Vellalar

Vellalar
Religions Saiva Siddhantam, Hinduism
Languages Tamil
Related groups Tamil people

Vellalar (Tamil: வேளாளர், translit. Vēḷāḷar or Tamil: வெள்ளாளர், translit. Veḷḷāḷar) is a Tamil caste found mainly in the Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and in northeastern parts of Sri Lanka. They are traditionally involved in agriculture also serving as landlords.

Vellalar, is a generic term used by several agricultural communities, including the numerically strong Kongu Vellalar, Chozhia Vellalar, Thuluva Vellalar and Sri Lankan Vellalar.[1][2] Despite being a relatively lowly group, they were dominant communities in Tamil agrarian societies for 600 years until the decline of the Chola dynasty in the 13th century, with their chieftains able to practise state-level political authority after winning the support and legitimisation of Brahmins and other higher-ranked communities with grants of land and honours.[3]

Etymology

The word Vellalar may come from the root Vellam for flood, which gave rise to various rights of land; and it is because of the acquisition of land rights that the Vellalar got their name.[4]

The earliest reference to the name is attested in the Tolkāppiyam, which divided the society in four classes Arasar, Andanar, Vanigar and Vellalar.[5]

History

Vellālars worshipping lingam, snake-stones and Ganēsa from Castes and Tribes of Southern India (1909).

The Vellalars have a long cultural history that goes back to over two millennia in southern India,[6] where once they were the ruling and land-owning community.[7][8]

The Vellalars are one of the tribes claiming ancestry from the aristocratic Velir chieftains.[note 1] The Sangam literature describes the Vellalar tribes as a landed gentry who irrigated the wet lands and the Karalar as the landed gentry in the dry lands.[11] There were two types of Vellalar, being the cultivators called Velkudi Ulavar and the wealthy landowners called Kaniyalar or Kodikkalar.[12] According to the anthropologist Kathleen Gough, "the Vellalars were the dominant secular aristocratic caste under the Chola kings, providing the courtiers, most of the army officers, the lower ranks of the kingdom's bureaucracy, and the upper layer of the peasantry".[8]

Cultivation in South Asia was spread by force, people would move out into virgin land, which was used by hunter gatherer or tribal people for slash and burn agriculture or for hunting and convert into prime agricultural land. This was an honorific title of select few people who would organise such raids and settlements like chiefs who were also called as Vel. Today everybody uses it but once it was restricted to village headman or founding chief's lineage.[13]

The Vellalars who were land owners and tillers of the soil and held offices pertaining to land, were ranked as Sat-Sudra in the 1901 census; with the Government of Madras recognising that the 4-fold division did not describe the South Indian, or Dravidian, society adequately.[14] Following the arrival of Dutch missionaries in the early 18th century, some Vellalar converted to Christianity.[15]

Sri Lanka

The Vellalars of Sri Lanka have been chronicled in the Yalpana Vaipava Malai and other historical texts of the Jaffna kingdom. They form half of the Sri Lankan Tamil population and are the major husbandmen, involved in tillage and cattle cultivation.[16][1] Local Sri Lankan literature, such as the Kailiyai Malai, an account on Kalinga Magha, narrates the migration of Vellala Nattar chiefs from the Coromandel Coast to Sri Lanka.[17]

Their dominance rose under Dutch rule and they formed one of the colonial political elites of the island.[18][19]

See also

Notes

    1. ↑ Etymologically connecting Velirs with Vellalars is of doubt. According to Rangaswamy and Araṅkacāmi, the Vellālars are probably the descendants of the Vēlir; but the words Veļļālar, Vēļāņmai, Vēļālar, are derived from their art of irrigation and cultivation rather than from their original chieftainship.[9] According to T. K. Venkatasubramanian, the association of vellalar with velir is speculative and there is no historical evidence for it.[4] The Journal of Kerala Studies, Vol 14, says the etymological interpretations connecting Vellalar with Velir are unconvincing.[10]

    References

    1. 1 2 Derges, Jane (2013). Ritual and Recovery in Post-Conflict Sri Lanka. Routledge. p. 77. ISBN 1136214887.
    2. ↑ Ramaswamy, Vijaya (2017). Historical Dictionary of the Tamils. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 390. ISBN 9781538106860.
    3. ↑ Moffatt, Michael (2015). An Untouchable Community in South India: Structure and Consensus. Princeton University Press. p. 37. ISBN 9781400870363.
    4. 1 2 Venkatasubramanian, T. K. (1993). Societas to Civitas: evolution of political society in South India : pre-Pallavan Tamil̤akam. Kalinga Publications. p. 64.
    5. ↑ Ramachandran, C. E. (1974). Ahananuru in Its Historical Setting. University of Madras. p. 58.
    6. ↑ Meluhha and Agastya : Alpha and Omega of the Indus Script By Iravatham Mahadevan pages 16: "The Ventar-Velir-Velalar groups constituted the ruling and land-owning classes in the Tamil country since the beginning of recorded history""Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 June 2011. Retrieved 7 June 2011.
    7. ↑ Al-Hind: Early medieval India and the expansion of Islam, 7th-11th centuries By André Wink pages 321: "Not only were the Vellalas the landowning communities of South India,..."
    8. 1 2 Gough, Kathleen (2008). Rural Society in Southeast India. Cambridge University Press. p. 29. ISBN 9780521040198.
    9. ↑ The surnames of the Caṅkam age: literary & tribal, by M. A. Dorai Rangaswamy, Mor̲appākkam Appācāmi Turai Araṅkacāmi, p.151-155: "The commentators on Tolkappiyam speak of two kinds of cultivators the Melvaramdars and the Kilvaramdars, relying upon like ‘Kutipurantarunar param ompi’ (Patir 13, line 24), ‘safeguarding the burden of those who protect the cultivators’, - and of some cutrams in Akatinnai Iyal (24, 29, 30) and the Marapiyal (80, 81, 84)...Tolkappiyar is not concerned with the codification of the actual habits and social conditions of the castes as contrasted with the literary tradition. Therefore one is tempted to look upon these as interpolations of a later age. Therefore the attempt at confusing the velir with vellalar and at identifying the Vellalar with the Sudras of the Smritis, is misleading. The word Vellalar comes from the root Vellam, the flood of the water which the Vellālar directed into proper channels; the name Kārālar is an exact equivalent of this word. But this does not mean the Vellālars may not be the descendants of the Vēlir; probably they are; but the words Veļļālar, Vēļāņmai, Vēļālar, are derived from their art of irrigation and cultivation rather than from their original chieftainship.."
    10. ↑ The Journal of Kerala Studies, Vol 14, p.6-7: "Also some modern scholars have tried to equate them with the Vellalar caste. However, such etymological interpretations to connect Vellalar with Velir appear unconvincing".
    11. ↑ India's Communities. Oxford University Press. 1998. p. 1576. ISBN 9780195633542.
    12. ↑ Kanagammal, S. (2011). "History of the Peasantry in Tamilnadu: From the Ancient to the End of Colonial Period". In Ganeshram, S.; Bhavani, C. History of People and Their Environs: Essays in Honour of Prof. B.S. Chandrababu. Indian Universities Press. p. 319. ISBN 9789380325910.
    13. ↑ Spectres of Agrarian Territory by David Ludden
    14. ↑ Kingship and political practice in colonial India, by Pamela G. Price, p.61: "...when government census officers placed Vellalar in the Sat-Sudra or Good Sudra category in its 1901 census, Vellalar castemen petitioned this designation, protesting this designation..
    15. ↑ Etherington, Norman, ed. (2005). Missions and Empire. Oxford University Press. p. 112. ISBN 978-0-19153-106-4.
    16. ↑ Fernando, A. Denis N. (1987). "PENINSULAR JAFFNA FROM ANCIENT TO MEDIEVAL TIMES: Its Significant Historical and Settlement Aspects". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka. 32: 84. JSTOR 23731055.
    17. ↑ Holt, John (2011). The Sri Lanka Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Duke University Press. p. 84. ISBN 0822349825.
    18. ↑ Gerharz, Eva. The Politics of Reconstruction and Development in Sri Lanka: Transnational Commitments to Social Change. Routledge. p. 73. ISBN 9781317692799.
    19. ↑ Welhengama, Gnanapala; Pillay, Nirmala (2014). The Rise of Tamil Separatism in Sri Lanka: From Communalism to Secession. Routledge. p. 168. ISBN 9781135119713.

    Further reading

    • Lucassen, Jan; Lucassen, Leo (2014). Globalising Migration History: The Eurasian Experience. BRILL. ISBN 978-9-00427-136-4.

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