Black and Bright and Beautiful

[Raveen Satkurunathan]

On Sun, 12 Nov 2000 20:25:56 GMT, Venkatraman Iyer
<venkatraman_iyer at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:


>When Tamils refer to African people as "karuppar",
>it just means Blacks, and they do not assign any
>negative cannotations to it. Otherwise, will they
>themselves name their children as karuppu-/nalla-?
>
>Best wishes,
>V. Iyer

Dear V,

You might be interested in knowing that 'culturally' IA Sinhlaese in Sri
lanka too are fond of calling their loved ones as Kalu (black). It is still
a term of endearment. Kalu Banda was a common name in rural areas.
Kaakavana Tissa (Black Tissa) was the name of the father King Duttu Gamini
the hero of Mahayana.  There are some references on this, if interested I
can find some for you.

Raveen