very much like the jews exodus from egypt the chola king develops an antagonism with the merchant community a general massacre ( also communal suicide suggested) 9 boys escape under the guidance of a munivar to pandya land he finds girls for them in the vellaalar community ( the promise to them is "we will treat girls well")
so even today in the wedding - the girls stands in the raised ornamental stool and the bride groom stands lower on the ground and ties the thaali
the 9 families grow into 9 gothrams called koyil after the temples they maintain
( pilaiyarpatti is one such temple belonging to one group) ilayathangudi where on sankaracharya of the past has a samadhi is also one temple)
the 9 families spread over 96 villages and grow and prosper in all fields( some say the names of the villages have their parallels in chola land they left)
and a thousand year later in a sense of loyalty to the land they left the nagaraththars came back to thanjavur district and performed thirupani on hundreds of temples
both gounds and senthil wud be sitting in front of temple posing as lepers and begging and one guy walks out of temple walks along the line of beggars and chooses to pichchai pottufy senthil...
goundamani: enda ivvalavu peru ukkandhirukkom avanukku mattum podara
If the promise is "we will treat the girls well", then where the so-called varadhatchinai of huge order (nagaraththaar community is believed to give huge amount of varadhathicinai in the form of materials, jewels, money etc.,) came into the picture.
please dont mistake me as supporting that dowry system the nagaraththar - merchant community took great risks in business to ensure financial stability in case of a loss the community beleived in investments in gold. even the thali called kaluth thiiru is made of cubes of gold still
the dowry system started as a way of giving the girl a share in the immense wealth of the father.( when there were no equal rights) the shares further came in when she had children and even performed sastithapoorthi even today a woman whose husbands sastithapoorthi is being celebrated gets gold jewels and silver costly kanjeevaram sarees from her parents house.( the gift cant be said to be forced so late after marriage) definitely the system has detiorated after this period but the joke now is the boys in the younger generation outnumber the girls and the scarcity is going to cause a reverse dowry)
in the 1940s the nagarththars had invested heavily in the far east mainly myanmar they literally lost their shirts in wwII it was the dowry of the women which made the community survive, educated the children and reestablished the community in the 1960s. now the nagaraththars are a well educated community and do other things than business or money lending like being the finance ministe of india for one........