alexander Hamilton in his book 'Account of the East-Indies 1688-1723' has written that Nair women used to live in huts, practiced polyandry and had twelve husbands. In my opinion, it was actually copied from Julius Caeser's travel accounts. I don't know if what Julius Caesar wrote is true or false. There is a mention about it in the book 'The History Of Scotland – Volume 1: From The Romans to Mary of Guise by Andrew Lang'. It is as follows, "In 55 B.C. Julius Caesar landed in southern Britain, and penetrated north of Thames. He found people dwelling (when security was needed) in the huts circled with a ditch and rampart, and surrounded by bush. Near the coast, they were agricultural; farther inland they were pastoral. They painted themselves blue (perhaps only to strike terror in war); we do not hear that they tattooed themselves. Their most important custom (if correctly reported) was Polyandry; ten or twelve men, generally brother or fathers with sons, had wives, it is said, in common." 
Kiriyathil and Illathu Nair women never lived in huts. They lived luxuriously in their Tharavadus, and as I said before they never practiced polyandry. Some of them were also married to Kings and Princes of Royal families. Though those Nair women were not allowed to dine with the Royal family members, they lived a very happy life with their husbands. Nair women were taught right from their childhood about Goddess Parvathi who is one the ideal wives mentioned in the Hindu Puranas. According to Hindu Puranas, Goddess Parvathi had taken a strict fast to get Lord Shiva as her husband and after their marriage, she began to observe same the fast, once in a year, for the good health and long life of Lord Shiva. According to Malayali Hindu beliefs, the fast taken by Goddess Paravthi is called Thiruvathira Vratham. Kiriyathil and Illathu Nair women were advised to take Thiruvathira Vratham right from their childhood. Unmarried women used to observe this fast to get a good husband and married women used to observe this fast for the good health and long life of their husbands. 
Ancient Japan was a matrilineal, if not a matriarchal, society. Until the eleventh century or so, upon marriage the husband and wife lived apart, the husband visited the wife in her home, and the children stayed with the mother. Polyandry never existed in Japan. 

Reformation in Nair community  

In 1912, the first Nair Act was passed, giving males the right to give half of their self-aquired property to their sons and the other half to their nephews. In Cochin, a law was passed in 1920 making Sambandham illegal.The Nair Regulation of 1925 and Cochin Nair Act of 1937-38 broke old joint-family system and allowed partition of Joint-family property and legalised inheritance from father to son, instead of uncle to nephew. Within five years of the 1925 Act, many Tharavādus are said to have been partitioned. Similar Acts were put into the statute books of Malabar and Cochin in 1933 and 1938 respectively; the former allowed the legal partitioning of Tharavadu into matrilineal segments and the latter allowed partitioning on an individual basis. 
The Nair Act of 1925 deprived nephews of claims to the property of their uncles. These acts legally recognized the conjugal family and set out the relations of protection and dependence between husband and wife and between father and children. Guardianship of the wife was legally ceded to the husband. Divorce, which had been settled informally under Sambandham, was made a subject to the courts. The Nair Act of 1925 got similar support from Nair women. 
In 1950 India became a democratic country and Sambandham soon got eliminated from Kerala. Every individual irrespective of religion, caste and gender got the right to get educated and employed. Child marriage too began to diminish in the state. The Hindu Succession Act was passed in the year 1956. This Act is applicable to Hindu (including all castes), Buddhist, Jain and Sikh communities. According to this Act, a person, whether from a matrilineal or patrilineal family, has the right to get a share of the ancestral properties of his both parents and when a married person dies, the spouse will become the first heir, children will become the second heirs and grandchildren will become the third heirs of his/her property. 




Reference: Man in India, Volume 76, Narayanan, M. G. S. Perumāḷs of Kerala: Brahmin Oligarchy and Ritual Monarchy: Political and Social Conditions of Kerala Under the Cēra Perumāḷs of Makōtai (c. AD 800 - AD 1124). Thrissur (Kerala): Cosmo Books, 2013. 115-117, Pacific Affairs, Volume 63, A Field of One's Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia by Bina Agarwal, Agarwal Bina, Female Ascetics: Hierarchy and Purity in Indian Religious Movements by Wendy Sinclair-Brull, Public Library Movement: Kerala by A. Paslithil, Women, Gender and Everyday Social Transformation in India edited by Kenneth Bo Nielsen, Anne Waldrop, Amerindian Rebirth: Reincarnation Belief Among North American Indians and Inuit by Canadian Anthropology Society. Meeting, Modern Japan: A Historical Survey by Mikiso Hane, ‎Louis Perez, Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society, London, Volumes 21-22 by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Company, 1924.