Untoucables in Classical Tamil Society? (Re: New discovery in Tamil Nadu)
Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan
Palaniappa at AOL.COM
Thu Jul 2 08:12:43 UTC 2009
I agree that George Hart and I have disagreed on what the Classical Tamil
texts say about caste. A discussion on his remark “that Dalits
(leatherworkers, washermen, drummers and the like) are called "izhicanoor" -- "low
ones" -- in the poems” can be used to illustrate the bases of our disagreement
and hopefully might help resolve the issue. (I apologize for the length of
the post.)
The word in question is ‘izhicinar’ (using Hart’s transliteration
convention, but ‘izicin2ar’ in the convention I use). The singular is ‘izhicinan’
(‘izicin2an2’ in my convention).
Of the three groups explicitly mentioned by Hart, even today Tamil
washermen ('vaNNAn2' or 'Vannan') who service non-Dalits have not been considered
Scheduled Castes or Dalits in Tamil Nadu except in areas which were part
of the former Travancore state where the designation as Scheduled Castes
follows the Kerala pattern. (To avail themselves of the affirmative economic
opportunities provided by the government, recently Tamil washermen have been
calling for designation as Scheduled Castes.
_http://www.hindu.com/2008/09/30/stories/2008093051950300.htm_
(http://www.hindu.com/2008/09/30/stories/2008093051950300.htm) ) This is a very important point Hart has missed.
(Those washermen who serve the Dalits, puthirai vannan, are included in the
Scheduled Castes. See _http://www.tn.gov.in/gorders/adtw/adtw1773-e.htm_
(http://www.tn.gov.in/gorders/adtw/adtw1773-e.htm) for a list of Scheduled
Castes in Tamil Nadu.) In my paper
(_http://www.soas.ac.uk/research/publications/journals/ijjs/file46109.pdf_
(http://www.soas.ac.uk/research/publications/journals/ijjs/file46109.pdf) ), I have discussed K. K. Pillay’s statement
on the status of Tamil washermen. To look at the Tamil washermen's social
status information uncontaminated by the influence of any government
policies, let us consider a paper entitled “Caste Society and Units of Production
in Early-Modern South India,” in Institutions and Economic Change in South
Asia, edited by Burton Stein and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, OUP, 1996, pp.
105-133, in which David Ludden presents interesting data for four taluks from the
1823 census of the Tirunelveli region. The people in the four taluks are
classified into the following categories – Brahmans (Smarta Telugu, Smarta
Tamil, etc.), Religious Establishment (Othuvar, etc.), Sudras, (Pandy
Vellala, etc.), Muslims, Christians, Inferior Sudras (Elava, Shanar, etc.), and
low caste (Palla, Vallava, Pariah, etc.). In this list, washermen are
included in the category of Sudras and not inferior Sudras or low castes, as to be
expected.
As for the second group, the drummers, an inscription (ca. 9th century
CE) from Ambasamudram in Tirunelveli District documents a person named pUvan2
paRaiyan2 a member of the Pandiyan king’s staff bought some land from the
brahmin sabha and endowed it as kiTaippuRam or endowment for Vedic
education. (SII 14, no. 56) Even if we assume pUvan2 paRaiyan2 was not a 'paRaiyan2'
by caste, why would a person of such a status have the name 'paRaiyan2' if
the name ‘paRaiyan2’ referred to an untouchable caste from Classical
Tamil times? There is a 11th century Chola inscription (SII 2, no.4) showing
that paRaiyar (from whose name is derived the English word pariah) were not
untouchable at that time with the paRaiccEri (street of paRaiyar) being
different from tINTAccEri (street of untouchables). (See paragraph 13 in the
Translation section of
_http://whatisindia.com/inscriptions/south_indian_inscriptions/volume_2/no_4_south_wall_second_tier.html_
(http://whatisindia.com/inscriptions/south_indian_inscriptions/volume_2/no_4_south_wall_second_tier.h
tml) ), Even after paRaiyar fall in status in South Arcot region in the
12th century (SII 7, no. 912), we find 13th and 14th century inscriptions
in the Coimbatore area in which we find references such as “veLLAzan2
paiyyaril caTaiyan2 nEriyAn2 paRaiyan2En2”. paiyyar is the name of a veLLALa
lineage here. If caTaiyan2 is assumed to be the donor’s father’s name and
nEriyAn2 is assumed to be the donor’s name, what is the role of ‘paRaiyan2’ in
the name of this obviously high caste veLLALa if the name paRaiyan2 had
always signified untouchable status? (See kOyamuttUr mAvaTTak kalveTTukaL,
tokuti 1, 2006, p. 342). Considering all these, it is diffilcult to justify
the case of paRaiyar being untouchable in the Classical Tamil period.
Coming to the third group, the case of leather workers needs to be
explored in detail since I had not addressed in my paper a philological problem
associated with the traditional interpretation of the relevant poem Hart is
referring to. The poem is puRanAn2URu 82 which is given below in translation
by Hart and Heifetz (1999, p.61).
“In the hand of a low-caste leather worker stitching a cot,
with a festival impending and his wife in labor and the sun
descending while the rain comes pouring down, as he
pulls thread through and again through, the needle flies!
When the warrior tried to take the city,
the lord who wears a chaplet of laburnum fought with that speed!”
Hart and Heifetz provide on p.267, the following note to this poem.
“1: ‘Low-caste leather worker’ is the translation of izicin2an2,
literally, ‘low one,’ ‘despised one.’ This shows that in Sangam times, as now,
leather workers were one of the lowest castes.”
(In the following discussion, I shall refer to Hart alone since, as
acknowledged by Heifetz, the scholarly contribution to the translation was Hart’
s.)
The strange thing about this translation is that in the original Tamil
poem, there is no explicit mention of leather or leather worker. All that the
poem says is that the man (‘izicin2an2’) is using the needle (‘Uci’) to
push/ force forward (tUNTu) the ‘pOz’ (“pOz tUNtu Uci”) as he makes the
cot. So why does Hart translate ‘izicin2an2’ as leather worker? Hart seems
to have assumed the man to be stitching some leather material using a needle
and thread. The 'presence' of leather is traceable only to a commentator
who interprets ‘pOz’ to be a leather strap. Is the commentator justified in
such an interpretation? I do not think so. Nowhere else in Classical Tamil
is ‘pOz’ used to refer to leather. The only possible reason for this
commentator (who is to be dated several centuries after the poems were
composed) to do so could have been the reference to ‘izicin2an2’ who is by now
widely interpreted as an untouchable. Probably, according to the commentator’s
line of interpretation, untouchables are known to work with leather and so
‘pOz’ must have been a leather strap. Hart interprets the situation
slightly differently. He does not explicitly call the material used in making
the sleeping surface of the cot as leather but introduces a thread to be used
with the needle. But he basically accepts the interpretation of the
commentator that the base material is leather and hence calls the cot-maker ‘
leather worker’.
Now what could have been the meaning of ‘pOz’? The verb pOz- means 'to
split, cleave open,' and thus the noun ‘pOz’ could refer to any material
which is split or cloven. In Classical Tamil poems we find ‘pOz’ being used
to refer to things such as palm leaf, and peacock feather. A Classical Tamil
poem, kalittokai 117, suggests a most probable interpretation of ‘pOz ‘in
puRanAn2URu 82. In kalittokai 117, a basket ‘puTTil’ is described as made
of ‘pOz’. While the commentator of kalittokai 117 assumes ‘pOz’ to refer
to the tender leaf of palmyra (not leather), in my opinion, pared rattan
cane will probably fit puRanAn2URu 82 better because it is capable of being
made into thin long strips which can be threaded through the eye of a
needle (such as the packing needle used for closing/sewing jute bags in India)
and can be used to push forward the rattan strip under and over crossing
rattan strips. Also pared rattan cane is a well- known material used to make
baskets as well as cots even today. Moreover, containers to make offerings
to murukan2 are described in CT as 'pirappu' (<'pirampu' meaning 'rattan
cane') and thus a very well-known material.
If one were to read Hart’s translation of puRanAn2URu 82 without referring
to the Tamil original, one would assume that the leather worker is
explicitly mentioned in the poem and that he is called a low caste person too so
that Hart draws the conclusion that “in Sangam times, as now, leather
workers were one of the lowest castes.” As we have seen that is absolutely not
the case. Leather makes its appearance only from the imagination of the
commentator which Hart has accepted as correct. As for the meaning of ‘izicin2an2
’, I have discussed in my paper why it could not have meant a ‘low one‘.
This poem is a good example of how a Classical Tamil poem can be
misinterpreted by unwarranted acceptance of interpretations by commentators who
come several centuries after the the poems. These commentators did not have
access to tools such as comparative linguistics, data from epigraphy, etc.
Using such tools and data, in many cases, we can reach much better
conclusions than those earlier commentators.
In conclusion, calling the Tamil washermen Dalits results from a flawed
understanding of the Tamil society of today as well as that of the Classical
Tamil period. If one has to account for the inscriptional evidence
regarding paRaiyar, one cannot say paRaiyar were untouchables in ancient times .
The classification of leather workers as untouchables in Classical Tamil
period is most probably based on non-existent data. Thus the case of
untouchability being present in Classical Tamil times is very untenable indeed
Regards,
Palaniappan.
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