Vellalar | |
---|---|
Religions | Hinduism, Jainism, [1] Christianity [2] |
Languages | Tamil |
Subdivisions | [3] |
Related groups | Tamil people |
Vellalar is a group of castes in the Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and northeastern parts of Sri Lanka. [lower-alpha 1] [lower-alpha 2] [lower-alpha 3] The Vellalar are members of several endogamous [lower-alpha 4] [lower-alpha 5] castes such as the numerically strong Arunattu Vellalar, Chozhia Vellalar, Karkarthar Vellalar, Kongu Vellalar, Thuluva Vellalar and Sri Lankan Vellalar. [9] [10]
The earliest occurrence of the term Velaalar (வேளாளர்) in Sangam literature is in Paripadal where it is used in the sense of a landowner. [11] The term Velaalar (வேளாளர்) can be derived from the word Vel (வேள்), Vel being a title that was borne by the Velir chieftains of Sangam age among other things. [12]
The word Vellalar (வெள்ளாளர் ) 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. [13]
The Vellalars have a long cultural history that goes back to over two millennia in southern India, [14] where once they were the ruling and land-owning community. [15] [16] Though the Vellalar have generally been associated with the landed gentry and agriculture, they are not a homogenous group and various people from diverse backgrounds have identified themselves as a Vellalar in the course of history. [6]
The Vellalar are spoken of as a group of people right from the Sangam period and are mentioned in many of the classical works of Sangam literature. The Tolkappiyam does not contain the term Vellalar but refers to a group of people called Velaan Maanthar who apart from practising agriculture had the right to carry weapons and wear garlands when they were involved in affairs of the state. [17] The term Vellalar itself occurs in the sense of a landowner in Paripadal. [11] The poem Pattinappaalai lists the six virtues of Vellalar as abstention from killing, abstention from stealing, propagation of religion, hospitality, justice and honesty. [18]
In the years that immediately followed the Sangam age (from third to sixth century CE), the Tamil lands were ruled by a dynasty called Kalabhras. [19] Historians believe that the Kalabhras belonged to the Vellalar community of warriors who were possibly once the feudatories of the Cholas and the Pallavas. [20] Scholar and historian M. Raghava Iyengar identifies the Kalabhras with the Kalappalar section of the Vellalar and equates king Achyuta Vikranta with Achyuta Kalappala the father of Meykandar. [21] Buddhadatta, the Pali writer who stayed in the Chola kingdom and authored Buddhist manuals refers (in the Nigamanagātha of Vinayavinicchaya, verse 3179) to his patron Achyuta Vikranta who was then (fifth century CE) ruling the Chola kingdom as Kalamba-kula nandane meaning the favourite of the Kalamba family. [22] In Pali language as in Tamil, the word Kalamba or Kalambam (in Tamil) means the Kadamba tree, the sacred totemic symbol that is associated with Tamil god Murugan. [23] [24]
The Velir were an ancient group of Tamil chieftains who claimed Yadava (Yadu) descent. [25] The Ay Vels were one such Velir group that ruled the territory in and around Venad during the Sangam period. The word Venad is derived from Vel -nadu, that is the country ruled by Vel chieftains. [26] We know of a queen of Vikramaditya Varaguna, an Ay king of 9th century who is referred to as Murugan Chenthi and as Aykula Mahadevi from inscriptions. Her father, an Ay chief called Chathan Murugan is described as a Vennir Vellala that is a Vellala by birth, [27] in the Huzur plates of king Karunandakkan, the predecessor of Vikramaditya Varaguna. [28]
The Irunkovel or Irukkuvel chieftains were another ancient Velir clan who ruled from their capital Kodumbalur (near Pudukottai district). They were related to the Cholas by marriage. [29] In an inscription of Rajadhiraja Chola an Irukkuvel feudatory who was a high-ranking military officer (Dandanayaka) of the king is described as a Velala. [lower-alpha 6]
The Irungovels are considered to be of the same stock as the Hoysalas as in one of the Sangam poems, the ancestor of the Irungovel chieftain is said to have ruled the fortified city of Tuvarai. This city is identified with the Hoysala capital Dwarasamudra by some historians. [31] Also, the legend of the chief killing a tiger (Pulikadimal) has a striking resemblance to the origin legend of the Hoysalas where ‘'sala'’ kills the tiger to save a sage. [32] As per historian Arokiaswami, the Hoysala title ‘'Ballala'’ is only a variant of the Tamil word ‘'Vellala'’. [33] The Hoysala king Veera Ballala III is even now locally known as the ‘'Vellala Maharaja'’ in Thiruvannamalai, the town that served as their capital in 14th century. [34]
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". [16]
Two identical Tamil inscriptions from Avani and Uttanur in Mulbagal Taluk dated in the 3rd year of Kulottunga I (about 1072-1073 CE) describe how the great army of the right hand class (perumpadai valangai mahasenai) having arrived with great weapons of war from the 78-nadus of Chola-mandalam and the 48000-bhumi of Jayangonda-cholamandalam (the northern districts of Tamil Nadu that is Tondaimandalam) conquered and colonized southern Karnataka (Kolar district) by the grace of Rajendrachola (Kulottunga I). [35]
Historian Burton Stein who has done a detailed analysis of this inscription equates the Valangai military forces and the Velaikkara troops of the Cholas with the Vellalas and notes that the contents of the above inscription confirm this identification. [36] The Velaikkara troops were special units of armed forces drawn from the right-hand castes that were close to the king. The units were generally named after the king like Rajaraja-terinda-valangai-velaikkarar, that is the known (terinda) forces of king Rajaraja Chola I . [37] The Chola inscriptions state that the Velaikkara forces pledged under oath to commit suicide in case they failed to defend their king or in the event of his death. [38] The Chalukya kings were also known by the title Velpularasar, that is kings of Vel country (pulam means region or country in Tamil) and as Velkulattarasar, that is kings of the Vel clan (kulam), in epigraphs and in the old Tamil lexicon Divakaram. [39] [40]
The Vellalar also contributed to the Bhakti movement in south India from the seventh century CE onwards and helped revive Hinduism. Many of the Nayanmars, the Shaiva saints, were Vellalar. [41] [42] In the 12th century CE, saint Sekkilan Mahadevadigal Ramadeva sang the glories of these Nayanmars in his magnum opus, the Periyapuranam. [43] Sekkizhar was born in a Vellala family in Kundrathur in Thondaimandalam and had the title Uttama Chola Pallavaraiyan. [44] [45] [46] Sekkilan Mahadevadigal Ramadeva was an elder contemporary of Kulothunga Chola II, the king who is said to have persecuted the Brahmin philosopher Ramanuja for his Vaishnavite preachings by forcing him to sign a document stating Shiva is the greatest god. [47] [48]
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. [49] [9] 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. [50]
Their dominance rose under Dutch rule and they formed one of the colonial political elites of the island. [51] [52]
At present, most of the Tamil Jains are from the Vellalar social group. [1] Also, the Saiva Velaalar sect are originally believed to have been Jainas before they embraced Hinduism. [lower-alpha 7] The Tamil Jains refer to the Saiva Velaalar as nīr-pūci-nayinārs or nīr-pūci-vellalars meaning the vellalars who left Jainism by smearing the sacred ash or (tiru)-nīru. [lower-alpha 8] While some of the Jains assign this conversion to the period of the Bhakti movement in Tamil nadu others link it to a conflict with a ruler of the Vijayanagar empire in the 15th century. [54] The villages and areas settled by the Saiva Velaalar even now have a small number of Jaina families and inscriptional evidence indicate that these were earlier Jaina settlements as is evident by the existence of old Jaina temples. [55]
Even though at present, the term "Vellalar" is uncertain, a number of non-cultivating landholding castes like Kaarukaatha Velaalar and the Kondaikatti Velaalar who served ruling dynasties in various capacities also identify themselves as Vellalar. [lower-alpha 9] Likewise, the Kottai Pillaimar who were traditionally land-holders and lived inside forts, neither lease land for agriculture nor do they till their own fields. They also do not supervise cultivation directly due to the stigma attached to farming and manual labor. [57] Similarly, the Vellala Chettis, a branch of the Chozhia Vellalars were traders and merchants. [58] The Adi-saiva vellalar sect is a strictly vegetarian Saivite group that traditionally served as priests. [59]
The Vellalar were considered to be of high status and enjoyed a high rank during the Chola period. They helped promote and stabilize Shaivism during the Chola era and many of the cult's leaders were drawn from the ranks of the Vellalar. They were a prosperous community of farmers and landowners who had provided economic support to Shiva temples in the Tamil country. In the Tamil region, Vellalar like Mudaliyar and Pillai along with certain other non-brahmin groups enjoyed a status equal to that of the Brahmins. The Vellalar also had more authority, power and status than the Brahmins in some social and ritual contexts. [60] They were more orthodox than the Brahmins in their religious practices. [61] [62] The Vellalar nobles had marriage alliances with Chola royal families. [63] [64]
The Smarta Brahmins have always competed with the Tamil Shaivites for religious influence in the temples in the Kaveri delta region. The Smarta adopted the worship of Hindu deities and combined their Sanskritic background with Tamil Saiva and Vaishnava devotionalism and eventually identified themselves as Shaivites and started worshipping in Shiva temples. [65]
From the Sangam period to the Chola period of Indian history (A.d. 600 to 1200), state-level political authority was in the hands of relatively low, Vellalar chieftains, who endowed local and nonlocal Brahmins with land and honors, and were in turn legitimized by them. [66]
During the British colonial period, 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 (four varnas) did not describe the South Indian, or Dravidian, society adequately. [67] Following the arrival of Dutch missionaries in the early 18th century, some Vellalar converted to Christianity. [68]
The Tamil people, also known as Tamilar, Tamilians, or simply Tamils, are a Dravidian ethno-linguistic group who natively speak Tamil and trace their ancestry mainly to India's southern state of Tamil Nadu, the union territory of Puducherry, and to Sri Lanka. The Tamil language is one of the world's longest-surviving classical languages, with over 2000 years of Tamil literature, including the Sangam poems, which were composed between 300 BCE and 300 CE. People who speak Tamil and are born in Tamil clans are considered Tamils.
Tamil Jains are ethnic-Tamils from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, who practice Jainism, chiefly the Digambara school. The Tamil Jain is a microcommunity of around 85,000, including both Tamil Jains and north Indian Jains settled in Tamil Nadu. They are predominantly scattered in northern Tamil Nadu, largely in the districts of Tiruvannamalai, Kanchipuram, Vellore, Villupuram, Ranipet and Kallakurichi. Early Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions in Tamil Nadu date to the third century BCE and describe the livelihoods of Tamil Jains. Samaṇar wrote much Tamil literature, including the important Sangam literature, such as the Nālaṭiyār, the Silappatikaram, the Valayapathi and the Seevaka Sinthamaṇi. Three of the five great epics of Tamil literature are attributed to Jains.
The Pandyan dynasty, also referred to as the Pandyas of Madurai, was an ancient Tamil dynasty of South India, and among the four great kingdoms of Tamilakam, the other three being the Pallavas, the Cholas and the Cheras. Existing since at least the 4th to 3rd centuries BCE, the dynasty passed through two periods of imperial dominance, the 6th to 10th centuries CE, and under the 'Later Pandyas'. Under Jatavarman Sundara Pandyan I and Maravarman Kulasekara Pandyan I, the Pandyas ruled extensive territories including regions of present-day South India and northern Sri Lanka through vassal states subject to Madurai.
Kārkāthār is a Hindu caste in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Mudaliar is a Tamil title and surname. As title, it was historically given to high-ranking military officers and their descendants during the Chola empire rule. The surname is most prevalent among Tamils from Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. Descendants of Tamil colonial migrants also bears variants of the name in countries such as South Africa, and elsewhere in the Tamil diaspora.
Kongu Nadu, also known by various names such as Kongu Mandalam and Kongu belt, is a geographical region comprising present day parts of western Tamil Nadu, southeastern Karnataka and eastern Kerala. In the ancient Tamilakam, it was the seat of the Chera kings, bounded on the east by Tondai Nadu, on the south-east by Chola Nadu and on the south by Pandya Nadu regions.
The Sangam period or age, particularly referring to the third Sangam period, is the period of the history of ancient Tamil Nadu, Kerala and parts of Sri Lanka dating back to c.6th century BC. It was named after the legendary Sangam academies of poets and scholars centered in the city of Madurai which are believed to be mythical.
Arumuka Navalar was a Sri Lankan Shaivite Tamil language scholar, polemicist, and a religious reformer who was central in reviving native Hindu Tamil traditions in Sri Lanka and India.
Tamilakam is the geographical region inhabited by the ancient Tamil people, covering the southernmost region of the Indian subcontinent. Tamilakam covered today's Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry, Lakshadweep and southern parts of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Traditional accounts and the Tolkāppiyam referred to these territories as a single cultural area, where Tamil was the natural language and permeated the culture of all its inhabitants. The ancient Tamil country was divided into kingdoms. The best known among them were the Cheras, Cholas, Pandyans and Pallavas. During the Sangam period, Tamil culture began to spread outside Tamilakam. Ancient Tamil settlements were also established in Sri Lanka and the Maldives (Giravarus).
Kongu Vellalar is a community found in the Kongu region of Tamil Nadu, India.
The Chola Empire, often referred to as the Imperial Cholas, was a medieval thalassocratic empire established by Pottapi branch of the Chola dynasty that rose to prominence during the middle of the 9th century CE and successfully united southern India under their rule.
The region of Tamil Nadu in the southeast of modern India, shows evidence of having had continuous human habitation from 15,000 BCE to 10,000 BCE. Throughout its history, spanning the early Upper Paleolithic age to modern times, this region has coexisted with various external cultures.
The Velir were a royal house of minor dynastic kings and aristocratic chieftains in Tamilakam in the early historic period of South India. They had close relations with Chera, Chola and Pandya rulers through ruling and coronation rights. Medieval inscriptions claim that they belong to the Yadu dynasty.
Vellala or Vellalar may refer to:
Chozhia Vellalar is a caste from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Thuluva Vellalar, also known as Agamudaya Mudaliars and Arcot Mudaliars, is a caste found in northern Tamil Nadu, southern Andhra Pradesh and southern Karnataka. They were originally significant landowners.
The Mutharaiyar was a south Indian dynasty that governed the Thanjavur, Trichy and Pudukottai regions between 600 and 850 CE.
Sri Lankan Paraiyar is a Tamil caste found in northern and eastern Sri Lanka. They are traditional parai-drummers who were also involved in weaving and scavenging.
Thondaimandala Vellalar is a high-ranking subcaste of the Vellalar caste in the state of Tamil Nadu, India who tend, to adopt the title of Mudaliar and they have been traditional "landlords, warriors, and officials of the state class" described by the anthropologist Kathleen Gough.
Kondaikatti Velaalar or Thondaimandala Mudaliar is a Tamil caste in south India. Historically, they were a caste of non-cultivating land-holders and some of them were administrators under various south Indian dynasties. Their original homeland was Thondaimandalam and from there they spread to other areas in south India and northeastern parts of Sri Lanka. Since they historically used the Mudaliar title, they are sometimes referred to as Thondaimandala Mudaliar. However, Kathleen Gough considers them to be a separate subcaste of the Thondaimandala Mudali, as does Susan Neild.
The Ventar-Velir-Velalar groups constituted the ruling and land-owning classes in the Tamil country since the beginning of recorded history
Not only were the Vellalas the landowning communities of South India,...
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)...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..