Aduanas interiores

they drew up a set of rules exacting compensation for bodily damage inflicted by their "masters". The list of conditions includes the following:

1) If a Kallar lost a tooth14 via a master's blow, the master was to be fined 10 Kali chakrams.

2) If a Kallar had his or her ear tom under punishment, the master was to pay 6 chakrams.

3) If a Kallar's skull were fractured, the master must pay 30 chakrams - "or in default have his own skull fractured."

4) If a Kallar had an arm or leg broken, the master must pay 20 chakrams, give a certain amount of grain and clothes, and likewise grant him as much nunja (irrigated) lands as could be sown with 1

kalam of seed, and also 2 kurukkams o f punja (dry) land.

5) If a Kallar were killed, the master must pay 100 chakrams - "or in default be put at the mercy of the murdered man's relatives." (cf.

Thurston 1906:373)

On the one hand, this schedule of fines might be seen as a mocking adoption of the principle o f the differentiated body o f purusa, in that a hierarchical valorization of (damaged) bodily parts is entailed. More seriously, the striking thing about this list is the higher compensation demanded for an arm or a leg than for a fractured skull, a negation o f the vama hierarchy. As the last rule enunciates, the entire list's main principle of compensation revolves around the symmetrical rule o f vengeance.15 In this exercise, the Kallar unambiguously signified the autonomy o f their political formation, polemically negating an enormous block of the hierarchical ideology of Brahmanical formula. This determination awaited nothing, but a century after its purpose was opposed by the Company sword, it was dismissed by an imperialist pen - held firmly in 1906 by Edgar Thurston16 - as "distinctly quaint"; to such an extent

of entitlement to land which articulated "a tradition of revolution in which the former gumsa chiefs were either

driven out or reduced to the status... of having no special rights" (1964:206-7). Once again what is depicted as a

cycle in time for highland Burma is spatialized in south India. In a sense the Kallars represent their past masters

as the dominators of another space - a space of a different "proper" or political form, of no direct interest to the

dryland Kallars. The Vellalars are perhaps over-represented in the ethnographic literature, again a symptom and

a transmitter of delta bias; by and large, Vellalars do live today in the delta zones, a point which Dirks observes distinguishes Pudukkottai from the usual representations of Tamil society; mostly dry, Pudukkottai did not have Vellalars (1988:247-49).

14 The word for tooth in Tamil is also pallan, a homonym to the name of the Pallar community. In Sattur, where

the Pallar-Thevar clash is particularly extreme, I saw a movie in which the star had an aching tooth which he

pulled it out by himself, saying, "there, now that damn pallan won't bother me anymore", thus provoking outrage

amongst the numerous Pallars in the audience.

15 Catalogues of money fmes are common in feudal Europe and very frequent in ancient Indian texts; here the key is that the Kallar are enunciating the rules, not their dominant masters, an expression of the symmetry of wills to power claimed by the subaltern Kallars. Today, it is precisely the "rule of vengeance" that is seen as a distinct trait of the Kallars and also the Pallars, and is construed as the reason for the escalating and inescapable violence

of their conflict at present. It is felt that other communities do not have such a code (jatidharma). Bougie,

claiming that repressive regulations take precedence over restitutive ones in "the caste system", and that "the Hindus seem to have lost the custom of collective vengeance between group and group very early" (1971:146,134); such arguments were contradicted by the practices of the dry zone, practices edited out of the script of colonial sociology.

16 Thurston was the colonial ethnographer in the compilation of the 7 volumes of his Castes and Tribes of

Southern India (1909): "In carrying out the anthropometric portion of the survey, it was unfortunately impossible to disguise the fact that I am a Government official, and very considerable difficulties were encountered owing to

had the colonial raj decided that all of Hinduism was indeed a function of Brahmanical discourse. Yet the Kallars knew what they were doing, as evidenced not only by their overthrowing of their prior Vellalar masters, but also their consequent re-naming of their territory as tan-arasu-nad, or: "the country governed by themselves" (cf. Francis 1905:93).

Around 1800, "Kusbah Dindigul" was famous for its weaving and painting of cloths, especially the weaving of blankets.17 References to the symbolic importance of blankets appear in Dumont's Kallar ethnography as well (cf. 1986:155 - "the authority of the carpet"), as an accoutrement of community leadership. The blanket

[kambalam] was the primary locus of dispute resolution, community reconciliation, and the enactment of family vows and prayers. I saw it in frequent use for the latter purposes in the kovil [temple] in Cumbum, which is dominated by and for the

Gowders. The case of the blanket with the Tottiyan Nayakkar community in

Cumbum Valley today is instructive; the blanket is stressed as essential, as befits the name of the community: Raja Kambalam. This is the community which provided the majority of polegars in Tamilnad, particularly around Madurai; they had particular good luck in avoiding liquidation and being converted into zamindars. Every family has a blanket for its own ritual use for household ceremonies and worship, and to facilitate purification should any form of contagion by menstrual facts occur.18 The community at large maintains a particular blanket which is considered very sacred, and is kept in the kovil-veedu [temple-house], a special place in the house of the

periyaveedu-Na.ydkkai [big house Nayakkar]. It is always the practice not to keep it at the zamindar's house - it is brought there for big functions and lifecycle ceremonies, then returned. Only the zamindari families should not have any blanket at all; it should be had, ideally, by an "even higher house."19

Immediately this appears as a variation on the Dumontian model of the distinction between the Brahmin and the King, in which the latter is given absolute the wickedness o f the people, and their timidity and fear o f increased taxation, plague inoculation, and transportation" (p.xvi). Some o f the native apprehension was due to Thurston's practice o f putting a spot o f white paint on the subject body's face, "to indicate the position o f the fronto-nasal structure and bi-orbital breadth" which was feared by Tamils to "blister into a number on the forehead, which would serve as a means o f future identification for kidnapping." The very idea o f his measuring bodies was suspected as proof that he was an army tailor (pp.xvi-xvii). His anthropometric research finally led him to concede that "the question o f the Dravidian head was not nearly so simple and straightforward as I had imagined" (p.xxxviii)...

17

See W ilson's catalogue o f the Mackenzie collection; the second section o f the book, "Local Tracts" in the "Tamul" language holdings, indexes a number o f texts on the Dindigul country, regarding polegars, temples, merchants, etc. (1828:xxxi-xxxviii).

18 The community today is known for its magical prowess, especially in curing snake bites, for which they have

long been known (cf. Ward, v.3:16). They will also evict ghosts for a small fee. Magical powers, however, are

lost by menstrual pollution, save for the restorative effects o f a blanket ceremony.

*9 Another comparison with the Kachin is possible. In the gumsa formation, the c h ie fs house has a special spirit

compartment; the spirit is seen as an affinal relation o f one o f the c h ie f s remote ancestors (Leach 1964:108). The

Tottiyan zamindars had a similar compartment in their house, which contained the remains o f those o f their