'Siva Nandi

[N. Ganesan]

Also: the bull baiting festival is very special in
Tamil culture. It happens on the Pongal/makara sankrAnti day.
Called as jalli kaTTu or manji viraTTu.
There are two classic novels with the flavour of the native
soil (Madurai district)
Kottamangalam Cuppu's manjiviraTTu
and C. S. Chellappa's vaaTi vaacal.

Kalittokai, an ancient Tamil sangam text, describes
the bull baiting festival (cf. K. Zvelebil's paper).
Sanskrit texts describing Krishna's bull baiting
games were written in the Tamil South much later
(Prof. Erik af Edholm's Nila/Nappinnai paper).
> From Kalittokai -> Alvaar Paasurams --> Sanskrit
Srivaishnava literature.
Vanamala Parthasarathy has written a long and excellent
article on Bull baiting in Tamil and Sanskrit
in the latest issue of Jl. Inst. Asian studies, Chennai.

Charles Fabri in 1930s has written a paper
on bull baiting in Crete and Indus culture.

It is important to note that in Sangam Tamil,
the word "toRu" means a bull, the head ox (poli kALai) ...
In Romance countries, "taurus" means bull.
"taurachomy" means bull baiting, ...

What is the connection between Tamil "toRu",
Indus bull baiting, and "taurus"???

Regards,
N. Ganesan



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