[INDOLOGY] query: 18 ;"sre.nii jaatis

[palaniappa at aol.com]

George Hart said, "In my opinion, the poems speak for themselves.  When the Sangam poems say someone was of despised birth and we see the same group among the Dalits today, that must mean they were Dalits then, I would think." 


I apologize for the long response below necessitated by Hart's statement.  However, I summarize the key points very briefly at first to be followed by details later.



To put it in a nutshell, Hart's interpretations of what the poems speak suffer from very serious methodological problems. His views are based on his own imagination or data from a Malayalam novel or social conditions of the 20th century. His knowledge regarding modern and medieval Tamil society is very inadequate. Unfortunately, based on this inadequate knowledge, he has imagined an early Tamil society which is not supported by data from the poems themselves.


Those who are interested in the details can read on below.
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ON DESPISED BIRTH
Unfortunately, there are other scholars, who do not understand the poems as Hart does. Hart (1975b: 34) described Nacciṉārkkiṉiyar, a 14th century Brahmin commentator from Madurai, as "perhaps the greatest of the medieval commentators on the Tolkāppiyam." Nacciṉārkkiṉiyar has also authored commentaries on Classical Tamil texts  such as Kalittokai and Pattuppāṭtu. Page 1 of the attachment shows that according to Nacciṉārkkiṉiyar, the royal funerary priest in Puṟ. 363 mentioned by Hart (1975b: 82) as one 'of despised birth' was a Brahmin. Nacciṉārkkiṉiyar also allows for the possibility of the same priest being a barber. (This is in Nacciṉārkkiṉiyar's commentary for Cīvakacintāmaṇi 2984.)  Neither of them is considered to be despised or untouchable in the Tamil society. 


What is most distressing is that Hart's interpretation is often based on what the poems do not 'speak'.  Here are some examples. 


ISSUES RELATED TO SACRED POWER
Hart (1975b: 101) said, " An inauspicious state of a woman's powers is brought about by her fall from chastity. The ancient Tamil poems nowhere describe this eventuality, as they are idealized; however, it is well-treated by a modern Malayalam novel, Chemmeen, by Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, about the life of the fishermen of the Malabar coast, which has changed little in the last two thousand years." [emphasis mine] When the ancient Tamil poems do not speak, Hart substituted the speech of a 20th century Malayalam novel! 


Hart (1975b: 124) said, "It is true the Vēlaṉ is never called low or base in the poems, but in modern Kerala members of one of the subcastes of Paṟaiyaṉs are called Vēlaṉs. One of their jobs is to tell the future, like the Vēlaṉs of ancient Tamil literature, from whom they are no doubt descended. Furthermore, it has been seen that in Puṟ. 259 a pulaitti, or base woman, is possessed by Murukaṉ and shakes, much like the Vēlaṉ, and that, in Puṟ. 335, the Kaṭampaṉ, who was probably a priest of Murukaṉ, is classed among the low castes. In light of this evidence, it is likely that the Vēlaṉ was in fact considered a low person." [emphasis mine] Puṟ. 335 does not say that the Kaṭampaṉ was a low caste person. That was purely Hart's own interpretation. Hart also did not consider Tēvanti, the Brahmin woman in the Cilappatikāram, being possessed by Cāttaṉ and shaking.  Data from the Cilappatikāram was a lot closer in time to the Puṟanāṉūṟu than any 20th century data. 


Hart (1975b: 125) said, "In the Paṭṭiṉappālai, one of the Pattuppāṭṭu, line 77, the outer streets of a town (puṟaccēri) are said to be inhabited by fishermen. It is quite likely that then, as now, the fishermen lived in the outer parts of the city because they were considered of low caste, probably because they were infected by the spirits of the fish they killed." [emphasis mine]  That the fishermen lived on the seashore does not call for any judgement about their caste status. The poem does not say that the fishermen were of 'low caste' or were "infected by the spirits of the fish they killed." This is Hart's own imagination.


PĀṆAR'S RIGHT TO CULTIVATE
Hart (1975b: 140) said, "Pāṇaṉs who could not make their living by performing would catch fish, residing in their own part of the city and exchanging some of the fish for paddy (Puṟ. 348; Ak. 196; Aiñ. 47, 48, 49, 111). This confirms their low status: bards were allowed the low task of catching fish, but they were not allowed to raise paddy." There is nothing in the poems that 'confirms their low status' or talks about any prohibition against their raising paddy. This is again Hart's own interpretation. It should be noted that inscription ARE 476 of 1962-63 mentions a Pāṇaṉ enjoying Kārāṇmai (right of cultivation) even in the Pāṇṭiya kingdom of the more Sanskritized time of the 13th century. 


ISSUES RELATED TO PAṞAIYAR
Hart (1975b: 143) said, "To a very different category than the Pāṇaṉ, the concert-giver, and the dancer, belonged the man who played the kiṇai drum. It is likely that one of the names of the kiṇai drummer was Paṟaiyaṉ, and that the modern Paṟaiyaṉ is his descendant. Thus Puṟ. 388 says that a kiṇai player plays the paṟai (a generic term for drum), while in Puṟ. 371, a suppliant packs up his paṟai, goes to the king, and plays the taṭāri (another name for the kiṇai). In Puṟ. 335, the Paṟaiyaṉ clan is distinguished from the Pāṇaṉ and Tuṭiyaṉ clan, while in the Puṟapporuḷveṇpāmālai, a later work, a verse mentions the Kiṇaiyaṉ, Tuṭiyaṉ, and Pāṇaṉ as three different clans; thus it seems natural to identify the Kiṇaiyaṉ and the Paṟaiyaṉ." [emphasis mine] There is nothing 'likely' in the poem about the Kiṇaiyaṉ being the Paṟaiyaṉ. 


If just because a kiṇai player plays the paṟai, he is supposed to be of the Paṟaiyar community, then a dancer who plays the paṟai (Aka. 151.10) should also be a considered to be a member of the Paṟaiyar community. But Hart considers the dancers to be of a different category from that of the Kiṇaiyaṉ. But, then agricultural laborers played paṟai (Maturaikkāñci 262), and the Kōṭiyar (actors/concert givers) also were described as having paṟai (Maturaikkāñci 523). Hart (1975b: 141) said, "It seems likely that the Kōṭiyaṉs and Vayiriyaṉs were subcastes of the Pāṇaṉs...". So are the dancers and actors/concert givers, who are supposed to be different from the Kiṇaiyaṉs, Paṟaiyar too? Comparing the lists of people in Puṟ. 335 and the Puṟapporuḷveṇpāmālai to conclude that the Kiṇaiyaṉ and the Paṟaiyaṉ were one and the same is like comparing apples and oranges. One listed the residents of a particular region. Another listed the people, who got shares of the spoils of war. In the final analysis, actually there is nothing to support Hart's equation of the Kiṇaiyaṉ with the Paṟaiyaṉ. 


Hart also wanted to link the modern Paṟaiyar with those who played the royal drum in ancient Tamil society. He went to extraordinary lengths to make this linkage when the poems did not do so! This is what Hart (1975b: 144) said: 
"Elsewhere, the drum played for the king in the morning is the muracu (Puṟ. 61, 397; Aiñ. 448) . While there is nowhere any indication of who played the muracu, it is not unlikely that a subcaste of the Paṟaiyaṉs had that office, especially as one of the modern subdivisions of that caste is called Muracu."2 [emphasis mine]


As we discussed earlier, Hart not only changed the radical vowel of 'Morasu' reported by Thurston, which resulted in the name of the Pāṟaiyar division matching the name of the drum in the poems mentioned above but also suggested that "it seems possible that this is a very ancient division." This suggestion extended the status of untouchability from the early 20th century Paṟaiyar to the ancient players of the drum. But then an inconvenient suggestion that the Morasu division members  were Holeya immigrants from Kannada-speaking region was mentioned by Thurston. The change of Kannada p- to h- occurred from the 10th century CE. So the early immigrant Holeyas (<Poleyas) could not have become the Morasu division before the 10th century, pulling the rug out from under Hart's assumption of them being an ancient division of the Paṟaiyar. This Holeya immigration issue was not discussed by Hart (1975b) or Hart (1987)!


In the whole Classical Tamil corpus, the word 'paṟaiyaṉ' occurs only once (Puṟa. 335). The poem does not speak of the Paṟaiyar being a caste or being untouchable or being funerary priests. Early medieval Tamil inscriptions show that people with the name Paṟaiyaṉ were high status individuals. Page 2 of the attachment shows an individual named Cākkai Paṟaiyaṉār of the 7th century was a warrior in the Pallava army one of whose subordinates was killed in whose memory a herostone was erected. It is important to note the Tamil honorific suffix -ār in the name Paṟaiyaṉār. Also the title Cākkai suggests he could have been qualified as a Sanskrit dramatist. This person could not have been an untouchable. Page 3 of the attachment shows a person by the name Pūvaṉ Paṟaiyaṉ of the 9th century who donated some land for Vedic study in a temple. He was an  Aṇukkar of the Pāṇṭiyaṉ king. The editor of the inscription called the position 'bodyguard'. But the position of Aṇukkar could refer to an official position enjoying the highest confidence of the king since the general Parañcōti of Pallava Narasimhavarman I was also referred to as Aṇukkar in the Periyapurāṇam.  Page 4 of the attachment shows a 13th century inscription in the Coimbatore area who was a Veḷḷāḻaṉ (which stands for Veḷḷāḷaṉ, an upper caste non-Brahmin) with the name "Paṟaiyaṉ Paṟaiyaṉāṉa Nāṭṭuk Kāmuṇṭaṉ". Similarly, page 5 shows another Veḷḷāḷaṉ (written as Veḷḷāḻaṉ)  with the name Caṭaiyaṉ Nēriyāṉ Paṟaiyaṉ in the 14th century. Some argue that the name Paṟaiyaṉ is only the proper name of individuals and not the name of a community. Even if that were true, if the name Paraiyaṉ was associated with untouchability from very ancient times, what would be the motivation for any non-untouchable family to give their child the name Paṟaiyaṉ? 


BARDS' SOCIAL STATUS COMPARED TO POETS' 
Another favorite claim of Hart is that the bards were of low caste and that the Pulavaṉs (the poets) were of high caste. Referring to the authors of Classical Tamil poetry, Hart (1975b: 148) says, "Like all writers, the authors of this poetry modeled their compositions on forms with which they were familiar. The only models  they had were the oral poems being composed by low caste performers all around them.  As a result, they took most of their poetic themes from the Pāṇaṉs and others, and even copied their life-style to an extent—though it must be kept in mind that the Pulavaṉs were of high caste, while the oral bards were low." This claim of Hart is also baseless. As in the case of the Paripāṭal 3.86, there are other instances where the poets and bards are welcomed in the poems without any indication of any hierarchy between them. The same thing can be seen in the medieval Cōḻa inscriptions. Page 6 shows iyal pulavar (poets) and icaip pāṇar (music-making Pāṇar) being mentioned as prospering under the rule of Cōḻa Rājarājaṉ II in the eulogy portion of a 12th century CE inscription. Page 7 shows another inscription mentioning poets and the bards as prospering under the rule of Cōḻa Kulōttuṅkaṉ II of the 12th century CE.


Moreover, we have a Classical Tamil poet named Neṭumpalliyattaṉār and a poetess named Neṭumpalliyattai. From their names, one can understand that they were bards who played multiple/orchestral instruments. (Ciṟupāṇāṟṟuppaṭai 125 associates palliyam (multiple/orchestral instruments) with the Kōṭiyar.) 


OTHER REMARKS
Also, Hart said, "The fact remains that caste is spread from Nepal to Sri Lanka and from Assam to Pakistan among many ethnic groups and religions." This does not prove caste is indigenous to Tamil society. Today, Christianity is present all over the world. That does not mean that it was present in the same areas 2100 years ago.  


Hart said, "It would be very nice if Sangam society was casteless and we could point to it as an exemplar of what India would be like without the Brahmins or whatever group is supposed to have dreamed up the caste system." With a research work that can serve as an example of what not to do in Indological research, Hart's subtle implication that questioning his thesis on caste in early Tamil society is tantamount to being anti-Brahmin does not work. Moreover, the title of my IJJS paper happens to be "On the Unintended Influence of Jainism on the Development of Caste in Post-Classical Tamil Society." :-)


Regards,
Palaniappan


-----Original Message-----
From: George Hart <glhart at berkeley.edu>
To: Indology List <indology at list.indology.info>
Sent: Sun, Nov 24, 2013 4:16 pm
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] query: 18 ;"sre.nii jaatis


In my opinion, the poems speak for themselves.  When the Sangam poems say someone was of despised birth and we see the same group among the Dalits today, that must mean they were Dalits then, I would think.  It would be very nice if Sangam society was casteless and we could point to it as an exemplar of what India would be like without the Brahmins or whatever group is supposed to have dreamed up the caste system.  The fact remains that caste is spread from Nepal to Sri Lanka and from Assam to Pakistan among many ethnic groups and religions.  I think it must be very ancient, and almost certainly pre-Aryan, as the Vedic Aryans had nothing whatsoever like the jāti system.  But however that may be, the Sangam poems specifically mention caste many times.  No doubt Palaniappan and I will disagree on this forever, but I think it is important to state that I am not at all persuaded by his arguments.


I never claimed that Pāṇaṉs were Dalits — they were not.  Apparently, they occupied (and still occupy) a position somewhat above the Dalits, as they stayed in the homes of rich people, sang for them, and also served as go-betweens between rich men and their women.  And in modern times, they certainly must not be a high caste, since barbers and washermen will not eat food prepared by them. Regarding the bhakti poems, it is undeniable that the Dalits and the Pāṇaṉs were not allowed to enter temples.  


If the poems don’t mean what they say, then there may not have been caste in Sangam times in TN.  If they do, then it is very difficult to argue against the existence of caste, in my opinion. 


George
  

On Nov 24, 2013, at 12:27 PM, palaniappa at aol.com wrote:





I agree completely with Rajam's statement, "There was no indication of "untouchability" in the Tamil society as reflected in early Tamil poems."








 
Since George Hart has criticized my findings in his post, I would like to say that the contents of Hart's post are nothing new. All these have been addressed in my paper available at http://www.soas.ac.uk/research/publications/journals/ijjs/file46109.pdf . We have also discussed this in Indology in 2009. Here are the last two posts of the Indology discussion http://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology_list.indology.info/2009-July/033485.html

http://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology_list.indology.info/2009-July/033486.html . 
So instead of going over material already covered, I shall discuss something I have not discussed so far. I shall summarize the crux of my views briefly at first. Those who are interested in the details can read further. 



For almost four decades, George Hart has propounded his views on the concept of dangerous sacred power,aṇaṅku, among the Tamils and the practice of untouchability that resulted from contact with the sacred power. According to Hart, the Pāṇaṉs and Paṟaiyaṉs have always been the lowest castes because they were polluted because they came in contact with that sacred power.  The only problem is that, as I had mentioned in 2009, there is clear epigraphic evidence that the Tamil Paṟaiyar (plural of the Paṟaiyaṉ) were not untouchables as late as the 11th century and Tamil Pāṇar (plural of the Pāṇaṉ) are not untouchables even today. These facts completely invalidate Hart's theories. The reason Hart came to a conclusion diametrically opposite to mine is that his research methodology had major errors of commission and omission.



Those who are interested in more details can read on below. 
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Regarding the power of aṇaṅku, Hart (1975a: 43) wrote:
 
"This power had to be rigidly controlled. As a result, religious rites were carried out by the lowest castes: the Paṟaiyaṉs , the Pāṇaṉs, the Tuṭiyaṉs, and the Vēlaṉs...The Vēlaṉ, who is even today found among the Paṟaiyaṉs of Kerala, would dance ecstatically as he was possessed by Murugan, an indigenous god...The Paṟaiyaṉ, the Pāṇaṉ, and the Tuṭiyaṉ would each play a special instrument which was thought to be inhabited by a sacred power and which was used for various ritual purposes. The pollution which is attached to the low castes is thus a legacy of indigenous Dravidian religion."
 
Hart's views of Tamil untouchability and sacred power are inseparable. And for his whole theory to have any validity, the Paṟaiyar (plural of the Paṟaiyaṉ) and the Pāṇar (plural of the Pāṇaṉ) he has mentioned above should be untouchables or lowest castes. If even one group is not untouchable, his whole theory collapses. I have already mentioned that the Paṟaiyar were not untouchables in the 11th century. 



Hart (1975b:144) also says the following in connection with the Paṟaiyar:
"Elsewhere, the drum played for the king in the morning is the muracu (Puṟ. 61, 397; Aiñ. 448) . While there is nowhere any indication of who played the muracu, it is not unlikely that a subcaste of the Paṟaiyaṉs had that office, especially as one of the modern subdivisions of that caste is called Muracu."2 [emphasis mine]



Footnote 2 reads:
Edgar T. Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India (Madras, 1909), VI:80



But, as shown in page 1 of the attachment, what Thurston (1909:80) really said was: 

"At the census, 1891, 348 sub-divisions were returned, of which the following were strongest in point of numbers:- Amma found chiefly in Tanjore and Madura;...; Morasu (drum) in Salem;...". [emphasis mine]
 
While Hart's change of -su to -cu may be understandable in terms of the Tamil transliteration system, the change of the radical vowel -o- to -u-,  which changed the name of the Paṟaiyar subdivision matching the word for 'drum' used in the Classical Tamil texts he cited, was problematic. This change could not have been a typographical error since in a later publication Hart (1987: 475) also says:


"One of the modern subdivisions of the Paṟaiyaṉ caste is named "Muracu" (Thurston and Rangachari 1909: VI. 80), and it seems possible that this is a very ancient division." [emphasis mine]
 
In light of Hart's suggestion of the possible antiquity of this Paṟaiyar subdivision, there is some interesting information about the Morasu subdivision not mentioned by Hart (1975b) and Hart (1987). As can be seen from the highlighted portion in page 2 of the attachment, Thurston (1909: 81) says the following:



"It has been suggested to me that the Morasu Paraiyans, included in the above list are Canarese Holeyas, who have settled in the Tamil country." [emphasis mine]



Even more interesting is the situation with respect to the Pāṇār. Hart (1975b: 120) states:
 
"The low status of bards may also be inferred from the fact that several centuries after the anthologies, Tiruppāṇāḻvār, who was a Pāṇaṉ by caste, was considered to be so low that he was not allowed into the temple."



(The story of Tiruppāṇāḻvār occurs in different medieval Vaiṣṇava hagiographical works such as the Āṟāyirappaṭi Guruparamparāprabhāvam. While the Vaiṣṇava hagiographical works depict the Pānar saint Tiruppāṇāḻvār as not being allowed to enter the temple, the Periyapurāṇam, the 12th century Śaiva haigiographical work, portrayed the Pāṇar saint Tirunīlakaṇṭar as originally standing outside the temple and being brought inside due to intervention by Śiva Himself. In another instance, the brahmin saint Tiruñāṉacampantar is said to have arranged for Tirunīlakaṇtar to sleep inside another brahmin saint's house.)


Hart (1975b: 158) also stated:



"The Paṟaiyaṉ is found in Tamilnad, Kerala, and the Kota-speaking areas, while the Pāṇaṉ is found in modern Kerala and Orissa, and in parts of ancient North India, where Pāṇa meant a low-class bard."



(The sources for the above statement were entries 3319 and 3351 in the first edition of Dravidian Etymological Dictionary (1960), which in turn, relied on Tamil Lexicon and  A Malayalam and English Dictionary by Gundert for information related to Tamil and Malayalam words respectively.)



As one can see, Hart (1975b) had left out any mention of the Tamil Pāṇaṉ in present day Tamil Nadu. Based on the two statements of Hart quoted above, it seems Hart was not aware of the existence of the Pāṇar in present day Tamil Nadu. Otherwise, he would not have had to rely on medieval hagiography to ascertain the 'low' status of the Pāṇār. Here lay a fundamental problem with Hart's research approach. He was producing sweeping anthropological conclusions with insufficient knowledge of people he was writing about.

 

All Hart had to do was to turn a few pages in Thurston (1909), which he had anyway consulted in the case of the Paṟaiyar.  Thurston (1909) spells Pāṇaṉ as Pāṇāṉ, with the second vowel being long ā. This spelling variation cannot be a reason for disregarding the entry. After all, Tamil Lexicon has entries connecting both variants as given below.

 

பாணன்¹ pāṇaṉ, n. < பாண். [M. pāna.] 1. An ancient class of Tamil bards and minstrels; பாடல்வல்ல ஒருசாதி. கூத்தரும்பாணரும் (தொல். பொ. 91). 2. See பாணான். (W.)  

 

பாணான் pāṇāṉ, n. < பாணன்¹. Man of the tailor caste; தையற்காரச் சாதியான்

 

Note that the Tamil Lexicon derives 'Pāṇāṉ' from 'Pāṇaṉ'.

 

The entry in Thurston (1909: 29-42) on the Pāṇāṉ is a long one discussing both the Tamil Pāṇāṉ as well as the Malayalam Pāṇāṉ. The entry opens with a very brief discussion of the Tamil Pāṇāṉ while discussion of the Malayalam Pāṇāṉ takes up the bulk of the entry. But it is the brief discussion of the Tamil Pāṇāṉ that Hart should have taken into account.

 

As can be seen in page 3 of the attachment, the entry on the Pāṇāṉs opens with the following statement.  "The Tamil Pānāns are said, in the Census Report, 1901, to be also called Mēstris. They are "tailors among Tamils in Madura and Tinnevelly. They employ Brāhmans and Vellālas as purōhits. Though barbers and washermen will not eat food prepared by them, they are allowed to enter Hindu temples."   Later in the entry, as shown in page 4 of the attachment, in regards to the Pāṇāṉs of Travancore, Thurston (1909: 33) says, "For the following account of the Pānāns of Travancore, I am indebted to Mr. N. Subramani Aiyar. The word is of Tamil origin, and means a tailor. The title taken by them is Panikkan, the usual honorific appellation of most of the industrial castes of Malabar. They are supposed to be one with the Pānāns of the Tamil country though much below them in the social scale."  

 

As Gundert's dictionary notes, in Southern Tamil usage Pāṇaṉ could indicate a bard as well as a tailor.

പാണന്‍‍ pāṇaǹ T. M. (T. പാണ്‍ = പണ്‍ melody). A caste of musicians, actors & players; in So. T. also tailors B., necromancers D. (= മുന്നൂററന്‍, മലയച്ചെക്കന്‍, പറയന്‍). പാ' ന്‍റെ നായി പോലേ prov. പാ'നോട് ഒപ്പിക്കുംഎന്നെ ആചാര്യനോ Bhr. — കീഴ്പാണന്‍ V1. a caste of slaves.

 

Based on Tamil Lexicon and Gundert's dictionary, it is clear that Pānān and Pānan are only variants of the same word. After all, there is no separate entry for Pāṇaṉs of Kerala in Thurston (1909).  Hart should have investigated if the Pānān/Pānan, the tailor, and Pānān/Pānan, the bard, were related in any way.  If he had conducted some fieldwork like anthropologists do before writing about different communities, he would have quickly realized that the tailors were from the same community as earlier bards.  At least if he had done a careful literature review, he would have gotten the true picture of the Pānans. 

 

For instance, the Arumpatavurai commentary for the Cilappatikāram glosses tuṉṉakārar in Cilappatikāram (5.32) as Pāṇar. Also, as has been pointed out by Aiyar ([1924] 1999: 109), Travancore king Bālarāma Varma's Sanskrit work, Bālarāma Bharatam of the 18th century, presents as a tailor the bard Pāṇapattiran of Madurai mentioned in the opening poem of the 11th Tirumuṟai of the Śaiva canon. Irakavan (1971: 79), a 20th century scholar, stated:

 

"பாணர் குலம் இன்று உளதா? என்று பலரும் ஐயுறுகின்றனர்? பாணர் குலம் அழிந்துவிடவில்லை. பாண்டிய நாட்டில் இன்னும்இருந்து வருகிறது. யாழ் மறைந்ததோடு பாணர் குலமும் பாழ்பட்டு விட்டது என்று சிலர் கூறுகின்றனர். அது தவறு. ஆனால், பாணர்குலம் எண்ணிக்கையில் சிறுபான்மையினராய் மதுரை, திருநெல்வேலி, சாத்தன்குளம் போன்ற இடங்களில் வாழ்ந்து வருகின்றனர்.தொழிலின்றிப் பலர் தையல் தொழில் புரிந்துவருகின்றனர்."

 

Here is a translation of the above quote.

"Many wonder if the Pāṇar caste/lineage exists today. The Pāṇar caste/lineage has not perished. It exists in the Pāṇṭiya country even today. Some say that with the disappearance of the lute, the Pāṇar caste/lineage is ruined too. That is wrong.  But people of the Pāṇar caste/lineage live in small numbers in Maturai, Tirunelvēli, and Cāttaṉkuḷam. Without an occupation, many are engaged in the job of tailoring." 


I have attached a table from Ludden (1996:123) showing the status of the Pāṇaṉ in Tirunelveli district in 1823. (See page 5 of the attachment. The date of 1923 shown in the table title should actually be 1823.) One can see that they were small in number but part of the large 'Sudra' category.  So were barbers and washermen. None of them was/is an untouchable community.  That is why K. K. Pillay (1969: 208), while discussing the use of pulaitti in Classical Tamil texts to refer to the washerwoman, said, "It is not known how the term 'Pulaitti' came to be employed to denote her, because in later times the class of washermen was not identical with that of 'Pulaiyar'."

 

Many of the traditional upper caste Tamil pundits of the 20th century did not distinguish between hagiography and history. For them what the Periyapurāṇam and the Guruparamparā Prabhavam were presenting was history. They did not see these works as propagandist texts intended to promote a specific ideology. So these Tamil pundits believed that the Pāṇar were untouchables of earlier Tamil society. These Tamil teachers and especially Tamil teachers in northern Tamil Nadu did not know that Tamil Pāṇar have continued to exist as a community even today and are suffering no untouchability. 


Most of these Tamil pundits were not knowledgeable about the reality-based social information available in the inscriptions. For instance, they did not know that  the Pāṇar were engaged in singing in front of the deities in brahminic temples, training the temple women in music, and were given houses and money by royal order to perform these duties. See page 6 of the attachment for a translation of a 12th century inscription in the Tiruviṭaimarutūr temple by Orr (2000: 102).


Some scholars in Southern Tamil Nadu like Irakavan (1971:78-79) were sold on the Periyapuranam's promotional view that it was the egalitarian nature of the Bhakti movement that allowed the Pāṇar to enter temples. (On this score, the Periyapurāṇam had succeeded in its promotional objective.) They had failed to note that Paripatal 3, a pre-Bhakti-movement Classical Tamil poem, calls Visnu "a good Pāṇaṉ of lute" in a poem that is full of Vedic and Puranic elements. As part of the poem's adoration of Viṣṇu, Paripāṭal 3: 81-86 offers the following praise:







"You are the red-eyed one with dark complexion (Vāsudeva), the black-eyed and white complexioned one (Sankarṣaṇa), the golden complexioned one (Pradyumna), the green complexioned one (Aniruddha), the one who dances to the left and right (of cowherd girls), the one who dances with the pot, the one who has the plough, the one who is the lord of cowherds, the one who protects, the one whose nature is not being seen, the one who never leaves the devotee's thought, the one that never dies, the one who rules the world, the poet of ancient texts, the good Pāṇāṉ of lute..." 







One cannot imagine this if the Pāṇaṉ were untouchable before the time of Tiruñanacampantar.

 

One can understand the traditional Tamil pundits' ahistorical view given their possibly limited exposure to historiography, anthropology, and comparative linguistics. But one would expect a US scholar with access to Western critical scholarship and other resources at Harvard University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and University of California, Berkeley to critically explore and evaluate facts.  Even after Orr (2000) published the translation of the Tiruviṭaimarutūr inscription shown in the attachment, Hart has not updated his views.

 

The facts that the Tamil Paṟaiyar were not untouchable even until 11th century and the Pāṇar are not untouchable even today completely invalidate Hart's theories regarding untouchability among ancient Tamils.  






Moreover, if contact with aṇaṅku, the sacred power, caused one to be polluted and become untouchable, Tēvantikai, a brahmin woman in the Cilappatikaram, a post-ClassicalTamil epic, who got possessed by Cāttaṉ, danced, and offered oracles would not have been appointed as a priestess by the king in a temple with Vedic sacrificial hall. (See http://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology_list.indology.info/2013-November/038692.html)













It is ironic that in order to buttress his views Hart is citing Dravidian Etymological Dictionary as if its groupings are true for all time and as if it gives etymological roots. He is incorrect on both counts. (Deriving etymological roots purely based on dictionary entries without considering the philological context can lead to wrong etymologies as in the case of Tamil āḻvār 'Vaiṣṇava saint' (DEDR 396), which S. Starostin derives from *āẓ-. See http://tinyurl.com/q64ko6e . But literary and epigraphic data clearly show that āḻvār 'Vaiṣṇava saint' should be grouped with DEDR 5157. See http://www.linguist.jussieu.fr/~chevilla/FestSchrift/supa_9d.pdf for the reasons. Hart's discussion of pul as a root is just another example of the same kind of etymologizing.)  Dravidian Etymology Dictionary's author, Emeneau, would be the last person to hold such views. A good example of Emeneau's genuine open-minded scholarship can be seen in Emeneau (1988),  after the revised Dravidian Etymological Dictionary was published in 1984. 
















 

In other words, philological, epigraphic, and sociological data clearly refute Hart's theories of sacred power and untouchability among Tamils, which were based on a research approach with fundamental problems. 

 

 

References




 

Emeneau. M. B. 1988. Proto-Dravidian *C- and Its Developments. Journal of the American Oriental Society 108, no. 2: 239--268.

 

Irakavan. A. 1971. Icaiyum Yalum. Tirunelveli: Kalainūṟ Patippakam.

 

Hart, George L., III. 1975a. Ancient Tamil Literature: Its Scholarly Past and Future. In Essays on South India. Edited by Burton Stein, 41-63. University of Hawaii: The University Press of Hawaii.

 

Hart, George. L., III. 1975b. The Poems of Ancient Tamil: Their Milieu and Their Sanskrit Counterparts. Berkeley: University of California Press. 


Hart, George L., III. 1987. Early Evidence for Caste in South India. In Dimentions of Social Life: Essays in Honor of David G. Mandelbaum. Edited by Paul Hockings. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

 

Ludden, D. E. 1996. Caste Society and Units of Production in Early Modern South India. In

Institutions and Economic Change in South Asia: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Edited by Burton Stein and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, 105-133. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

 

Orr, Leslie. 2000. Donors, Daughters, and Devotees of God: Temple Women in Medieval Tamilnadu. New York: Oxford University Press.



Pillay, K. K. 1969. A Social History of the Tamils Part I. Madras: University of Madras.


 

Thurston, E. 1909. Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 6.  Madras: Government Press. 

-----------------------



Regards,
Palaniappan

 





















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