The Paniya, also known as Paniyar and Paniyan, are an ethnic group of India. They constitutes the single largest Scheduled Tribe in Kerala and are mainly found in the Wayanad District and the neighboring areas of Karnataka. They primarily inhabit villages around edge of forestland in Kerala's Wayanad, Kozhikode, Kannur and Malappuram districts. The Paniya speak the Paniya language, which belongs to the Dravidian family, closely related to Malayalam. A scheduled tribe, they have a population of around 94,000 (Sex ratio 1057). There is a theory that the Paniyas were brought to Wayand by the Jain Gounders who trained them to be agricultural laborers in their fields (Thurston, 1909). The center of the bonding contracts was the famous temple of the regional Mother Goddess of the Valliyoorkkavu