karanavan but occasionally they would arise from a woman attracting a man in a temple, bathing pool or other public place. The first sambandham of a man was deemed to be momentous and his ability to engage in a large number of such relationships increased his reputation in his community. Sambandham relationships could be broken, due to differences between the spouses or because a karavanan forced it due to being pressured by a man of higher rank who desired to marry the woman. Marriage by sambandham was neither legally recognised nor binding. The relationship could end at will and the participants could remarry without any ramifications. Attempts to regulate sambandham marriages by the Nayar Regulation Act of 1912 in Travancore and the Malabar Marriage Act of 1896 in British Malabar were not very successful. Any children borne by the woman had to be claimed by one of her sambandham partners if she was to avoid being out-caste, sold into slavery or even executed. There was a presumption that unclaimed children were the consequence of her having a relationship with a man from a lower caste, which could not be the case if the child was claimed because of the caste restrictions imposed in the selection of sambandham partners: Hypergamy The Nambudiri Brahmin tradition which limited the extent of marriage within their own caste led to the practice of hypergamy. Gough notes that The disparity in caste ranking in a relationship between a Brahmin man and a Nair woman meant that the woman was unable to live with her husband(s) in the Brahmin family and so remained in her own family. The children resulting from such marriages always became Nairs. Panikkar argues that it is this type of relationship that resulted in the matrilineal and matrilocal system. It has also been argued that the practice, along with judicious selection of the man who tied the thali, formed a part of the Nair aspirational culture whereby they would seek to improve their status within the caste. Furthermore, that Although it is certain that in theory hypergamy can cause a shortage of marriageable women in the lowest ranks of a caste and promote upwards social movement from the lower Nair subdivisions, the numbers involved would have been very small. It was not a common practice outside the higher subcaste groups. Polyandry Fuller argues that there is overwhelming evidence that Nair women as well