Production Process and the Historical

Roots of Transition to Castes

K.S. Madhavan “Primary producing groups in early and early medieval Kerala:
Production process and historical roots of transition to castes (300-1300 CE)”
Thesis. Department of History , University of Calicut, 2012
 Chapter Four
Production Process and the Historical Roots of
Transition to Castes

Attempt is made in this chapter to unravel the various aspects of the process
which developed the multiple forms of power that led to the developemt of
endogamy and hereditary occupations. The transition from a tribal / clan
based society of the Mullai- Kurinchi region to the structured hierarchical
society in multiple economies in the wetland and parambu areas are
important. This society was dominated by the institutional structure of the
chiefdom and the ideological and cultural dominance of the temples which
engendered social subordination and subjugation of women and the producing
class.

The growth of overlordship and the subjugation of producing class was

developed through the political power of the Nāttutayavar and the cultural
and ideological control of the temples and the Brahmans. The instituted
process of production in multiple economies transformed the clan endogamy
and kinship structures into endogamous social collective with hereditary
occupations. The subjugation of the endogamous social collective to the
political and cultural dominance of Nāttutayavar or Chēra Perumāl and the
temples and its retinue and the fucntionaries structured the producing class
with endogamy and hereditary occupation. The servitude and bondage of
primary producers were materialised in the process of the production and
appropriation of the resources. Various aspects of the formation of social
stratification and consolidation of hierarchy based on caste and gender are
explained along with the subjugation and servitude of the producing groups in
the following sections.

380
Eco zones and Life Activities

The physiographic regions1, hilly-forested backwood areas, pasture lands,

river valleys and wetland plain, arid –dry and barren lands and littoral tracts –
Mulli –Kurinchi, Marutham, Palai2 and Neytal respectively are eco –types3
or micro eco zones4 which together constituted the multiple economies5 and
corresponding social structures. Hunting, gathering and punam cultivation or
shifting agriculture was important forms of subsistence among the people in
the Kurinchi - Mullai zone. Fishing and salt manufacturing in the littoral
tracts developed even before the wet land agriculture started in the riverine
areas. Pālai could be located anywhere as it was an ephemeral situation
contingent upon seasonal changes.

Vētar, Vēttuvar and Kuravar were engaged in shifting cultivation and

hunting practices in kurinchi region. Āyar or Itayar were the people who were
engaged in pastoral activities and subsistence agriculture in Mullai and
Paratavar engaged in fishing in Neytal area.6 Migration of people from the

1
K Kailasapathy, Tamil Heroic Poetry,[London,1968], p.12.
2
Palai is an ephemeral ecological situation developed due to seasonal changes and it can
be anywhere else in the physiographic zones.
3
K Sivathamby, ‘Early South Indian Society and Economy: The Tinai Concept’ in
Studies in Ancient Tamil Society: Economy, Society and State Formation, pp.1-25.
4
It is assumed that these represent the primary habitat associated with communities
thriving on a multi -resource broad spectrum subsistence economy, situated within a
series of geo-physical and bio-climatic niches. Each micro geo- physical zone tends to
develop an echo zone having its own distinct character and identity depending upon the
nature of community interaction with resource use , technology,subsistence pattern and
settlement pattern, Sudarshan Seneviratne, From Kuti to Natu: A Suggested Framework
for the Study of Pre- State Political Formations in Early Iron Age South India,[1993]
reproduced in Srī Nāgābhinandanam – Dr M S Nagaraja Rao Festschrift,[Eds] L K
Srinivasan and S Nagaraju, [Bangalore, 1995], p.101.
5
The study of development of multiple economies and the uneven development of life
activities are well attested in the study of Guro society of Ivory Coast by Cloude
Meillassoux, Emmanuel Terrey, Marxism and Primitive societies [Monthly Review
Press, New York, 1972].
6
The analysis of self – sustaining communities in West African societies is useful to the
understanding of the kinship groups developed in the early historical period in the

381
mullai –kurinchi region to the riverine and water logging areas occuredand
subsequently formed settlements and wetland agriculture in the river valleys.
Shifting cultivation was practiced in tinai- varaku zone where multicrops
including mountain paddy were cultivated. We find that Thozhuvar and
Uzhavar had engaged in wetland agriculture in riverine and riparian areas.
The people engaged in various life activities were collectively known as
kutimākkal and the basic unit of the tribal descent society in the early historic
period as represented in the classical Tamil texts is the kuti.

Kuti is used to denote family, clan and settlement7. Kuti was originally
used to denote herd or a collective, which later came to mean residential
community of extended kin group. The original meaning of the herd
[economic base] has been extended to the house [place of residence], family
[the immediate subsistence group] and lineage [the extended kin group]
forming the total socio economic complex.8

region under discussion. Claude Meillassoux has made significant contribution in

understanding the self-sustaining kinship groups and he defines the traditional social
unit called ‘community’ as composed of a number of individuals of both sexes linked by
kinship ties and grouped territorially or moving around together under the authority of a
man regarded as eminent. They meet their subsistence from agriculture combined with
food gathering, hunting or herding and, therefore, self-sufficiency is the economic
feature of such community, Cloude Meillassoux - ‘The Economy’ in Agricultural Self –
sustaining Societies: A Preliminary Analysis, in Relations of Production: Marxist
Approaches to Economic Anthropology [Ed] David Seddon, [Frank Cass,1978],pp.133-
34.
7
K Sivathamby, ‘Early South Indian Society and Economy’, in Studies in Ancient Tamil
Society: Economy, Society and State Formation, op.cit. p.15.
8
Sudarshan Seneviratne, From Kuti to Natu: op. cit., pp.104-105. In tribal society, the
institutions are not much differentiated. The constituent units of tribal society is starts
from the closely –knit household to the encompassing tribal whole. Families are joined
in local lineages, lineage in village communities, villages in regional confederacies, the
later making up the tribe or ‘’people’’- itself set in a wider inter-tribal field. The smaller
groups are usually cohesive kinship groups. The larger appear as social compacts of the
smaller integrated by perhaps personal kinship, clanship, or intermarriage. Tribe as a
whole is identified and distinguished from others by certain commonalities of custom
and speech. The smallest units, such as households ,are segments of larger groups of
more inclusive units, such as lineages ,the lineages in turn segments of larger groups,
and so on ,like pyramid of building blocks. Its coherence is not maintained from the

382
 The notion of kinship9 was important in each micro-eco zone that
determined the nature of life activities and the labour process involved in it.
These clan groups settled as chirukuti and the settlers were identified as
chirukudiyān. Chirukuti was the settlement of the people engaged in the
different life activities in the hill slopes encircled by hills in the mullai –
kurunchi region as well as in the coastal area.10 The settlers were known as
kudimākkal to denote a mark of their collective identity as kinship groups.
Those groups who engaged in metalworking, pottery and carpentry also
contributed to agriculture and settled as kutis. The kutimākkal who engaged in
different life activities resulted in developing the gendered division of labour.
All labour activities were based on extended familial kin relations and kin
labour was the principal form of labour of the various clans who practiced
their life activities. Cluster of these chirukuti settlements of the people who
followed various life activities constituted the chirūr.The resource availability
and material life activities in various micro eco zones indicate the
development of multiple economies in relation to the micro -eco zones. It also
reveals the expansion of different livelihood forms as well as the movement
of people involved in it across the various micro eco zones. Life activities and
gender relations in multiple economies developed particular socio-economic
life, which formed both matrilocal and patrilocalhouseholds.

above by public political institutions [as by a sovereign authority].The tribe is divided in

to concentric circles of kith and kin: the household in central position, a circle of lineage
kinsmen surrounding it, a wider circle of village relations, on out to the tribal and inter-
tribal spheres, Marshall D.Sahlins, Tribesmen, [Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1968], p.15.
9
Social relations are expressed in terms of kinship; it is expressed either of individuals or
of aggregates of unilineal kin, John Middleton and David Tait, Tribes Without Rulers:
Studies on African Segmentary Systems [1958] 1970, p.4.
10
The observation made by Marshall D. Sahlins is important in this context as he says that
the segmentary tribe is sharply divided into independent local communities. These
communities are small in the form of their settlements. The primary segment may be a
compact village or a ‘open community’ of scattered homesteads or hamlets, Marshall D.
Sahlins, Tribesmen, op. cit.,p-21.

383
The Role of Mother Sex in Tinai Varaku Zone

The Mullai poems describe the change of season from summer to

winter. It also deals with the emotional state of lady -love who stays at home
and the anxiety of the heroes who returns from warfare for the protection of
settlements and cattle wealth.11 The hero after separation from his lover
travels in search of wealth is also depicted in the texts. Cattle rearing was the
mainstay in the Mullai region where the subsistence agriculture in the form of
slash and burn or punam cultivation appears to have developed. It indicates
that pastoralism was a less stable economy, which was linked to the slash and
burn cultivation that developed in certain areas of the Mullai region.12 There
are a number of texts, which refer to the emergence of agriculture along with
herding.13 Mullai tinai represents the agro- pastoralism in which cattle
rearing14 and punam cultivation, especially cultivation of varaku, go hand in
hand.15

11
K Sivathamby, ‘An Analysis of the Anthropological Significance of the Economic
Activities and Conduct – Code Ascribed to Mullai Tinai’ in Studies in Ancient Tamil
Society: Economy, Society and State Formation ,op.cit., p.118.
12
Ibid, pp.119-120.
13
A mullai text [AN.194] describes the various aspects of varaku cultivation in the Mullai
region. The epithet kōtutai thalaikutai chūtiya vinainjar [AN.194.7 ] reveals the
labourers wearing caps in their heads and kalai kāl kazhi iya perum puna varaku
[AN.194.9], engaged in the process of weeding in the varaku plots. Kilikati
makalirinvilipata [AN.194.15] also shows the women who engaged in the process of
driving away the birds from the varaku plots. There is reference to the cultivation of
mutanthai varaku [AN.284.3]. There is also reference to muthaipunam kāvalar
[AN.94.10] the protection of the cultivating fields. Similarly, we find the epithet ithai
puna varakin arichi [AN.394.3], here we also find reference to the youngsters who take
meals made of varaku rice, AN.394.7.
14
The epithet kōvalar mullai viyan pulam parappi kurumporai marunku [AN.14.7],
Kōvalar conducting cattle rearing in the Mullai lands in the foot of a small hill called
kurumporai. The cattle are stationed in the mantram [AN.14.11] is mentioned.
15
AN.194 ithai puna varakin arichi, AN.394.3.

384
 Role of the mother sex is important in the pastoral cum subsistence
agriculture economy.16 It made possible the women of a pastoral economy to
be aquainted make themselves acquainted with plants and crops. Such crops
were later incorporated into the domain of agriculture. The shifting
cultivation was practiced by women near their settlements. As men wandered
with their cattle17 in pasturelands women got engaged in agriculture.18 This
developed a gendered division of labour in which women became central to
agriculture instead of being gatherers.Women became active agent in the
emerging social form as they did almost all agriculture operations, especially
the cultivation of varaku and vegetables.

The gender relations in this stage were somewhat symmetrical and

women appeared to have selected their mating partners independently. It
made possible to develop the fusion of clans resulting in clan exogamy by
which the women were enabled to include the other kinship descent groups.
After the introduction of cattle drawn agriculture and hoe cultivation men
began to dominate the agriculture operations, although the lion share of
agriculture were exclusively done by the women. This is mentioned in
number of Mullai texts in which cattle drawn plough is used for varaku
cultivation.19 The exchange of milk products and multicrops enabled men to
assume power over women. The settlements, the cattle and other resources

16
The word tāy , i.e. mother, has been analysed as tā itam, used honorifically to ā [cow]
āy , i.e. mistress of the cows, Sudarshan Seneviratne, From Kuti to Natu,op cit, FN.2,
p.105.
17
Kōlkaikovalar, AN.54.10. A text of a Mullai song mentions kallākōvalar ūthum valvāy
chirukuzhal [AN.74.16-17], the horn sounded by the Kōvalar to get the attention of the
cattle while they were rearing in the pasture.
18
K Sivathamby, An Analysis of the Anthropological Significance of the Economic
Activities and Conduct – Code Ascribed to Mullai Tinai, op. cit., p.126.
19
It mentions ēr itam patutta iru maru pūzhi ,i.e., the land was ploughed with ox
[AN.194.2]. The persons who ploughed the lands are called kollai uzhavar [AN.194.13].
The reference to nedunchāl vitti [AN.194.4-5] indicates the plough marks where seeds
began to be sprout [AN.194.4-5].

385
were to be protected from plundering raids. The able bodied men went for the
protection of settlements and cattle wealth20, while others engaged in cattle
rearing21 and punam cultivation.22

Cattle rearing and punam cultivation was the main occupation of the
people who were descent groups who inhabited in the settlements called
chirukuti23 and the cluster of chirukutis formed part of the chirukutipākkam24
or village.25 The development of multi crops production and cattle rearing
resulted in the exchange of milk products and multi crops, which led to the
development of the prosperous settlements called nallūr.26 This was
accompanied by the emergence of manai, probably from the perumkuti, the
wealthy households in the Mullai region. It is in the manai that women seem
to have domesticated.27 They were confined to the household in which the
notion of karpu28 or chastity began to determine their everyday life29, which
subjected them to the domination of husband and patrilocal households.30

20
Mullai songs represent the return of the heroes after the warfare made for the protection
of cattle wealth or for booty capturing to the lady love who patiently waiting for him.
21
A Mullai text mentions ūr vayin peyarum pozhuthin [AN.64.13], the cattle are
proceeded from the cattle rearing pasture lands to the kuti and cattle are kept in the
mantram , mantrunirai, the public space in a ūr where the cattle are kept,AN.64.14.
22
Muthaipunam kāvalar [AN.94.10].
23
Punpulam thazhiiya porai muthal chirukuti [AN.284.7] indicating the location of
chirukuti settlement which is usually encircled by the uncultivated pasture lands land
located near small hills.
24
Punpula vaipin em chiru nallūr [AN.394.16], the prosperous ūr in the Mullai region.
AN.274.14 mentions the ūr where the lady - love resided/ settled.
25
A Mullai text [AN.384.5-6] mentions mullai am puravin kavai katir varakin chīrūr
ānkan indicating the chīrur is situated in the mullai region where we also find the
cultivation of varaku.
26
It mentions punpula vaipin em chiru nallūr [AN.394.16], the chīrūr in the Mullai
region.
27
Manaiyōl [AN.14.14] indicates the women seem to have domesticated in a rich
household or settlement, There is reference to nin manaiyōl indicating the domesticated
women in a household called manai.
28
Narumalar mullai chanta karpu [AN.274.12-13].

386
 The protection of cattle wealth and settlements also led to the
emergence of chiefs called Mannar who must have developed from the
prosperous settlements and these settlements called nakar or netunakar. These
centeres were also the centers of exchange. The life world of the households
is represented in the Mullai poems. It mentions the direct involvement of
women in cultivation operations and in the protection of crops. We also find
reference to vanpulakāttu nātu31, the multi crop region where nātu began to be
developed, the germination of nātu, which must have developed
concomitantly with agro- pastoralism. It also mentions thunaiyotu thilaikum
kāpputai varaipin32 meaning the household where the protection is made not
only for the physical protection of the settlements but also for the protection
for the control of the youthful female members of the households to prevent
the practice of kalavu and thereby ensure clan endogamy. The term
chemmuthu cheviliyar’33 indicates the beautiful foster mothers who were
appointed to look after the young female members, especially to instruct them
in the patrilocal household relations and the notions of karpu which
emphasized the importance of conjugal fidelity in the prosperous patrilocal
households. Therefore, the conjugal fidelity and the karpu form of marriage
were used to protect women from making exogamous relations with the
members of other clans and to maintain the material wealth within the

29
The men who returned after warfare for the protection of settlements and cattle are
represented in the Mullai poems, K Sivathamby, ‘An Analysis of the Anthropological
Significance of the Economic Activities and Conduct – Code Ascribed to Mullai Tinai’,
op.cit., pp.122-123.
30
The domesticated women in the household of kuti settlement is mentioned in a Mullai
text, katavut karpotu kutikku vilakkākiya puthalvan payantha pukazhmiku chirappin
[AN184.1-2], to give birth a son to be known as the light of the kuti where he born and
bought up, it indicates the development of a house hold where women are domesticated
and they were supposed to be given birth to male children and they also became
instruments to reproduce the patrilineal house hold.
31
Vanpulakāttu nāttathuve [AN.94.12] the multi crop region where the nātu developed.
32
AN.34.13.
33
AN.254.2.

387
extended patrilineal households. Therefore, the disappearance of ka½avu and
the formation of gender relations based on karpu within the extended
patrilineal households of the dominant clans or social groups became an
ideological mechanism, which appeared to have controlled the sexuality of
women so as to ensure clan endogamy.

Tinai Cultivation and the Role of Women

The slashing and burning method is used in kurinchi34 region to

cultivate the tinai35 in the plots located in the forested area called ēnal.
Women in the kurinchi region are variously known as kānavarthankai36,
kurumakal37, kotichi38 etc, primarily engaged in the cultivation of tinai. The
epithet panaithōl ivalum yānum kāval kanninam tinayē39 suggests that women
in the kurinchi region were primarily engaged in the various activities of tinai
cultivation40including the protection of tinai.41 Men did this as well.42 Hill

34
In Kurinchi poems, the main theme is sexual union and those that lead to it. Pre-marital
intercourse was an accepted social custom of the hilly back wood region, K Sivathamby,
‘Early South Indian Society and Economy’ in Studies in Ancient Tamil
Society,op.cit.,p.19.
35
AN.148.6, chirutinai perum punam.
36
AN.132.5.
37
AN.172.16, AN.188.13. AN.188.13 refers to Kurava woman.
38
AN. 58.5, AN, 102.5.
39
AN.92.6-7
40
Koithu ozhi iravi punam the tinai punam lies after reaping the corn, AN.38.14.
41
AN.92.6-7. there is also reference to kuramakal kākkum ēnal [AN.188.13. Kulil kol
thattai [AN.32.6], devices used to drive away the birds from the tinai plots are operated
by the women.
42
AN. 392.15.refers to kal uyar kazhuthin chēnōn erintha val vāy kavanin, a Vētan who
is stationed in the kazhuthu [the hut erected to the purpose of kāval in the tina plots]
and he operated the device called kavanin to disperse / drive away the wild animals
from the tinai fields. The yield of first crop of tinai plant cultivated in slash and burn
method [AN.88.1], muthaichuval kaliththamuri chenthinai] is protected from the wild
animals by the Kuravar [katum kai kānavan] and the Kuravar erected a temporary hut
called kazhutu in the tinai field to drive away the wild animals and the Kuravar guards
the tina plots even at night [ katum kai kānavan kazhuthumichai koil iya netumchutar
vilakkam, [AN.88.5-6].

388
paddy was another important crop cultivated43in addition to tinai. The
cultivation of peas44, chēmpu 45[colocasia], plantains46, sugarcane47 , pepper48
etc indicates that mixed crop cultivation existed in the kurinchi area. A
number of Kurinchi texts suggest that the in tinai zone of the kurinchi region
women predominantly engaged in agriculture operations.49 These texts
repeatedly refer to the active presence of mothers in the everyday life of the
kuti settlers.50

Kalavu and Clan Exogamy

Since women were primarily engaged in cultivation of tinai and vegetables,

the men engaged in occupations that did not warranting them to stay at the
settlements. This led to the emergence of matrilocal settlements in the
kurinchi areas.51 The epithet vinai punai nal il reveals the matrilocal

43
Chezhumchey nellin vilaikathir [AN.72.17].
44
AN.262 mentions various aspects of cultivation of peas [payar], muthai patu
pachungatu means the green spaces were ploughed with ox , pakatu pūnta uzhavu pala
urumchenchey [AN.262.1-4] and conduct various activities including the manuring and
weeding[ pinneyum itumurai nirampi ākuvinai kkalithu.
45
Chēmpu [colacasia] AN.178.4 and kozhukizhangu / cherukizhangu AN.178.4.
46
AN.8.9 mentions the cultivation of plantains [vāzhai]. Similarly, AN.302.1mentions
chilampir pōkiya chemmuka vāzhai, plantains cultivated in the hillside. AN.328.14 and
AN.332.9 mention vāzhai am chilampu, the plantains cultivated in the small hill slopes.
47
Irunkal atukkattu ennaiyar uzhutha karumpu, 302.9-10. Kurumakal, AN, 172.16.
48
AN.272.10-11 kari ivar patapai, AN. 112.14 mentions kanakkale ikukkum kariyivar
chilampin, the pepper cultivated in the hillside. AN.278.4 mentions kōl nimir koti means
the pepper cultivated and it was directed towards the trees or stumps.
49
In the study of the social system of the Guro’s of Ivory coast, Meillassoux shows the
dominant role played by the women in the cultivation of rice , yam and vegetables etc,
Cloude Meillassoux , Kinship Relations and Relations of Production, in [Ed] David
Seddon ,Relations of Production, Op. Cit,p.290.
50
The text AN.12.1 and AN.18.17 mention thāy, mother. AN.52.9, AN.48.1.AN.68.1,
AN.248.14, AN.292.2 and AN.138.3 mention annai or mother. Certain annay vāzhi
vēntu annai, the women and their lady friends discussed the issues with their mother;
annai ariyinum arika [AN.218] and annai en āvathu [AN. 272.15.16] indicate the
importance of mother sex in the kuti settlements.
51
A Kurinchi text mentions kotichiyar thanthai [AN.58.5], the father of the woman called
Kotichiyar in the kurinchi tinai, the men folk , especially the fathers of the Kuravar

389
settlements where women had considerable importance in agriculture
operations.52 The matrilocal extended households where foster women
engaged in nurturing the children, especially of the girld child. Foster mothers
called shevilithāy informed and instructed the young female members on the
social and familial life. These foster mothers trained the young girls on
everyday familial life including the selection of their mating partners. It
appears that the young women were free enough to select their partners.53

There are references to punarnthōr54, thunaipunarnthu55, namkalavu56,

kāmam kalantha kāthal57 indicating ka½avu form of relations between male
and female members of various kutis. The male members engaged in hunting
activities and the women participated in shifting cultivation, indicating that
hunting and shifting enabled kalavu form of relation by which both men and
women were able to select their mating partners independently. The kalavu
was an accepted practice among the kutis. The epithet kātu ther vēttam

women , were not to stayed in the kurava settlements called chirukuti located in the
hilly area, malaikezhu chīrūr [ūr surrounded by the hills ].
52
Women folk in matrilocal settlements are referred to maiyara pentir [AN.98.22]. The
epithet pirappu ularpu iri e [AN.98.9] indicates a kind of astrological prediction made
by women with the help of paddy grains taken in a bamboo pan. There is also reference
to the women who inhabited in the ills / hut settlements independently, thamiyar aliyar
thām nam il pulampil, AN.78. There is also reference to female deities in the hill, ūhurai
utai chilampil ananku, AN.158.8.
nallirai melviral kūppi
illurai katavut kōkkuthum paliye [AN.282.17.18] illurai katavul means the ancestor who
is deified and worshiped in the house, possibly in a matrilocal settlement , where female
ancestors might have been worshiped and kinship ties were reckoned from a common
female ancestor real or imaginary.
53
The mating partner of a woman seemed to be part of a matrilocal settlement is also
mentioned in this text, AN.32.
54
AN.108.1 lovers engaged in lovemaking.
55
AN.178.15.
Palnālpunarkuri cheytha
Pularkural ēnal kilikati pātal [AN.118.11-13] women used to drive away the birds from
the tina plots where they also met their mating partners.
56
AN.122.23, the lovemaking done in secrete and the selection of partners independently.
57
AN.268.6, the lovemaking in which mating is part of it.

390
indicates that the Vēttuva hunter made alliance with a Kurava woman. Thus,
by the practice of clan exogamy men and women of various clans must have
been integrated to the clan of the female and this developed primarily because
of the existence of ka½avu relation which was accepted and facilitated in the
matrilocal settlements. This must have been the reason for, in addition to the
active participation of women folk in agriculture operation, the emergence of
matrilocal settlements in the hilly backwoods area in the kurinchi region
indicating that women of the matrilocal households were free in their choice
58
of sexual relations. The epithet manapparum kāmam punarthamai59
denotes the meeting of mating partners in the kurinchi tracts. It also mentions
marai amai panarchi60, the men and women of various clans in the kurichi
region engaged in secret lovemaking.

The members of matrilocal settlements practiced kalavu where women

invited their mating partners to the settlements.61 Male members in the
matrilocal settlements used to go for accumulation of wealth called porul
while their partners seem to have resided in the maternal kuti settlements,
which indicate the importance given to the matrilocal settlements in the
kurinchi area.62 It seems that women enjoyed considerable freedom in
selecting their mating partners, the practice was accepted and such women
had considerable role in the familial life world. This must have been the
practice in a matrilocal settlement in which women enjoyed considerable
freedom, where mother sex including foster mothers became the referent

58
AN.98.24-25 marai alar and AN.62.6 marai amai panarchi.
59
AN.112.15.
60
AN.62.6.
61
il vanthu nintrōn kantanal annai [AN.248.14] mother finds a man who is the lover of
her daughter and he reaches near her settlement. AN.102.12-13.
62
AN.22.16.

391
point63in everyday life64thereby resulting in developing clan exogamy as a
rule.

The goods and produce generated through shifting cultivation,

gathering and hunting or collection of forest produce in the kurinchi region
were redistributed among the kutimākkal. It was redistributed at a public
space located either inside or outside the ūr settlements. This process of
redistribution of resources resulted in developing certain form of relations
pertaining to exchange called noduththal. The process of redistribution of
produce and goods and the persons who developed from the ūr settlements to
manage this process came to be called ūr kizhān or kizhavan. The dominant
roll assumed by the ūrkizhān in the process of redistribution enabled him to
control the process of redistribution and the exchanges.

Expansion of agriculture made possible the interlocking of settlements

and the interaction between various groups. It developed exchanges of various
produce and goods in the settlements. The kinsmen in these kuti settlements
called kilai or kilainjan.65 The division that developed among the kuti settlers
between senior and junior male members was called ilayarum muthiyarum
kilayutan.66 The juniors among the male members engaged in labour
activities67 while the elders enjoyed the leadership or seniority.68 The epithet

63
Kotiyōr means kin of a woman, AN.288.9].
64
The epithet kātu ther vēttam indicates that the Vēttuva hunter made an alliance with a
Kurava woman shows there was a practice of clan exogamy by which men and women
of various clans must have been integrated to the clan of the female and this was
developed primarily because the existence of ka avu form of female and male relation
which was accepted and facilitated in the matrilocal settlements.
65
kilainjan are known as kinsmen, AN.342.7.
66
AN.348.11-12. The epithet kilayotu kalichiranthu [AN, 172] means along with the
kinsmen/ kilai. AN.138. mentions ikulai means relatives.
67
AN.182.4 mentions vilai ampin ilaiyar means the elders with their arrows. The Kuravar
conduct the hunting practices as a hunting party consisted of elders and youngsters in
which the active hunting operations are done by the youngsters, ampin ilaiyar and the
elders lead the party. Similary, we have reference to indicate the elders, youngsters and

392
irunkal atukkathu ennaiyar uzhutha karumpu69 is mentioned to denote the
hilly-forested area where the sugar cane was cultivated by the brothers of the
kuti settlers. This points the elders must have used the kin labour in
agriculture.70 This contributed to changing gender relations in the kuti
settlements.

Karpu form of Marriage and the Clan Endogamy

The changes in gender relations are represented in the formation of manai 71,
or wealthy housesites in which the movement of women appears to have
been restricted .72 There appears the emergence of a form of called karpu,
which must have led to the establishment of patrilocal household as an
institution.73 There are number of texts indicating the development of certain
form of restriction on women. Kāval74 was instituted in the household
probably by the male members to restrict the women, especially the young
daughters to prevent them from having sexual relations with persons of their
choice, leading to clan exogamy.75 Karpu was, in a way, a system by which
women was exchanged among the endogamous clans, thontu iyal marapin

the relatives are engaged in the tina cultivation in the kurinchi tracts, AN.348.
AN.122.7, also mentions ilankuvēl ilaiyar, the youngsters is used for kāval.
68
AN.342, ēval ilaiyar thalaivan, means the leader of the Maravar mercenary groups
consisting of the youngsters.
69
AN.302.9-10.
70
There is also reference to the juniors, the elders and the kin of the Kuravar, ilayarum
muthiyarum kilayutan kuzhi, [AN.348.11-12], who engaged in the cultivation of tinai
and they drive away the elephants who destroys the tinai in the tina plots.
71
The reference to nanmanai netunakar kāvalar means the manai or the household is
located near the protected chiefly residence.
72
AN.8.9 , manai muthir makalir indicates the woman of a wealthy household called
manai.
73
anta karpil, AN.198.
74
thanthai arunkati kāvalar, AN.2.13-15.
75
thanthaikāppu, AN.288.17, father instituted kāval to protect his young daughter.
Viyarnakar kāval AN.232.13, the kaval instituted in a wealthy household. AN.298.16.
Enthai katiyute viyanakar, the father instituted kāval in a patrilocal house hold.

393
mantal ayara76, and the practice gave way to penkol ozhukkam77, a custom
related to institutional marriage called mānavam.78 Settlers in an extended
household and the kin79 determined wether women were married to the same
clan, possibly through a form of cross cousin marriage.

The restriction imposed on the movement of women was intended to

prevent them from having sexual relations with men of other clans and
thereby control the members of particular kuti within clan endogamy. Women
in the patrilocal family were restricted to so as to maintain the karpu.80 The
women were subjected to the dominance of male members in the extended
households.81 The kuti settlements began to be known through the male
members in the kuti, ie, kuti nanku utaiyan.82 Perumkal yānar
thamchirukutiyān83, the prosperous chirukuti settlements began to be
developed and the kuti came to be known through the lineage of its male
members and cluster of such settlements were made part of the chirur,
kuntuzhai nanniya chīrūr, the chīrūr in the hilly area.84 The exchanges and
the inter locking of such settlements developed the kizhan in these ūr
settlements. The development of Kizhān or Kizhavan was also linked to the
wealthy settlements and households and Kizhans seems to have a dominant
76
AN.112.16.
77
AN.112.17.
78
AN.292.15.
79
AN.268.12,kilaiyotu polintha perumpeyar enthai
80
AN.252. arunkati annayum thuyil maranthanal means the mother who institutes kāval
to her daughter. āy ari uruthal [AN.298.17] mother of a woman institutes kāval to her
daughter. Val urai katumchol annai [AN.122.4], mother who spoke harsh words and
made protection or guarding called kāval to the daughter. It also refers to pinikōl
arumchirai annai [AN.122.5], mother made kāval to the daughter to prevent her to meet
her mating lover and mate with him.
81
aran il yāy [AN.302.15], mother devoid of aran / dharma indicating the status of a
woman began to be subordinated to the men in the household.
82
AN.352.8 , indicates those born in a famous kuti.
83
AN.228.
84
AN.152.2

394
position over the settlements. When the power of the Kizhan85 began dominat
over the settlements, the karpu form of marriage and the patrilocal settlement
functioned according to the customs called mura guided by the patrilocal
notions of the elders.86 It also shows the development of the power of the
chiefs whose centers were hills87indicating the development of the dominant
groups among certain clans who were able to establish their power over the
settlements, households and the community.

This change could be also seen in the structure of the kuti settlements
in which the male members acquired got prominence, though many of the
extended households were kept organised on matrilocal relations. The line of
succession in such matrilocal extended households must have been controlled
by the elder members was aimed at having control over wealth. This was
intended to control the junior male members so as to make use of their labour
as well as to controll over the sexual and reproductive life of women through
clan endogamy.

The the socio-economic structure of the kuti settlements and gender

relations involved in dominant households underwent transformations. The
‘mother’ who had previously enjoyed considerable autonomy and status seem
to have been subjected to the domination of the male members. The accepted
practice of lovemaking and selection of partners that had existed as ka avu
disappeared. As wealthy households emerged and patrilineal relations
developed, the senior male members also tended to dominate the affairs of the

85
Malai kizhavon, AN.108.18.
86
A Mullai turned Kurinchi song [AN.188.4] mentions, murai purinthu aran neri pizhaya
thiran ari mannar the chiefs rule over the people according to the mura or tradition and
the dharma.
87
They are usually referred to kāna nātan[AN.128.10], māmalai nātan[AN.268.5] , malai
kizhavōn[AN.108.18], malai kezu nātan[AN.292.15], kān kezhu nātan, perumalai kāna
nātan[AN.222.1-2] nalvarainātan [302.4],kunta nātan [AN.352.7]in various Kurinchi
poems.

395
households. The matrilocal settlements that had existed with ka½avu form of
male and female relations declained, still matrilocal forms continued
primarily to control the material possession within the household by the elder
male members. The gender relations and the material wealth continued to be
controlled by the elder male members. They also ensured the continued
existence of male dominance through both forms of succession through
female lines and the patrilocality, which institutionalized the karpu form of
marriage and male dominance.

The early migrants to the rivine areas from the mullai –kurinchi region
maintained both matrilocal and patrilocal forms of successions. Those who
settled in the chirukutis [chirukutimākkals] in the mullai-kurinchi region are
believed to have migrated to the riverine and riparine areas for wetland
agriculture. These migrant settlers were responsible for the creation of
productive lands in the river valleys and water logging areas for wet land
paddy cultivation. The chirukudimākkals of the mullai –kurinchi region were
the harbingers of multi crops including mountain paddy from the tina –varaku
zone to the river valleys and water-laden areas. The migrant settlers who
conducted reclamation and cultivation in the wetland area began to be known
as kazhani Uzhavar, ērin vāzhnar or Uzhavar. Their settlements - cum
operational space were termed as ērin vāzhnar kudi indicating the settlements
of the settler cultivators in the wetland. It shows the transition from dry
cultivation of the tina-varaku zone to paddy cultivation in the wet land region.
It also shows the changes that occurred in the kuti settlements from the
chirukuti to wetland cultivation in the riverine and water logging areas when
their identity was transformed to the ērin vāzhnar kuti meaning the settlers
who subsisted on plough agriculture or the uzhakuti of the settler cultivators
in the wetland region.

396
 Terms such as Thozhuvar Arinar, Kalamar, and Kāvalar indicate the
complex operations in wetland agriculture. Emergence and expansion of
wetland agriculture also implied the formation of a number of groups who
were identified either with their instruments or with the type of labour they
performed.88 The term vinai, which stands for labour and terms such as
thozhil, chey etc, are associated with the labour process indicating the
importance given to the socially necessary labour. 89 The term vinaiar indicate
the people engaged in the labour process. This shows the development of
socially necessary labour and formation of a permanent labouring population
as part of the reclamation of riparian areas and cultivation in the wetland
tracts. The development of wetland agriculture in the riverine areas and the
proliferation of settlements of settler cultivators developed a group of
permanent labouring population who retained certain elements of clan identity
and continued to be called kutis.90

We find terms such as izhichinan and izhipirapālan, low born and the
people of low status. It indicates that the status based on birth became
significant in the social milieu. Development of both wetland agriculture in
the riparian region and the cultivation of multiple crops in the parambu areas
made certain changes in the way in which labour was realised. Both
developments incorporated the punam cultivators, hunting gatherers and other
primordial non-cultivating labour groups into the wetland and parambu
cultivation as labouring groups. The development and expansion of wetland
and multi crop cultivation in the parambu areas made possible the
proliferation of settlements.

88
K N Ganesh, Lived Space in History, op.cit.,p.176
89
ElamkulamKunjanPillai, Keralam Chathurvarnathintepitiyil, in Elamkulam Kunjan
Pillaiyute Therenjedutha Kritikal, [Ed] Dr. N Sam, op. cit., pp-261-262.
90
K Sivathamby interprets this development, as ‘it is in the agrarian region that we meet
the first non owning worker’, K Sivathmby, Early South Indian Society and Economy:
the Tinai Concept, op.cit.,p.18.

397
 A significant transformation is the formation of wealthy households
called manai from the settler cultivators in both the wetland region and
parambu area. The dominant groups who developed from the settler
cultivators and the parambu cultivators began to possess productive lands
which led to the emergence of extended households. The surplus in wetland
paddy cultivation and multi culture crops in the parambu cultivation area
enabled the development of wealthy households.91 In prosperous villages,
patrilineal households called manai92 developed which was controlled by the
Ūran.93 Karpu form of marriage and gender relations developed in these
settlements and women in these households seems to be domesticated.94
There appears to have emerged the patrilocal settlements of the settler
cultivators in the wet land region. Though there developed the matrilocal
households the line of succession to the material possession and control of
such households rested on senior male members on female line.95 Women in
the wealthy households of the settler cultivators appeared to have

91
akal vayal yānar ūra, AN.246.4
92
Manta vilavin manai [PN.181.1] manaivilakkākiya vānuthan kanavan [PN.314.1].The
husband is represented as the person who looks after a woman. Manaivi [PN.326.7]
manaiviyōtu [PN.250.5] Nelmalintha mana [PN.338.2] indicating the prosperous
household where paddy stored. Manaiyurai [PN.318.4] Narkal panthal chirumanai
[PN.29.19-20] the manai which was erected on four pillars. Makalir valamanai
[PN.354.6] the house hold where the women became domesticated. Manaikuva iya
karimutayāl [PN.343.3] the pepper bags are kept in the house indicating the social status
of the house, this must have been a warehouse or the wealthy household of the family
who engaged in the pepper trade.
93
Valamkēzh ūran, AN.26.4 and punal ūran, AN.156.7.
94
Makizhnan manaiyōl AN. 166.10. AN.136.19
95
The behavior patterns represented in the Marutham songs are wife sulking over husband
visiting harlot and those that lead to it, K Sivathmby, Early South Indian Society and
Economy: the Tinai Concept, op.cit.,pp.2-3.

398
domesticated96 and women in the bardic troupe turned out to be the
parattaiyar or the other women.97

Gendered Labour in the Multiple Economies

Diverse occupational patterns in tinais resulted in the social division of

gendered labour. People settled as collective occupational and settlement
entities called kutis, and these kutis controlled the resources in the ūrs where
they collectively inhabited. The goods and produce generated through shifting
cultivation, gathering and hunting or collection of forest produce in the Mullai
–kurinchi region were redistributed among the kutimākkal. This also occurred
in the settlements of the settler cultivators in the wetland areas. It was
redistributed at a public space located either inside or outside the ūr
settlements. This process of redistribution of resources resulted in developing
certain form of relations pertaining to distribution called noduththal. The
process of redistribution of produce and goods and the persons who
developed from the ūr settlements to manage this process came to be called ūr
Kizhān or Kizhavan. The dominant role assumed by the ūr Kizhān in the
process of redistribution enabled him to control the process of redistribution
and the exchanges.

Paddy was the common element in exchange. It was exchanged for

salt, fish and toddy. The pastoral and agricultural activities were linked by
exchanges of milk, curd and ghee.98 Similarly, development of wetland

96
The women who domesticated in a typical patrilineal family is mentioned in a
Marutham text[AN.86.4,manaivilakkuruthu]
97
It repeatedly mentions that the male members in the family went for the parattaiyar, or
the other women, K Sivathamby, Development of Aristocracy in Ancient Tamilnatu- A
Study of the Beginnings of Social Stratification in Early Tamilnatu, op .cit,.p.71. A
Marutham text mentions a patrilocal family where woman seems to have domesticated
and her husband is gone for other women [AN.16. 5]yāvarum vizhayum polanthodi
pulavan.
98
K N Ganesh, Lived Space in History, op.cit.,p.177.

399
agriculture involved the exchange of cattle.99 Maruku was the term used to
denote the center of exchanges which also indicates the germination of
trading activities. The exchange centers were related to different productive
spaces where various life activities developed. As market widened centeres of
exchange evolved as āvanam and angādi. The forest produce and spices were
important goods that reached the ports of trade in the west coast through
internal exchange networks.

The vētchi100, a form of cattle raids, in the ūr settlements became

101
institutionalized. Booty capturing and plunder raids also developed due to
the development of chieftains from the ūr Kizhāns. The warfare that
developed between chiefs led the rise of certain tribal chieftains called Vēls
and later the Mannans from the Ūrans of the ūr settlements.102 Most of the
chiefs were located in mountain centers called malai / kuntram or coastal
areas.103 The headquarters of Vēntans or Vēls were netunakar.104 The trade
settlements began to develop near the residences of these chiefs. The Marava
soldiers developed as retinue of these chiefs as part of the plundering and due
to the sharing of the booty capturing. These Marava soldiers and the trading
groups used the pathways called aru that were developed due to the
movements of cattle, goods and people. The channels in the hillsides called
churam also developed. Different pathways and cross roads resulted in the
steady movement of people across long distances. These pathways served as

99
Ibid.
100
AN.97.6 kolaivil ātavar, 105.13 vinaival ampin vizhuthotai maravar, 309.2 kadunkan
mazhavar,338.16-17 and 372.10 kotuvil ātavar.
101
Ibid.p.183.
102
K Sivathampi, ‘Organisation of Political Authority in Early Tamilnatu’ in Ancient
Tamil Society: Economy, Society and State Formation, op.cit.,pp.37-46.
103
Ibi.p.185.
104
K N Ganesh, Lived Space in History,op.cit.,p.167.AN.162.9[netunakar]

400
important channels to the ports of trade in the west coast, in addition to the
number of rivers.105

Many occupational groups developed. The reference to cotton

texture106, indicates people, predominantly women were engaged in the
cultivation and processing of cotton. Similarly, the mention of the processing
of sugarcane reveals sugarcane was important crop during the period. There
must have been the cultivation of palm and coconut. There developed groups
of people who engaged in different crafts, metalworking, masonry and
pottery. People were engaged in bead making and in the processing of
precious metals and stones. These people are also identified as kutis. The kuti
is known to their settlement locality and their collective identity is related to
107
kinship descent groups. It shows that the kuti is related to the habitational
and occupational aspect of a settlement locality. The production also involved
identification of the means and instruments of labour as well as the labourer,
which is again related to kutis. This is the result of the realization that the
production process in agriculture involved not only different acts and forms of
labour but also different instruments.108 Perhaps the specialized labour that

105
Yavanar thantha vinaima nankalam
Ponnotu vanthu kariyotu peyarum
Valamkezhumuiriyārppezhavalaiyi [AN.149.10]. The Greeks came with gold and
returned enough pepper from the Muchiri is attested in these verses.
106
There is reference to paritti pendir [PN.326.5] indicating the cotton texture
predominantly done by the women.
107
Clan is a multi local, matrilineal or matrilineal descent unit often widely dispersed in
local – the members of which do not intermarry because their presumed common
ancestry, but by that token stand ready to help each other if called upon. Since people
have to marry outside the clan, into other clans, the tribe takes shape as a number of
inter connected clans cutting across the several local groups, Marshall D. Sahlins,
Tribesmen, op. cit.,p.23. The clan is a unilineal descent group when it is exogamous. It
consists of several lineages, which may be segmented. It may be a mere category of
dispersed people, not forming a corporate group with only a vague notion of original
common ancestry, exogamy and totemism are often given a defining attributes, John
Middleton and David Tait, Tribes Without Rulers, op.cit.,p.4.
108
K N Ganesh, Lived Space in History, op.cit., p.177.

401
was directly involved in the space of agriculture production was that of the
potter who involved in the making of vessels for eating, drinking and for
storage of consumable goods. Like the craft groups, the potters were
specialized groups who were part of the moving people and there must have
developed the closed and collective identity of such moving groups as
specialized units of production.

The kutimākkal were identified primarily by the occupation. The

settlement and their life activities were interrelated to each other. People lived
as clan groups and a clan consisted of the extended households of kinsmen
called kilai and kin relation was the base of the extended households of the
kin group.109 The material life activities of each kin group were important in
each eco – cultural zone [tinai] when the kin groups and labouring groups
were not differentiated. The extended kin groups were divided through
muthiyar and ilaiyar groups. Cluster of these kutis constituted the ūr. Ūr is
the habitational space and hence identifiable with kutis conducting various life
activities. Ūr includes habitation sites like kuti,pati chēri etc. Ūrs were in
proximity to exchange centers like maruku, teru and angadi and assembly
called mantram.110 Lived spaces of different groups of people conducting
various life activities with different technological and cultural development
can be seen in the ūr settlements.111 The kinship collectives inhabited as
extended households, as indicated by such terms as ill or illam. Manai was

109
A descent group is a body of kinsmen united by common ancestry. The common
descent is reckoned through male, female or male and female [cognatic]. There are
corporate descent group, in the sense of perpetual units of the tribal system, existing
forever though individual members come and go through birth and death. Descent
groups themselves can be allied by kinship. Intermarriage effects alliance: in so far as,
each group is a cohesive entity marriages between different groups can be translated in
to marriages between the groups themselves. Kinsmen are made as well as born; they
are made by marriages, Marshall D.Sahlins, Tribesmen, op. cit., pp.11-12.
110
K N Ganesh, Lived Space in History, op.cit., p.189.
111
Ibid.p.190.

402
more of a structured residence indicating the socio economic status of the
inhabitants. Elevated walls were erected around such structured houses.

However, there did not develop substantial changes in the forms of

labour involved in the life activities of the different groups who lived as kutis
in micro-eco zones112. Almost all labour activities were done by the kutis in
various tinais. When new occupations developed due to the expansion of
cultivation and proliferation of settlements types of labour diversified in both
mullai –kurinchi, wetland and parambu areas and these were to be done by the
kutimākkals in respective areas. The development of agricultural operations
and the proliferation of exchange centers for the production and exchanges of
goods and produces for the consumption of the chiefs and their retinue led to
specialized skill and goods among certain kutis. The acquisition of new skills
among certain kutis ensured mobility and subsequently which provided them
the potential to have control over the resources available to them in the area
they inhabited. However, the base of the production operation and the labour
process involved in it was the kinship descent structure of the kuti inhabitants.

Such kutis were the resource base of the Vēl chiefs who developed
from the kin groups in the kutis and those who made use of the different kuti
collectives for their existence and expansion of their dominance. They also
made use of the physical power of the Marava / Mazhuva group113 to extend
their power / authority. The Maravas were also kinship descent groups who
developed from the process of warfare between the ūr settlements as in the

112
Thontu mozhintu thozhil kēlpa PP.9.10.8.
113
The Maravars were developed from the ūr settlements where the groups who destroyed
the ūrs of the enemy settlements in the feud that had taken place between the ūrs came
to be known as Maravar. Elamkulam KunjanPillai, ‘Keralam Sangakalathu’ [Kerala in
Sangam period],in Elamkulam Kunjan Pillaiyute Therenjedutha Kritikal,op.cit.,pp.11-
12.

403
case of cattle lifting ,booty capturing or plunder raids.114 The presence of Vēl
chiefs and their retinue led to the constant conflicts between these Vēl chiefs
and this became a regular feature of the society. It created a social situation by
which the kutis came to be controlled by the Vēl chiefs. The war became a
mechanism of appropriation of the resources from the kutis. The Vēl chiefs
incorporated a number of Marava groups as mercenary soldiers into their
political fold that further increased conflicts among the Vēl chiefs. This feuds
between the Vēl chiefs resulted in the destruction of ūr settlements. This was
one of the prime reason for the migration of people from their kuti settlements
to the riverine areas115 and development of wet land agriculture and mixed
crops cultivation in the parambu areas in the midland.

The Vēls chiefs in the hilly areas in the mullai- kurinchi region tried to
subdue the settlements in the wetland and parambu areas as part of the
expansion of their resource base to the midland and to the coastal areas. The
kutimākkals who were captured in the warfare between the Vēl chiefs might
have been employed, in addition to the primordial labour groups like punam
cultivators and pastoral groups, in water management and ground preparation
in wetland agriculture in the flood plains and riparian areas. Effective
utilization of silted and biomass deposited land spaces with the labour of these
groups and the cultivating kutis116who developed from the settler cultivators
made the wetland agriculture a surplus producing enterprise.

It made a complex division of gendered labour in the wetland

agriculture. The expansion of agriculture in the wetland areas and in the
parambus and proliferation of the settlements were complemented by the

114
kotuvil ātavar patupakai very i ūrezhunthulariya pīrezhu muthupāzh indicating the
devastated villages on account of the raids made by the Maravar mercenary groups
[AN,167.9-10]
115
nilam kan vata [PP.2.9.17], pumal keta iruttu[PP.4.2.11], pulamketa nerittu[PP.4.3.6]
116
Palvithai uzhavin chil eralar PP. 8.6.11.

404
extension of various agriculture produce including the forest produce. This
process develoed the produces in parambu and wetland areas became
dominant ones in multiple economies, yet hill crops and forest produce had
considerable importance in these economies. It resulted in linking the various
movements of goods, products and people, trade, which shaped the social
form in which the kutis and labouring population with distinct life worlds in
the multiple economie.

The diversification of occupations and the proliferation of ūr

settlements led to the generation of surplus. Dominant group who emerged
tried to control the production process in these areas. They included the
traders and mercenary groups like Maravar. It was from these groups that the
Vellala cultivators having control over the productive lands developed in the
ūr settlements in both wetland and in parambu areas.

Social Relations in Multiple Economies

The expansion of agriculture in water laden and riverine areas

necessitated the development of a permanent labour collective in the ūr
settlements. The dominant groups who developed in the ūr settlements
brought the non-agricultural labourers from outside for this purpose. They
were used for both reclaiming land and extending agriculture in the midland
as well as to bring the new forested land under cultivation. The land holding
groups brought the non-agricultural labourers and the people who practiced
the punam cultivation and foraging activities for this purpose. The non –
agricultural labourers and primordial groups who already settled in the
midland areas as hunters and pastoral groups were also persuaded and made
to settle in both the laterie and wetland areas.

However, they were detached from their original settlement localities

and clan ties, brought and settled as scattered servile labouring groups in the

405
ūr settlements. Pulam was used to denote the fertile agriculture land117 where
these labouring groups were employed for agriculture operations in wetland
areas. Those servile populations who were permanently engaged in the pulam
tracts for agriculture operations were identified with the lands they attached.
Their servitude was characterized by their attachment to the lands on which
they laboured. They must have been the descendants of some of the earlier
settlers as well as those people who were brought for labour activities in both
wetland and parambu areas. They became the primary producers in the
surplus producing economies in both wet land and parambu areas. These
people became the servile labouring population to the landed groups. The
kinship and descent structure of the cultivating kutis and the kutis of
occupational groups also played important role in the process of the
coordination of labour.

The people who were engaged in the making of agriculture implements

[Kollan]118 and basket making in both wetland and parambu areas were
labouring groups. The people who engaged in craft production, metalworking
etc in wetland riparian plains and their counterparts in the parambu areas were
also kutis. Those who engaged in toddy tapping and labour activities related
to palms and coconut came to be called Thīyar. Occupational groups
connection with palms and coconuts as well as in metalworking and craft
came to known as Katasiyar, Īzhavar etc. The term Izhichinan and
Izhipirappālan become important in this context as it indicated the people of
low origin and status and these terms must have been used to denote the
servile people who developed in the context of agrarian expansion and
formation of dominant groups in the society.

117
PP.3.5.1 mā ādiya pulam nānchil āta, PP.3.3.3 pulam ketu kāleyum, PP.6.8.15
punpulam vittum.
118
Kollan mithukuruku ūthu ulai [AN.202.5-6], irumpu payalpatukkum karumkai
kollan[PN.170.15 ]PN.180.12], porkollan[PN.353.1]

406
 Expansion of parambu cultivation and wetland agriculture developed
diverse appropriating pattern.This also evolved complex form of production
process involving large number of permanent labouring population of servile
nature resulting in the creation of large surplus and its appropriation modes.
The labouring groups required for the production of surplus in wetland and
parambus were met by bringing the non-cultivating labouring clans,
primordial labour groups, pastoral groups, and punam cultivators into the
labour process. This paved the way for the development of servile groups.
The dominant groups were known as Mēlōr and the producing groups were
known as Kīzhōr, Iravalar and Irapirappālar.

The divisions that developed between the two groups, Mēlōr and the
Kīzhōr, were accompanied by the process of the appropriation of surplus. The
elder male members in the extended families were the immediate
appropriators as they were the landed groups among the settler cultivators in
both laterite and wetland areas. The Ūran, Kizhān or Kizhavan mercenary
martial groups like Mazhuvar or Maravar, Brahman groups, sometimes,
called Pulavar, Budhist and Jain groups were also linked to the group of
appropriators of the produce generated by the cultivating kutis and labouring
population. This was crystallized in the form of a political structure that was
manifested in the authority of the Vēnthar who tried to control the resources
by way of subjugating the cultivating kutis and the labouring groups who
were also located in the ūr settlements as Kīzhōr. Development of the political
authority of the Vēnthar involved the development of certain groups
consisting of the retinue of the Vēntans and the Pulavar. The latter were
predominantly the Brahmans who interpreted knowledge as transcendending
and otherworldly one and legitimized the polity of the Vēntans.119 They were

119
PN.305.2-4. K Sivathamby, ‘Development of Aristocracy in Ancient Tamilnatu- A
Study of the Beginnings of Social Stratification in Early Tamilnatu’ in Studies in
Ancient Tamil Society.op.cit.,p.79.

407
able to acquire the wealth including the productive lands in the ūr settlements
of the settler cultivators and the cultivating kutis. They were donated
productive lands and many of them must have participated in the expansive
raids made by the Vēntans over the ūr settlements where cultivating kutis and
the labouring groups engaged in the production of agrarian resources.

The acquisition of wealth by the dominant groups resulted in the

development of structured households among the dominant groups including
settler cultivators and Brahmans, which also necessitated the germination of
an ideology to legitimize gender relations, wealth, household structure and the
polity. This ideology was provided predominantly by the Brahmins with their
Sanskritic and dharmasāstric notions and itihāsa-purāna idioms.

However, the social organization of the kutis did not transform the
structure of the households. Il or illam began to be developed as a unit of
kuti, which was more an economic unit.120 The most typical term is
manai121which is a house site, which must have been developed as the
prosperous households. It not only indicates the constitution of the household
as a structured entity related to formal house site but also the socio economic
status. The manai developed as a formal unit of the familial household of the
wife and husband related to the karpu.122 The manai can be seen as the
development of patrilocal extended family which existed by rule of patrilocal
marital residence which paved the way for the domestication of women in a
patrilocal household.123 It was from the manai that women of the non-

120
AN.141.3 punaivinai illam.PN.116.5, PN 329.1, PP.331.5, PN.85. em il, PN.86.1 chittil
nattūn, PP.9.10.45 kūzhudai nal il.
121
AN.224.11, AN.232.10, AN.254.5,
122
ElamkulamKunjanPillai, ‘Kalavum kārpum’, in Elamkulam Kunjan Pillaiyute
Therenjedutha Kritikal, [Ed] Dr.N Sam, op. cit., pp.53-99.
123
The patrilocal extended family is consisted of a patriarch, his wife, and his married sons
with their wives and children and perhaps some unmarried daughters of the senior
couple. The detachment of women from their natal groups for procreation of their

408
producing groups began to be domesticated and came to be called manaiyōl124
or manaivi.

The familial households were developed from the kutis in relation to

the development of the karpu form of marriage and women came to be seen
as dutiful housewife in a patrilineal household called manaiyōl. The
patrilineal households were developed mainly because of the division of the
descent groups into seniors and juniors either in relation to the development
of patrlilocal households or in relation to the matrilocal settlements on female
line with male dominance. The senior members controlled the labour of the
junior members in the extended households controlling the wealth created by
the juniors.

The control of women was achieved through the practice of an

institutionalized form of marriage called karpu, which aimed at the
domestication of their women. The cultivating kutis and the labouring
population were made use of in the expansion of resource base of the
dominant groups including the settler cultivators, Brahmans, chiefs and their
kin and their retinue. Endogamy became an organic mechanism by which
women were subjugated by having control over their sexuality. The social
reproduction of the material life activities were ensured through the
appropriation of resources by way of social taxonomy of classificatory norms
like Mēlor and Kīzhor. Women and junior male members in the dominant
households and both sex among the producing groups were used biologically
and socially to reproduce the social form that already came into being.

husband’s heirs is one of the features of this marriage, Marshal D.Sahlins, the
Tribesmen, op. cit.,p.65
124
Manaiyōl [AN.166.10]manai manalatuttu[AN.195.4]

409
The Perception of the Social World: Challenges and Transition

Society was continuously confronting challenges, passing through systemic

crisis and transition. The reflection of which is manifested, in a way, in the
forms of influence made by the Budhists125, Jains [arathar, chavakar etc] and
Brahmans126 [pārpanar, anthanar] whose presence is well attested and their
influence had considerable impact upon the society. They came to Tamilakam
along with the trading groups with a missionary zeal and new knowledge
forms from societies where the knowledge forms pertaining to material
production and social life had been well developed. Knowledge forms that
were brought by the Buddhists, Jains and others were accepted and its
acquisition was considered significant in the advancement of the material life
activities of the society at a time when resources and production forms began
to be developed and expanded. The new knowledge was inevitable not only
for the development of agriculture but also for the expansion of trade and
exchange. 127

Those who were able to possess such knowledge forms were

recognized as arivōr/knowledgeable persons /groups and assumed
considerable status and privileges in the society.128 There developed a
distinction between the technics developed and sustained by the producing
groups as part of their involvement in the material production, and the new

125
Elamkulam KunjanPillai, ‘Keralam Chathurvarnathintepitiyil’,in Elamkulam Kunjan
Pillaiyute Therenjedutha Kritikal,op.cit.,pp-241-244.
126
There were Brahmans who conducted the sacrifices and those did not conduct it, the
term maraiyōr indicate the importance as well as the concealment of the vēdic
knowledge. Similarly, the term vēlāpārpanmār indicate the ordinary Brahmans who
lived off the life activities other than the vēdic sacrifices, ElamkulamKunjanPillai,
‘Keralam Chāthurvarnathintepitiyil’, in Elamkulam Kunjan Pillaiyute Therenjedutha
Kritikal, op.cit.,p.240.
127
Mayil arivinar chevvithin natanthu [PP.3.2.8] and uravōr enninum matavōr enninum
[PP.8.3.1]
128
Ariyunar kānin vētkai nīkkkum [PN.154.2], arivutaiyōnārarachunchellum [PN.183.7],
arivutaivēntan [PN.184.5] māndaven manaiviyotumakkalunirambinar [PN.191.3]

410
knowledge largely in the form of ethics and social norms which were
systematically preached by the Budhists, Jains and Brahmans etc. The
Budhists emphasised on social morality while Brahmans stressed the
dharmasastric and canonical principles. This knowledge looked upon those
who involved physical labour as ignorant and uninformed of knowledge.
However, the material production and the diversity of labour activities were
interpreted with the abstract notion of labour and its bodily hexies in Budhist
narratives. Budhists and Jains are believed to have interpreted hunger129 and
misery130 that existed in the society as reality of human material life world
and its location in the social system.131 However, the shramanic sects though
did not negate the importance of material production132, yet it had been
negotiated through question of conditions of human existence.

Therefore, those people engaged in the labour process were treated as

people devoid of knowledge, ignorant and unconscious. The social divisions
that emerged in the context of the relations that were established on account
of the production and exchanges in the multiple economies were represented
as people belonging to Uyarnthōr / Mēlōr, the high born having knowledge,
and the Kīzhōr/ Izhainthōr or the low born devoid of knowledge.
Kataisiyar133,Īzhuvar, Izhichinan134, or Izhipirapālan135 were the attributed

129
Pachiya laikkum pakaiyontrenko [PN.136.8]
130
Varunthalumunden paithalankadumbe [PN.139.15].Philosophical notions of the
existence of misery and hunger in the material life world are attested [PN.182]
131
There is vivid description of the hunger and misery in the text [PN.164.3-7]. pachipini
maruthuvanillam [PN.173.11]
132
njāyittellai ālvinai kkuthavi
Iravin ellai varuvathu nāti
uraittichin peruma nantrum , the attitude of the Budhistts towards labour and labour
activitieas are represented in this epithet [PN.366.10-12]
133
PN.61.1 kondai kkūzhai thandazhai kkatachiyar the Katashiyar women who engaged in
the labour activities. There is also reference to pulaitti kazhi iya thūvellaruvai, the
washer women who is also can be treated as low born in this context, PN.311.2. certain
atumakal is represented to indicate the domestic women labourer [PN.399.1]

411
cultivating kutis and the labouring groups. Birth attributed to particular socio-
cultural group136 became significant category through which their social status
was determined. The people represented as Kadasiyar,Thīyavar, Kīzhōr,
Iravalar ,Izhichinan etc were given the status of Izhipirapālan, the low born
and ignorant , mainly because they did not possess the knowledge of the
condition of their existence. The division between the Uyarthor and Kīzhor
has a striking similarity in Budhist sources, the ukkata jāti and the hīnajāti.137
However, Buddhists made their discourses of knowledge as an open ended
and inclusive system, left the possibility of transcending the nuances of the
material life world through the attainment of knowledge of the material
condition of existence in which the life activities of the people were
located.138

Production Process and Kuti Settlements

The archaic terms that appeared in the epigraphic documents, mostly from
ninth centuries onwards, refer to the settlers in generic terms indicating the
development of the cultivating kutis in both wetland and parambu areas.139
The land and labour terms that appear in inscriptions also indicate the process
of reclaiming land spaces and cultivation operations made by the cultivating
kutis and the labouring groups. The cultivating kudis who developed from the

134
mativāy thannumai izhichinan kurale, PN.289.10. There is also reference to
thudiyeriyum pulaiya,PN.287.1.
135
izhipirappālan karunkai chivappa
Valithuranthu chilaikkum vankat katumthudi, PN.170.5-6 and PN.363.10-14.
136
Chira ār thutiyar [PN.291.1], pathan eliyōr[PN.35.15]
137
Uma Chakravarti, Beyond the Kings and Brahmanas of ‘Ancient’ India, [Tulika Books,
Delhi, 2007], p.62.
138
kīzhppāloruvankarpin
mērpāloruvanu mavankat patumē, PN.183.9-10.
139
Kīrankadambanār in Vazhapalli plate, Pakaithonkan, Thudavar,
Mīnachchichirukundurār and kurunthorai Kundirār in Parthivapuram plates appear as
cultivating kutis.

412
early settlers, in both wetland areas where they did cultivation of paddy and
laterite parambus where they engaged in the production of multi crops,
became an important group. In addition to the cultivating kutis, the labour of
the servile groups was utilisd for the expansion of cultivation and generation
of surplus. Avittaththur inscription can be seen as a case in point, which
mentions ivvūrkutikal140, the cultivating kutis settled and cultivated in the ūr
settlements. Certain chemmaruthar mentioned in Tirunandikkarai plate and
Karunantharuman in Paliyam plate are the cultivating groups settled as kutis
in ūr settlements whose existence in the respective areas must have had long
historical past.141 The epithets like avvūrilirikumkutikale142, yivūrulkuti143,
ivūrur ulkuti144 etc seem to have developed as the cultivating and the
occupational groups. There is also reference to pūmiyuzhuvumavar145 to
indicate the cultivating kutis.

The production and exchange of the parambu and wetland region

developed diverse livelihood forms. They included the kammālar groups
consisting of various smiths like the carpenter, potter etc. The menial
labourers called Pulayar, Parayar and Chāntrar etc were generally considered
as the Adiyār or Āl indicating their condition of existence as the primary
producers who provided the labour for the production operations. The kutis of
cultivating and occupational groups and servile group of labouring population
are found to have incorporated into the production process with their clan ties,
kinship structures and distinct cultural features.
140
M G S,A-10,L.14.
141
Certain Kannakālaiyudaiyār and Thachchanār, [MG S.A-24, Kannakālaiyudaiyārpōttai
and thachchanārpōttai ].It indicates the people settled as cultivating kutis,
Kāraikkādudaiyar, mentioned in a Trikkakara plate [M G S.B-10] also indicate this
development.
142
Chennamangalam inscription, M G S, C-34.L.6.
143
Trikkakara inscription, M G S,B-19,L.[2] 2.
144
Trikkakara plate mentions, M G S, B-19.
145
M G S,A-42, Ls.[3]1-3.

413
 The cultivating kutis controlled the lands they occupied and cultivated
as the original settlers and actual producers. However, the kutis had to give a
share of the produce as kudimai to the overlords when the over lords
developed and controlled the production localities where both wetland
produce and multi crops were cultivated. The overlords consisted of
dominant households, nāttutudayavars, Brahmans and temples received the
kutimai as payment for allowing the kudis to stay in the lands. The kutis
retained the right to occupation and cultivation paying the kutima. This was a
transition from the actual structure of the kutis, from the status of autonomous
cultivating groups who were the original setters and actual producers of the
lands in which they settled and controlled, to the producers who retained the
right over the lands in lieu of the payment of the surplus produce to the over
lords concerned.

Earlier the kutis had to give only certain share of the produce as settler
payment called pakarchai to the powerful groups of the locality as prestations
in return for the physical protection from them. But when the Nāttudayavar
made control over the production localities, the kutis were forced to pay
obligatory payment called kadamai, sometimes, it was called as mēlpāti or
mēlodi and vāram which were given to the Nāttutayavar and to the Perumāl
while pāttam was given to the temples. A major share of the surplus produce
generated in the production localities was taken over by the overlords like
dominant households and the Nāttutayavar as kīzhpāti and mēlpāti
respectively. They in turn donated a share of this surplus to the temples,
largely in the form of expenses of the offerings they made in the temples.
Temples were able to develop certain tenurial control over the lands from
where the donations were made to the temples in the form of the share of the
produce. It was in this way that the agrarian surplus produced by the
cultivating kutis was channelized to the temple as offerings and grants.

414
 A few attippēr grants of productive lands made by the ruling lineages
and dominant families to the temples also brought the productive lands under
the control of the temples. The cultivating kutis and the labouring population
who were already settled in such lands continued to engage in the process of
surplus generation even when they were under the over lordship of the
temples and their obligatory payment were redirected to temples. This forced
the kutis to accept the over lordship of the temples under the kārānmai
relations and pāttam became a new mode of payment of the share of surplus
produce. The households that developed from the settler cultivators held lands
as a collective possession of the households and the Nāttutayavar held lands
as chērikkal on which extended households of the ruling lineage retained
rights over the lands where the cultivating kutis and the labouring groups like
Pulayar, Āl and Atiyār settled and cultivated. Brahman villages where the
temples developed had the lands under the control of Brahman assembly
where the kutis and the labouring population settled to cultivate and generate
the agrarian surplus.

The primary producers of servile labouring population were

subordinated to various overlords like dominant land holding households,
nāttutayavar, Brahmans, temples, Chēra Perumāls and others. The cultivating
kutis were transformed to the tenant cultivators under the kārānmai relations.
The kutis who engaged in the auxiliary occupations like metalworking, craft
and the kutis associated with palm, coconut, etc, also became subordinated to
the respective overlords. The nāttudayavar, their kin groups, retinue, and the
land-holding households managed to evolve devices to realize the labour of
the cultivating kutis and other labouring populations by expanding agriculture
activities and surplus extraction. The Brahmans and temples began to become
part of this process of realization of labour and the generation of agrarian
resources with the support of the nāttudayavars. It enabled the temples to
establish tenurial dominance over the production localities of the cultivating

415
kutis. The hitherto uncultivated areas in both wetland and laterite areas
including forested land spaces were brought under cultivation as part of this
process.

The occupational and spatial meaning of kuti was transformed when

the landed families and the chiefs exerted over lordship over the production
localities where the settlements of kutis were located. The kutis were
subordinated to the political and cultural structure of the overlords and the
land holding households. Their particular life worlds including specific
kinship relations became part of the modes of subordination. The meaning of
the kuti had been transformed as clan groups of occupant cultivators to kutis
of cultivating and occupational groups in the ūr settlements. These cultivating
kutis and kutis of occupational groups were clustered mostly as extended
house sites and the resource they were able to make use of including lands
that were held as collective possession bound to the gradations of rights held
by the extended house sites. There developed the over lordships of the
dominant households of the landholders, nāttutayavar , temples and
Brahmans over the cultivating settlements where the cultivating kutis and
labouring population engaged in the production of agrarian surplus. They
were forced to engage in the expansion of cultivation in parambu and wetland
areas for the requirement of a number of overlords. This also happened under
the Nāttutayavars, temples and the dominant lanholding groups including
Brahman ūrs.

The development of Vellālar as cultivating kutis and the fact that the
kutis engaged were in various occupations like, Thachchar, Īzhavar, Vannār
etc, as mentioned in Kollam plate is an indication to the proliferation of
various kutis in the coastal settlement called nakaram. Similarly, the bonded
people called adimai developed as the servile population. The status of kuti as
cultivators and occupational and artisanal groups appeared in the coastal

416
settlement must have also developed in the wetland and parambu areas. This
can also be seen as the indication to the proliferation of various kuti
settlements and expansion of cultivation in both wetland and parambu areas
where the generation of agrarian resources was made with the labour of the
primary producers called Āl/Adiyār or Pulayar. The location and organization
of kuti settlement mentioned in Ayiranikkalam inscription indicates the
development of kutis as having engaged in cultivation and as having lived in
the extended households in the puras. It also shows the way in which the
cultivating kutis settled in the ūr settlements were brought under the
dominance of a Brahmanical temple. Even when they came under the
Brahmanical dominance, the right of the kuti to settle and cultivate was
retained. Cultivation was done by the members of the kutis with the
leadership of the elders of each extended households of the kutis called kutiyil
mūththavan.146 The land cultivated by the kutis was the collective possession
of the extended households of the kutis and the kutis controlled the lands they
cultivated.147 The term kutiyil mūththavan refers to the elder members of the
cultivating kutis who managed to cultivate the lands and retained the rights
that was collectively possessed by the extended households of the cultivating
kuti as a whole. The descent head of the elders of such extendedhouseholds of
the kutis was known as kutipati.148

The punam cultivation developed in the tina- varaku zone of the

mullai- kurinchi region where women had control over the production and
matrilineal relations. We also find the process in which such matrilineal
households gave way to the households where men had control over the
households, clan and the resources. The development of wetland agriculture
and mixed crop cultivation in both riparian water logging areas and laterite
146
Pūmi kutiyil mūththavalai vazhakkatirai, ibid, L.21.
147
Ivvūr kutikalarkkuttu karaipūmi, ibid, L.24.
148
ivvīrandūrilum pathiyaiyum,ibid, L.6.

417
parambus developed the cereal agriculture where also women also maintained
important roles in the production operations. However, cereal agriculture
required planting, weeding, care, harvesting, processing, stock and
centralization of the product in the production localities called ūrs. Two
important developments occurred in the kutis in relation to this process. One
is the continuation of the kuti as an economic unit of production with its own
kinship descent structures. Second is the continuation of extended households
with matrilineal relations. Men in such extended households could exert their
control without overstepping the prerogatives of women in the households.
The result was the dominance of the elder male members in the extended
households. Cultivation and redistribution of produce in turn led the elders to
assert their dominance within the households of the kutis. The matrilineal
structure was maintained for the enlargement of the extended households as
productive economic unit. Thus, male dominance was maintained by
domesticating women to reproduce such households as endogamous units.
Apart from this, there developed the close ties between the members of the
kutis. Such a relationship was articulated through domination and
subordination that developed between the elders and junior members of the
extended households.

Kuti as Economic Unit and Kinship Descent Structure

Settlements of cultivating kutis proliferated in various production localities in

both wet land areas and mixed crop parambus lands. Land was used as the
instrument of labour with the expectation of a later return. The output was
delayed until the maturity of crop, i.e. for a period, which is not under the
control of the cultivating kutis. The agriculture cycle was divided into
successive periods. For starting the agriculture activities in the wet land
cultivation, the cultivators must have had certain resources at their disposal to
survive during unproductive period and to do the preparatory and preliminary

418
works. This was met either by subsidiary activities like gathering and hunting
or from the left –over from the previous crop or compensated by a number of
mixed crops cultivated in the mixed crop areas like yam, tubes, fibre etc in the
parambu. As agriculture production delayed there developed bonds and
cooperation between the people in the cultivating kutis. The kinship descent
structure developed in the kutis and the solidarity maintained in the extended
households must have evolved the kutis as economic and biological unit.

Agriculture operations created two types of bonds between people who

worked together. There developed the relation between people of cultivating
kutis and the kutis of the occupational groups like metalworkers and artisans
who provided the auxiliary occupations and services to the agriculture
operations. The labouring groups who were engaged in labour activities from
the time of the preliminary cultivation operations to the time of harvesting and
the processing of the produce were also part of these relations. This also
happened in the case of mixed crop cultivation in the parambu areas. Our
textual and oral evidences reveal, as explained in our second chapter, the
members of the cultivating kutis and the labouring groups worked together in
the labour activities from the preparation of ground, ploughing, sowing,
weeding, manuring, maintaining the plants including watering and
protection[kāval] ,harvesting and processing the produce.

The people of cultivating kutis and the labouring groups who existed in
the ūr settlements depended on each other for their own survival as cultivating
and labouring collectives. The survival of both groups from the time of
cultivation until harvesting and for the preparation for the next cultivation is
important. It also reveals that there developed certain form of labour cycles.
Important point is that how a system of appropriation of surplus produced by
both these groups developed, how it kept the kutis at the subsistence level and
labouring groups below the subsistence. It was the instituted mechanism of

419
social control dominated by the polity of the Nāttutayavars and the Chēra
Perumāl and the temples and Brahmanas that made the cultivating kutis and
the labouring population as subjugated groups. It was under the exploitaive
system of resource expropriation maintained by such overlords that the
agriculture cycle was continuously renewed. It also retained continuous
process of production and reproduction of produce and producers, wo/men
and material resources.

The composition of people who involved in the production operations

i.e. the members of the kutis and the labouring populations is bound to
change. The elder members disappear, while younger members of both kutis
cultivating, occupational, and artisanal groups and labouring populations take
their place. The elders in the cultivating kutis called kutiyil mūttavan and the
clan head or the head of such elder members in the clans called kutipatis had
important role in mediating the cultivating kutis with the power centers. There
developed certain form of power structure among the members of the
cultivating kutis, between the elders and the junior members of the extended
house holds. The elders controlled the produce, land and seeds and also the
women. The senior members of the kutis were entitled to control the kinship
descent structures of their clans while all the junior members are indebted to
the elders to meet the necessaries of their everyday life. Because of the
dominant position assumed by the elders in the extended house holds of the
kutis, the elder members collected and stored the produce cultivated in the
collective holdings of the households. The elders also managed the production
operations as well as the everyday life activities of the households. This was
also the case of the kutis of occupational and artisanal groups in controlling
the resources for their labour activities and for the transmission of knowledge
and the skill involved in it.

420
 The agricultural operations done by the members in the kutis and the
kinship descent structure of the kutis constituted certain dependence relations
between the senior and junior members in the kutis. It created a lifelong
relationship between members of the cultivating kutis. Thus, kuti became a
well-defined social cell functioning as an economic unit with kinship descent
structure. The head of the extended household of the cultivating kuti came to
be known as the kutiyil mūttavan, and the head of the kutis in a production
locality called kutipati. The transformation of production process and the
cultivating groups involved in it indicates the process in which both the
productive cycle of the agriculture process and the kinship descent structure
of the kutis were to be reproduced. The kutis engaged in the agriculture
operations during the successive periods. It functioned as an economic unit
engaged in the production operation and reproduced the same agriculture
cycle to the next season as well. Similarly, kinship descent structure of the
kutis is functioned as a social cell with the biological function of reproducing
the members of the kuti. The reproduction of the members of the kutis had
also take place place with the continuous cycles of agriculture production
from one generation to another. There continued the simultaneous process of
reproduction of kuti as an economic unit and reproduction of kinship descent
structure as a biological unit. It shows that not only the production operations
in agriculture but also the producing groups engaged in the production
operations were reproduced. There must have developed certain organic
mechanism which ensured the proper balance between the number of
productive and unproductive members of both sexes in the productive unit
called kutis, which reproduced the kutis and the agriculture operations.

The production locality called the ūr settlements where the cultivating

kutis and the kutis of the occupational groups settled. When the kuti
settlements expanded horizontally in relation to the expansion of agriculture
in both parambu and wet land areas, the control made by the elders over

421
women became an efficient tool to deal with a fairly large population of the
respective kutis. The cultivating kutis is in a way a social corporate unit
consisting of heterogeneous collectives that included several productive units
in its fold. In the beginning, the cultivating communities were not exclusively
endogamous groups and many a number of groups who followed the non-
agricultural activities were exogamous groups who were integrated into the
process of agrarian expansion and thus became part of the cultivating
communities. This happened because of a process of expansion and
diversification of a number of kutis as economic units due to the complex
division of labour and expansion of agriculture. The cohesion among the
cultivating groups was maintained when endogamous marriage relations
developed within the kutis. The head of the extended family in the kutis
controlled the junior members in the family by regulating the subsistence and
the resources. They also extended control over the women, as maintenance
of his authority required that marriage be prohibited within the clan groups.
The authority of the elder members of the kutis rested on the power to prohibit
the exterior relation in the case of marriage, which provided each kuti the
capacity for endogamous reproduction of the kuti, although endogamy never
became the rule in an agriculture community.

The kutis were the functional agricultural groups and the functional
relations were developed among them along with the growth of agriculture
production process, which were bound to be reproduced structurally. The
kutis of kammāla groups like potters and craft groups who were moving
groups engaged in specialized occupations and crafts developed and as
endogamous collective and maintained their professional skill and knowledge
as cohesive unit of professional groups. The dominant groups like retinue of
the nāttutayavar and the Chēra Perumāls like Vāzhkai, Nizhal, Pani, Prikriti,
Adhikaris, and Nūttuvar etc appear to have not maintained the endogamy as a
rule. The structural reproduction of kutis generated the authority of the elders

422
in the kuti; kutiyil mūttavan became a person who led the cultivation
operations and controlled the juniors and women in the households. In both
cases kuti was reproduced through the production of subsistence and surplus.
The control of the biological reproduction of women was important for the
kutis as endogamous units.149 However, control of biological reproduction
was not diverced from production process in which kutis were integral part.

We find that the production operations done by the kutis developed

certain form of kinship descent structures and the corresponding relations.
These relations were developed on the functional requirements of the kutis,
which reproduced the kinship descent structures of the kuti as endogamous
unit. The kutiyilmūttavan or the senior member of the extended house hold in
the kutis maintained absolute control over the women. The kinship descent
structure of the kutis was important for making control over the women by the
elder male members of the kuti. It was here the kinship transformed into an
ideology for the justification of the solidarity of the members of the kuti as a
kinship descent group. It was also used for the domination and exploitation by
the senior members over the juniors, the characteristic of descent group called
mūttār and itaiyār, and controlling the sexuality of women binding the rule of
endogamy.

Growth of Avakāsams and Subordination of Women

Kutis controlled the production operations and labour activities in the

production of a particular produce or artefact. The control of resources,
including raw materials, land, technology, tools; labour etc involved in the

149
Social anthropologists have studied this in terms of certain form of marriage circles.
Marriage circle of kinship groups and the territory in which they settled, the kinship and
territoriality, as cultivating and occupational groups are important,. Morton Class, see,
‘The Economy of Caste’ [Chapter -6] and ‘From Clan to Caste’ [Chapter -7] in Caste:
The Emergence of South Asian Social System, [Manohar, Delhi [1980]1993], pp.105-
160.

423
production of goods and produces was limited to the respective kutis. This
was also the case with the exchange of products or the forest produces
collected. It entiled the involvement of the members of the kutis, or the
people who managed to produce or collected the produce. The cultivating
kutis engaged in the production of both mono and multi - crops in parambus
and wetlands required land, labour, technology and managerial skill to
operationalise the cultivation activities for the production of surplus. This was
predominantly done by the members of the kutis and the primary producing
groups. As has been shown elsewhere the kuti is a collective unit in terms of
kinship and descent structure and an economic unit as far as their location in
the ūr settlements or production localities are concerned. Therefore, kuti
became a production unit as well as a structure and form of kinship descent
group in which the elder and junior male members and the women were
positioned according to specific gender relations in each kuti.

Kuti as a cultivating group in a particular area and service groups or

occupational collective in the ūr settlement used to maintain its rights over the
resources which they made use for the production of a particular material
product. Kutis were allowed to retain the rights it enjoyed over the resources
as original settlers as long as they paid the kutima or dues on their profession
to the respective overlords. Overlords like dominant households of the
landholding groups, the Nāttutayavar and their retinue, temples and
Brahmanas and the Chēra Perumāls and the like established their authority
over the area where the kutis settled. The right of the kuti to settle and
cultivate the lands in the ūr which was a production locality was vested with
the kuti as collective entity. This right of the kuti varied according to their
location in the ūr settlement as well as their rights and control over the
resources with which they produced a particular product or artefact and
contributed to the generation of agrarian surplus. Therefore, the resources
available to the kutis and forms of the labour they performed for the material

424
production was important in determining the nature of the right the kuti
possessed over the resources.

The rights enjoyed by the crafts and artisanal groupsto make use of
their raw materials for the productioion of products or artifacts was
inalienable irrespective of the changing status and power within the societies.
Similarly, the relation of cultivating kutis to the lands they settled and
cultivated in both parambu and wetland was also important. Yet there were
differences in the rights of the kutis who engaged in different occupations
with distinct kinship structures. The knowledge, and skill and their proximity
to the resource as well as the control over the resources also shaped the
disposition of the kutis to hold the rights. The evidences cited in the previous
chapters in relation to the location of various kutis in the production localities
and the analysis made on it suggest that the Izhavar,Vellālar, Vannār and the
Kammalār including the Kusavar/porters were kutis who possessed certain
rights over the resources, i.e. the productive lands on which the cultivating
kutis retained their rights as kutima and the occupational and artisanal groups
who possessed the rights over the respective means of production. The
relation of these kutis to the raw materials or resources indicates the nature of
the rights of these kutis and their location in the production localities.

The location of kuti in a production space and the labour activity

rendered by the kutis in relation to the availability of the resources in that
locality is important as far as the kutis are concerned as an economic unit as
well as kinship groups. The location of various kutis in labour process in
agriculture and allied occupations helped the kutis to develop the potentialities
to accumulate different types of resources for the production. This enabled the
kutis to be endowed with knowledge and skill to maintain differential access
to resources and knowledge. This developed certain form of gradations of the
rights over the resources. The forms of rights called avakāsams that

425
developed among various kutis primarily because of the importance of the
produce and the artefacts they created in relation to their spatial location in the
ūr settlements influenced the growth of gradation of rights.

The structure of various forms of avakāsams /rights held by the kutis

over the resources available to them and the right to settle in a production
locality was developed due to the expansion of agriculture and the
proliferation of settlements in both parambu and wetland areas. The material
life activities and exchange forms that developed along with this process led
to the gradation of rights. Kutis of cultivating and occupational groups that
developed in this process were more economic units than the structured units
of individual families with instituted gender relations. It indicates that the
family as a system had not been developed among kutis and the kinship
descent structure had a dominant role in determining the collective material
possessions of these kutis. Therefore, the kutis must have maintained their
kinship descent structures to transmit the material life world and the
rights/avakasams related to resources, skill and the knowhow to the next
generation. It paved the way for the germination of certain modes of
transmission, which passed the rights / avakāsams to next generation through
a system called thalamura.

These avakāsams or the rights were to be protected through the

generations or thalamura. These rights were maintained and protected by
each kuti through its own kinship descent structures. Therefore, the location
of kutis in the production process, the way in which each kutis maintained
their rights over the resources, the gradation of rights developed among the
kutis due to differential kind of avakāsams and access to the resources
resulted in differences among the kutis as kinship descent groups as well as
occupational collectives. It shows that the structuring of division of labour

426
and occupational differences among kutis in the multiple economies paved the
way for the gradation of rights of the kutis over the resources.

The rights called avakāsams of the kutis who did cultivation and the
auxiliary occupation to agriculture were maintained through generations,
thalamura, by which the rights over the resources and the skill and knowledge
of the life activities they followed were sustained and protected. The rights
assumed by the kutis as a kinship and descent groups were functioned as
economic units with distinct kinship descent structures rather than individual
families. It also meant that the kutis were able to maintain technics and skill
related to a specific life activity in a particular production locality with
distinct socio-cultural life. Therefore, the kuti was entitled to maintain its
rights and protect the skill and knowledge of a particular occupation. The
kutis had to reproduce its livelihood forms and its kinship descent structures,
i.e. the social and biological reproduction of kutis became a historical
necessity. The possession of avakāsams for settlement and cultivation in a
particular production locality by paying kutima to the overlords were
protected through generations as thalamura avakāsams, came to be later
called kuti janmam, the right to settle and cultivate the land which was
recognized as birth right.

Therefore, the social reproduction of kuti not only granted rights to

settle in a production locality but also to cultivate the lands and thereby
generate the surplus, which became contingent upon the historical necessity
of the expansion and development of multiple economies in which wetland
agriculture and multi crop cultivation in parambu played important role.
When overlordships developed in an area by the non-producing groups like
Nāttutayavar and the Brahmans or temples or Chēra Perumāl, the rights
possessd by the original settlers and the occupational groups had to be
acknowledged by the respective overlords. Expansion of cultivation and

427
generation of surplus was possible only when the rights of the original settler
and cultivating groups were protected. Apart from this, the avakasams were
maintained through thalamauras of the kutis consisting of a number of
kinship descent groups inhabited in extended house holds. The avakāsams
were protected through making households. The rights over the land to
cultivate and settle were the right possessed by the cultivating kutis. Similarly,
kutis of other occupational collectives also maintained the rights over their
resources and labour or knowledge. Such rights were collective in nature
protected by the extended households as a whole. The development of
extended households and the right held by these households was protected
through thalamura or generation, shows the way in which the extended
households and the collective form of material possession developed and
protected.

The elder members of the extended households were entitled to protect

the avkāsams and to maintain kuti as a well-knit unit of kinship descent
structure and economic unit. It was achieved through preventing the female
members from making exogamous relation with the other clan groups. The
restriction of women in such extended households of the kutis resulted in
developing the clan endogamy in the kutis. The junior members in the family
were also restricted to render their labour and their knowledge of a particular
life activity was protected within the kutis through the junior generation. The
occupation, the labour, knowledge and technics of the kutis were also
protected through the junior generation of the kuti resulting in developing the
hereditary occupation as concomitant development.

Kuti became biological unit reproducing the kinship descent structure

through endogamy and kuti also developed as a production unit of a particular
occupational group and sustained the rights over the resources, knowledge,
and skill through junior generation. It also enabled to develop the occupation

428
hereditary. The kutis developed through controlling both women and the
junior members by reproducing both biological and social norms. Endogamy
and hereditary occupation became the logical development of the production
of surplus and the reproduction of the producers of the surplus. The hereditary
occupation and endogamous marriages continued to exist on account of
biological and social reproduction of kutis. Thus, the development of multiple
economies and the creation of agrarian wealth ensured the process of social
and biological reproduction of the kutis.

Gradation that developed among various kutis on account of the

variation in the rights they possessed, the immediate requirements of the
service they rendered and the produce or products that they created in the
production localities are important to determine the location of the kutis in the
ūr settlements. The specificity of the kinship descent structures and the
nature of the extended household also structured each kuti in the production
localities. These factors influenced the development of occupational
gradations as well as kinship descent structures among various kutis. It also
developed each kuti as collective entity having differential access to basic
resources. The life activities and the avakāsams over the resources as well as
technics, skilled labour and knowledge forms were to be kept within the
kinship descent structures of the kutis. This had to be protected by the
extended families through thalamuras resulting in the collective possession of
material resources.

Simultaneous development of occupational gradations among various

kinship descent groups who possessed different forms of avakāsams occurred.
It ensured that the kutis were to be positioned in different spatial locations in
the production localities. It developed the historical process of deploying the
various kutis in particular spatialities in relation to their proximity to
resources and the way in which they were able to protect their rights over

429
such resources. This is also imprinted in the labour and resource terms that
appeared in inscriptions of the period under discussion. This created the
dispersed settlement localities of the various kutis whose collective entities in
production localities indicate the spatiality of settlements and labour aspect of
life activities. Thus, kutis developed as economic unit of the producing groups
who maintained particular life activities through hereditary occupations and
kinship descent structure as endogamous groups with specific cultural
features.

The large section of the producing groups consisted of various kutis

and Adiyār / Āl were the bedrock of the agrarian system under discussion.
These producing groups were incorporated into the production process with
their kinship and descent structures and distinct life worlds. The primary
producing groups called Adiyār / Āl, Pulayar or Parayar groups developed
from a number of primordial settlers and groups of obscure origin. Some of
them developed from the original settlers who must have been part of the
early migrant settlers from the mullai-kurinchi region and settled in the
riverine and wetland region as well as the parambu areas. The people who
followed punam cultivation and foraging activities as well as the hunters and
pastoral groups in the forested areas were brought by the dominant groups for
reclaim lands and for slash and burn in both wet land and parambu areas for
cultivation. In course of time, they were subjugated to a number of groups
such as landholding households, nāttutayavar and their retinue, temples and
Brahmans and to the Chēra Perumāl.

The documents including oral texts pertaining to the labour process

involved in the production operations reveal the way in which the migrants
from the hilly forested areas settled and engaged in agriculture in both
wetland and laterit parambu areas. There were two types of migrations; one is
the migration of people who originally migrated from the hilly areas primarily

430
because of the wars in the form of plundering raids and predatory marches,
which destructed the settlements of the people. Secondly, people migrated due
to natural calamities. The early migrants and settlers were the harbingers of
agriculture including many a number of mixed crops and paddy from the hilly
areas where they lived in chirukuti as chirukutimākkals conducting slash and
burn agriculture. The riverine riparian areas and water logging estuarine lands
reclaimed by these settlers were used for wetland agriculture. This process is
also revealed in inscriptional evidences in the form of land names, the names
of settlers and the terms indicating the labour process involved in the
production of space and cultivation operations. The asymmetrical and loose
nature of the settlement localities and the unstructured nature of the
configuration of various groups of people settled in the areas suggest that the
migrant settlers did not develop institutional mechanism for expansion of
agriculture.

Labour Realisation and Development of Primary Producers

The migrants who came from the hilly backwood areas created the
settlements for cultivation in wetland and parambu areas and became the
original settlers and cultivators. They came with their cultural features and
distinct life worlds as many of them had the historical experience of
settlements and cultivation congenial to the tina- varaku zone as
cherukutimākkal. The dominant groups who developed from the war chiefs,
their kinsmen and retinue, who conducted the plunder raids in the original
settlements, captured such settlements and brought the original settlers under
their control. The Vellala cultivators and dominant households of land
holding groups were developed due to these plunder raids and capturing of
settlements. The settlers who had lost their original settlements and
productive lands in such raids to the war chiefs and their retinue resisted the
capturing of settlements and plunder raids. The memories of which were

431
inscribed in the oral tradition of some of the descendants of the original
settlers. The dominant house holds developed from the retinue of the war
chiefs and from the settler cultivators. The patis were developed from the
settlements of the settler cultivators and the cultivating kutis.

The nāttutayavar developed as war chiefs or lords who conducted

plunder raids, captured settlements and productive lands. They distributed the
share of war and prestation among their retinue and the men of arm. The
groups like Nāttutayavar, Kutipatis and Vāzhkai were made use of by the
Natutayavar. It gave way to a system of over lordship of the Nāttutayavar
with the support of the groups called Patis ,Vāzhkai, Nizhal, Pani,Adhikāri ,
Nūttuvar etc who were also developed from the landholding groups and the
mercenary soldiers of the war chiefs.

The cultivating kutis or other settlers paid certain protection fee in the
form of pakarcha to the persons who might have developed from kutipatis or
local chiefs as indicated in certain inscriptions150. The landholding house
holds developed from the settler cultivators, the Nāttutayavar and their kin
made control over the cultivating kutis and the labouring populations when
over lordship over the production localities was developed by the
Nāttutayavar. They wanted to legitimise of their political authority with the
help of Brahmans as many of the Nāttutayavars developed from obscure
origin and tribal past. Brahmans were given productive lands in the form of
offerings and donations to the temples they created in their ūrs. Brahmans
and the temples were able to superimpose the tenurial dominance of the
settlements of the cultivators. The settler population who inhabited in the
production localities became subservient to the temples and Brahmans under
the kārānmai relations when the production localities where the cultivating

150
Tiruvalla copper Plates mention a number of pakarchai terms to indicate this process, M
G S,A-80.

432
kutis controlled the lands and the agriculture process were brought under the
super imposed tenurial relations of the temples and Brahmans with the
support of the Nāttutayavar. However, the chiefly ower of the Nāttutayavar
was different from the political power of the state structure.

One could see the emergence of institutional structures over the

production process and producing groups which developed a number of
strategies for the realisation of labour with the mediation of temples and other
intermediaries of the polity of the Nāttutayavar. The resource requirements of
the overlords were met by expanding cultivation in the areas hither to
uncultivated in both wetlands including estuarine lands and the parambu and
forested spaces. This process can be seen in number of epigraphic documents.
The dominant households, Nāttutayavar and their kinsmen brought new
groups of people for the reclaim land and extend agriculture. This created a
group of servile labourers to cultivate land as permanent labour force. It was
in this context that the primordial settlers, the pastoral groups, punam
cultivators and even hunting gathering groups and non-agricultural labourers
were brought into agricultural activities as labour collectives. These labouring
groups began to be attached to the lands on which they did their labour and
gradually a permanent labouring population was developed in the lands
controlled by the dominant groups.

The growth of kārānmai and the super imposition of tenurial control of

the temples and Brahmans over the production localities of the cultivating
kutis paved the way for the subjugation of the producing groups and the
primary producers like Pulayar and Parayar therefore became the servile
groups. The servile labour collectives including Pulayar and Parayar were
attributed a status of Āl and Adiyār, which indicates their condition as a
labouring population who were attached to the lands. However, the complete
subjugation of these groups with the tenurial dominance of the temples did

433
not happen yet. Parthivapuram inscription indicates that Pulayar were given
lands near kalam or threshing ground suggest the fact that at least in some
areas they were granted lands to settle and were given rights to hold land and
their rights were acknowledged to continue their status as original settlers151.

Servile labouring groups were employed to reclaim lands in

waterlogged and marshy areas near the river valleyes and wet land plains. The
primary producing group engaged in the draining of water from the water-
laden areas for cultivation and construction of water channels, check dams
and anai [dams]. These servile labourers reclaimed the estuarine lands and
engaged in the agriculture operations in the water logging areas like the
karilands and thuruthu lands. The variety of oral genre revels the location of
the primary producing groups in the labour process involved in the production
of agrarian resources in both parambu and wetland areas. These groups did
the labour activities involved in preparing grounds, sowing seeds, planting the
seedlings in the wetland fields. They did weeding and manuring, tending and
protecting the fields, harvesting and processing the food grains. The multiple
labour activities in the cultivation of mixed crops including various spices
were also done by the primary producing groups in the parambu and forested
spaces152.

Pulayar were settled to protect the fields and to provide the labour
services to irrigation activities and water management. The Huzur Plate of
Vikramadithya Varaguna shows that the Pulayar were subjected to the super

151
Parthivapuram Plate, pulērku koduththa īrandēr nilaththinum kizhakkku, TAS, Vol.3,
p.52-56.
152
The various labour activities done by the primary producing groups in both wetlands
including the estuarine lands and in the parambu areas are described in the second
chapter.

434
imposed kārānmai relations of the temple153. In order to meet the resource
requirements of the various overlords the labouring population like Pulayas
were to be maintained as servile group. The labour of the primary producers
was indispensable for the production of agrarian surplus, which made them to
be attached to the means of production. It was made possible to expand the
cultivation reclaiming the estuarine lands where Pulayar were employed to
reclaim the punjai lands154 from marshy lands for cultivation. Multi crops
cultivation including spices in parambu lands in the laterite area and in the
lands adjacent to forest was developed. The forest produces and the spices
were important items, which reached the port of trades like Kollam where
kutis of cultivating and occupational groups and adimai155 or servile groups
were also located.

The lands where labouring groups settled were transferred to the

temple156 in the form of the share of the produce from such lands to meet the
expenditure of the offerings of the temples. The land terms like
siriyaparayankari, padinjāyiruparayankari, paraiyanpurāy157,
paraiyanvalāl158 and parayarkāttuchēri159indicate that the Parayar groups

153
Ivattintlyaikarayum pulaiyum kārāimamitātchi ulladanka iraiyilikōnīkki chemmaruthar
kudiyāga pārthivashēkharapurathuperumakkal kāttūttuvathāga attikkuduttathu,
TAS.Vol.1, p.42
154
Padunilanīkki ithanakam tholikkottodu kūdappunjaikuttuntharikkurayuzhu kodu
chelluppulayarum ,TAS.Vol.1,pp.275-283.
155
The term ālkāsu indicates the transaction or maintenance of bonded people called
adimai in the nakaram.
156
The epithet kudithala pakukkaperāre mentioned in the Chembra inscription reveals the
fact that the kudikal settled the land should not be divided, indicating the importance of
the labouring kutis and their relation to the households of cultivators, M R Raghava
Varier, Keraliyatha Charithramanangal, op.cit.,pp.99-102.
157
M G S,A-80.L.249.Certain kāvathiyārpurāy mentioned in the Tiruvalla Plate may be
related to the same group, M G S,A.80,L.619.
158
M G S,A-80,L.611.
159
This land term is mentioned in a mid-fourteenth century Saththankulangara inscription,
TAS.Vol.4.pp160-161.

435
were the original settlers who reclaimed the lands from the estuaries. The
term chāntārkādu indicate that the people like Chantar160 were part of the
primary producing groups. The primary producers were settled not only in the
parambu and but also in the lands reclaimed from the estuarine area.161 The
epithets like puleverupatti162, pulaiyanmuthai163and pulayannadaipunnu164
indicate Pulayar groups were settled to reclaim the land spaces and to engaged
in labour activities in cultivation operations165. The Āladiyār were transferred
along with lands166 they attached and they were also employed to conduct the
reclamation process in water logging areas.167 Pulayar were also attached to
the chērikkal lands where they engaged in the labour activities in vayal and
kara lands168.

The resource requirement of the Nāttutayavar was met by the surplus

generated by the process of expanding cultivation in both wetland and mixed
croplands with the labour of the primary producers like Pulayar.169 The labour
appropriation was materialised by temples and Nāttutayavar in which the
labour of Pulayar was used for the generation of surplus to meet the resource

160
M G S,A-80.L.393.
161
Kandiyur inscription, TAS.Vol.1, pp.414-417.
162
Tirumuzhikkalam inscription, TAS, Vol.2.No.7 [k].pp.45-46.
163
M G S,A-80,L.507.
164
Chennamangalam inscription, TAS.Vol.6.part.2, pp.189-190.
165
Land terms such as muthai; karunthāzhemuthai, punalimuthai indicates the process
which brought the newly reclaimed lands under cultivation probably with the labour of
people like pulayar, M G S,A-80.
166
Adharam , A journal for Kerala Archaeology and History, Vol.1,2006, pp.75-82.
167
M G S, A-80.L.499. Kadapanangādu and the Āl attached to the land mentioned in the
Thiruvalla plate nilams and purayidams where āladiyār were attached are mentioned in
Peruchellur temple inscription, Adharam, op. cit., pp75-82.
168
Kannamangalathu vayalum karaiyumpulerum, M G S,B-10.
169
The land called peruvayal pūmi and Pulayar attached mentioned in a Trikkakara Plate,
TAS.3.PP.169-171. injaithuruththi and kuzhikkāduphūmi and āl attached to these lands
was held by the Irāman Māthēvi, the udayavar of Munjinātu, M G S,A-80.Ls.537-38.

436
requirements of both the temples and the Nāttutayavar.170 Terms like Āl and
Adiyār indicate the condition of existence of the primary producers because of
the labour was also realised through a number extra economic means to
increase the surplus to meet the leisured existence of the Nāttutayavar and
their retinue and the temples and Brahmans. The Nāttutayavar, temples and
Brahmanas became the main beneficiaries of the surplus. Brahmans were
made to settle by the Nāttutayavar in the lands over which the latter had
established the over lordship where cultivating kutis and the Āl/Atiyār were
already settled.171 It shows the formation of producing groups like Āl/Adiyār
or Pulayar is an integral part of the expansion of agriculture and proliferation
of production localities in both wetland and parambu regions.

Our evidences including the oral texts pertaining to the labour

activities and to the ritual acts of various producing groups do reflect on the
ways in which the primary producers engaged in the production of agrarian
surplus in multiple economies. The overlords expropriated the surplus
productions in these areas by subjugating the primary producers. The primary
producing groups were tied to the lands on which they engaged as instruments
of production. They were transferred along with the land and were
subjugated, in due course of time, by the dominant groups consisted of land
holding house holds which developed from the settler cultivators, the

170
The epithet vettikarikkāttukolla pūmiyumpulaiyarum the land called vettikarikatu and
Pulayar attached to it mentioned in a Trikkakara temple inscription, M G S,A-25
171
The epithets kilimānūr pūmiyum kādum karayum karapurayidaththinide māniyam,
‘kādum karayum karapurayidavum ālum kūda and kādum karayum karapurayidavum
ālum mentioned in Kilimānūr record indicate the transaction of kilimānūr village in
which the large extent of land comprised of forest, arable land, compound site along
with kutis and adiyar, TAS.Vol.5 Part.1.pp.63-85. This document mentions that nine
ladiyār were required to cultivate sixty kalam seed capacity of wet land, per onninu
ānāl ontrum pennāl ontrum akayil arupathungalamum āl orupathum nīkki olla nilam
eppēr pettathum kādun karayum karaippurayidamum ālum kūda kīzhppērūr
nādevāzhiyide amiththu,ibid, Ls.8-9.

437
Nāttutayavar , their militia and the retinue, temples and brahamans, the
Perumāls and their associates.

The development and expansion of agriculture due to the development

of overlords and many a number of non- producing groups made possible the
growth of the Adiyār / Āl / Pulayar. When they were attached to the lands they
rendered their labour, kinship structures and clan relations began to be
developed among the labouring groups like Pulayar primarily through
marriage relations. The kutinīkka kārānmai that existed in the region as a
whole also helped them to create the clan ties without their physical
displacement from the lands they attached. The limited areas of the
production localities called ūrs and dispersed nature of the village settlements
also made possible the reckoning and recognising the clan ties through local
indicators of kinship relations.

There witnessed the gradual process of formation of kinship descent

structures among primary producers like Pulayar that resulted in developing
them as an endogamous collective of servile labourers. It also made them to
possess the skill and knowledge they over period of time accumulated through
labour process and retain certain right over that knowledge and skill. They
were settled in particular areas attached to the lands gradually evolved as
endogamous groups with distinct cultural features and kinship structures and
kutis in later period.172 The kinship descent structures developed through
marriage relations and settlements in the lands helped them to develop the
structure of kuti. The rights were developed among them to possess and
transmit their skill, knowledge and cultural features through generation called

172
The oral text embedded the socio – economic relations of the post Perumal period
describes the socio-cultural life world of the primary producers like Pulayar. The story
of Pumathai Ponnama, a Puluva woman in which Pulayar were treated as kutis who
follow endogamy vested with certain rights in their moral and cultural world, M C
Appunni Nambiyar, Vatakkan Pāttukal, [Malabar Books,Vatakara,[1983]1998], pp.19-
37.

438
thalamura. They were incorporated with their kinship structures and the skills
they possessed into the structures of power as endogamous groups of servile
labourers who engaged in the specific labour activities with particular cultural
features. This integration took place place at a time when various overlords
subjugated them into the agrarian order as the instruments of production.
Thus, Nāttutayavar, temples and Brahmans and a number of non-producing
groups subjugated the primary producers. This process was mediated by
groups consisted of militia and functionaries of the Nāttutayavar, temple
servants and other local magnates like Patis and Vāzhkai.

The Pulayar were ageneric group of labouring population consisting of

a mass of a scattered labouring population attached to the cultivating lands
without locating their kinship descent ties. They developed more as inclusive
exogamous groups rather than discrete labour units. It enabled them to
increase their population to meet the labour requirements necessitated for the
development of overlords and expansion of cultivable areas for surplus
production. The historical contingency was to increase the surplus production
by increasing the population of primary producers. Due to the prevalence of
labour intensive production developed in agriculture, advancement made in
the processing of iron was not applied in the making of new implements in
agriculture production. This relative backwardness in technology in
agriculture especially in the case of implements of production was partly
compensated with the labour of the primary producers, predominantly by the
Pulayar. The situation became complex when overlords and a number of non-
producing groups who participated in the appropriation of the surplus by one
way or the other. This resulted in maintaining the primary producers below
the subsistence and to increases surplus production at an optimum level using
the labour of the latter. The increase in the volume of the surplus was
materialised only by increasing the number of the primary producers keeping
them below subsistence and it was this surplus appropriation mechanism,

439
which made the primary producers in servitude and bondage on which the
entire edifice of the agrarian order and its political structure rested.

Households and Collective Possession of Resources

The system of household and the form of material possession are important to
understand the way in which the stratified agrarian order and the
corresponding social relations developed. It appears that the share of the
produce from the lands possessed by the extended households of land holding
groups , where the cultivating kutis and the labouring groups generated the
surplus, were donated to the temples to meet the expenses of offerings made
by the landholding households. The lands from where the share of the
produce reached the temples as donations aand these lands came under the
tenurial control of the temple called kārānmai. It is important to know the
development of the households of the landholding groups and the way in
which these households were able to control the landed property under the
household structure. Tiruvalla copper plates mention the donors of the
temples which show that the extended households were developed among the
landholding groups and collective form of possession that developed within
the structure of these extended households.

There are references to certain persons in the Tiruvalla copper plates,

they are; Chenthan Kesavan of idaichery; Iyakkiyammai , Kuntan Iravi and
Kuntan Govinnan of pallam,Ponniyakka Nāyan, Achchiyar of Kulakkatu,
Yakkan Govinnan of Kotikkalam, Komakkottu Nayar,Chentan Kumaran of
koyirpurm,Nayattiyar of koyirpuram,Iraya Chekaran of
chennithalai,Nayanthonka Pallavarayan, Nambukali, Thamotharan Kothai of
pallivarutti,Yakkan Kothai of peruvayalur, Ayyan Kothai Varman of
pōnjikkarai, Nayattiyar of mūlaiyil,Kothai Iravi of vantalaichēri,Narayanan of
pāthamūlam, Pantariyar of venpalanāttu mentioned as the members, possibly

440
the elder members of households 173. Apart from this, there are references to a
few Nāttutayavar like Nāttutayavar of Kīzhmalainātu, Purakizhanātu,
Munjinātu, Venpalanātu and Vēnātu; and the members of the chiefly
households are also mentioned. The house names prefixed to the names of
these donors such as idaichēry174, pallam175, kulakkātu176, kōtikkalam177,
kōmakkōttu178, kōyirpurm179, chennithalai180, pallivarutti181, peruvayalūr182,
pōnjikkarai183, mūlaiyil184, vantalaichēri185, pāthamūlam186,
kidanguparal187etc, indicate the households. These households are found to
have developed as extended households of the land holding groups who must
have been developed from the cultivating communities of early settlers of the
area. Certain Chennan Kumaran and his nephews belonged to the household
188
named kōilpurathu and Kovinnan Achchuthan and his nephews were part
of the land holding households189, they are found to have followed matrilineal
line of succession. However, both patrilineal and matrilineal house holds

173
M G S, A-80.
174
Ibid, L.404.
175
Ibid, L.461.
176
Ibid.L.276.
177
Ibid,L.359.
178
Ibid.L.152
179
Ibid.L.544.
180
Ibid,L.102.
181
Ibid,L.554.
182
Ibid,L.154.
183
Ibid,L547.
184
Ibid,L.106.
185
Ibid,L.555
186
Ibid,L.198
187
Ibid.L.152
188
Ibid, L.544-545.
189
Ibid,L.552.

441
donated the produce or the lands on behalf of the extended households they
belonged to the Tiruvalla temples.

Punjaipatakaram190 and karkottupuram191 are the names of the

households that donated the share of the produce to the temples from the
lands they collectively held. Similarly, Chembra inscription192 mentions
names of certain households and these names are prefixed to personal names
such as Kumaraniyakkan of Vāyila, Thariyanan of Chraithalai, Iyakkananar
of Chalaikkarai, Katathiran Kumaran of Kuvēli, Chanthira Chekharanar of
Thavattikuvēri, and Narayanan Chankaran of Kuruvattēri. The witnesses
mentioned in the document such as Narayanan Kandan of Chalaparambil and
Kandan Chinkan of Menmanaipurathu seem to have belonged to the
households of settler cultivators.

Certain individuals donated their share of produce called kīzhpāti to the

Trikkakara temple to meet the expenses of the offerings they made in the
temple.193 They are pōzhan kumaran of mēlthali, Ūran nakkan kēralan, Ūran
Chēnnan, Kōtha Iravi of vantalachēri, Chinkapirān Kumaran of mēthali, Ūran
kumaran Chāmi Kannan and Ekkan Pōzhan of venpamala. The witnesses
mentioned in the document are found to have the members of households of
194
settler cultivators such as attānikkōttam, ilamthuruththi, perumthottam,
parambudaiya, kuppavāzhkai, parambudaiya, chiraiyankōttu,

190
Tiruvattuvayinscription, M G S, A-4, L.2.
191
Chokkur, M G S, A-8.Ls.3-4.
192
M R Raghava Varier, op cit, pp.
193
M G S,A-25 .
194
M G S,A-25 , They are ; Thēvan Chāttan of attānikkōttam, Kēralan Nārāyanan of
ilamthuruththi, Kanda Nārāyanan of perumthottam, parambudaiya Kumaran, Kanda
Nārāyanan of kuppavāzhkai,Kēralan Srikumāran, Kumāra Nārāyanan of parambudaiya,
chiraiyankōttu Iravi Vāsudēvan, kannan Pōzhan of pantrithuruththi, Kannan Kumaran
of ventalamanal,Kottan Puraiyan of kīzhakam,Kandan Puraiyan of kuntriyur, Ūran
Kottan Kōthai , Ūran Unnichirukandan,Ūran Kumaran Chirukandan,Ūran Pōzha
Nārāyanan,Pōzhan Chāttan of velliyāmpalli and Sankaran Kumaran of pullipalli.

442
pantrithuruththi, ventalamanal, kuntriyur, unnichirukandan, velliyāmpalli,
and pullipalli. It is interesting to note that names of settlements such as
mēlthali, vantalachēri, venpamala, attānikkōttam, ilamthuruththi
perumthottam, parambudaiya, kuppavāzhkai, chiraiyankōttu,
pantrithuruththi, ventalamanal, kīzhakam, kīzhakam, kuntriyur, velliyāmpalli
and pullipalli are names of extended households which possessed landed
wealth collectively.

Kannan Kumaran of kārilam who made certain offering in the

Trikkakara temple seems to be a settler in the ūr settlement.195 Thēvan Thēvan
of malapuram, Kēsavan Sankaran of perumanaikōttam, Pōzhan Nārāyanan of
kulassēkhara pattanam, Ūran Pōzhan Chirikandan, Pōzhan Chāttan of
velliyanpallli, Kumaran of malaiyilmpalli are represented in the document as
the settlers held rights over the lands and they must have been the senior
members in the households.196 Chirumattapuzhai and ilamkulam are
households mentioned in one of the Trikkakara inscriptions.197 This is also the
case of the households such as velliyānpalli and nedumkollil mentioned in
another document in the same temple198. Similarly, cherumattapuzha and
mākkannapalli seem to be the names of the households.199 The epithet
ūridavakai vellālar mentioned in a Tirunelli inscription200must have been
landed gentry developed from the households of the settler cultivators.
Certain Gōvinnan Kuntrapōzhan of kulavāyini mentioned in a Trikkakara
inscription seems to be part of land holding households.201 Certain Chēnnan

195
M G S, A-26,Ls.[2].3 and [5].3.
196
M G S, A-26.
197
M G S, A-28,L.[1]5.
198
M G S, A-30, Chāttan Kumaran of Velliyānpalli and Kālan Gōvinnan of nedumkollil.
199
M G S, A-44.
200
M G S, A-36,L.8.
201
M G S,A-35,Ls.3-4.

443
Thāyan belonged to the thenchēri mentioned in Trikkadiththanam temple
document is found to have held landed property collectively202.

Makizhanjery203 and mangalam204 mentioned in Kaviyur inscriptions

are household names. Similarly, certain iravimangalam and murukanāttu
205
mentioned in Trikkakara and Triprayar206 temple inscriptions are
landholding households. Certain kuppaiyārpulam mentioned in Pukkottur
temple document207 is also the name of a settlement space. The names
prefixed as maranallur, govinnamangalam, iruriman, maruthakachēri,
perunkulam et al are names of households attached to the names of persons
who donated lands to the Virakeralapuram temple.208

From the above analysis, we come to the fact that the house holds and
kuti settlements had developed in both wetland and mixed crop areas209.
These were constituted as extended households on matrilineal and patrilineal
line and retained the right on landed possession collectively210. The collective
form of right retained by the households of the settler cultivators and the
cultivating kutis was succeeded to the next generation through thalamura

202
M G S,A-64.
203
M G S,B-5.
204
M G S,B-6.
205
M G S,B-10.
206
M G S,C-31.
207
M G S,C-23.
208
Mampalli plates, Puthussery Ramachandran, op cit.,pp.214-218.
209
Nālukuti Vellālar[ Tarisapalli Plate, M G S, A-6.L.2] and the ūridavakai vellālar is
mentioned in Tirunelli Plate[M G S,A-36,Ls.7-8] are important as the former are the
cultivating kutis and the latter are the dominant land holding group who became
incorporated to the polity of the Nāttutayavar
210
Number of individuals donated the share of the produce, from the lands they held as
collective property of their extended households they belong, to the temples as
donations to meet the expenses of the offerings they made in the temples, M G S,A-80 .
Ilamkulam Kunjan Pillai, ‘Janmisambrathyam Kēralathil’ in N Sam[Ed], Ilamkulam
Kunjanpillayute Thirenjedutta Kritikal, op .cit., p.599.

444
without breaking the structure of the households and the kutis. It succeeded
either through male or female line indicating the existence of both matrilineal
and patrilineal extended households211. Even though there developed the
matrilineal households, the system of possession developed within these
households made the senior male members to control the the material wealth
on mother line. There are instances to indicate that the landholding groups
held rights over the material possession, including the landed wealth on male
line. There must have developed male line of succession for rights over the
resources, mainly the cultivable lands, in the patrilineal households212.

The surplus generated by the producing class consisted of the

cultivating kutis, primary producers called Āl /Adiyār/ Pulayar and the
auxiliary occupational kutis. The cultivation was done under the system of a
tenurial dominance of the temples. The cultivation was done by the
cultivating kutis on a condition of tenant cultivation under the kārānmai

211
Certain kārālar seem to have followed the patrilineal system of inheritance and
Porangattiri inscription mentions kārānmai kotutta kolavāyanum avan chantathiyum M
G S,A-13.L.s.77-79.
212
Tiruvanmandur inscription mentions avan thanthathi uzhuthunintu, his children cultivate
the lands. Similarly, there is reference to ippūmi ellām uzhavu mangalattavakal
thanthathiyil mūttōriruvarum chiraikkarayil mūththavanumkūti in Kaviyur inscription to
indicate the cultivation right over the land was held by the elder members cultivating
kutis. The epithets ethirangavīranum thanthathiyum ippūmi kārānmaicheythu in
Perunnayil inscription and mūttaputtiran athikāram chelutti varuvithu in Tiruppalkatal
inscription are cases in points to indicate rights held by the cultivating groups over the
landed property on male line. We have reference in Thirupparappu document to certain
ithuchōrakan chēnthan makkalmakkle thēven kizhpāti uzhuthūttūvathu to mention the
right held by the cultivating kutis over the lands they cultivate and settled. Certain
families held the rights over the cultivating lands on female lines. Tiruvalla plates
mention certain Chenna kumaran and his nephew /marumakkal held rights over the
lands they cultivated and certain Kovinnamn and his nephew held rights over the lands
they cultivated and settled. Similarly, we have an epithet in Tiruvambati inscription
thannutaiya marumakkale kārānmai cheythu indicating the rights possessed by the the
families on female line, all these citations are referred to by Ilamkulam Kunjan Pillai in
his ‘Marumakkattāyam Kēralathil’ in [Ed]N Sam, Ilamkulam Kunjanpillayute
Thirenjedutta Kritikal,op.cit., pp.676-678.

445
system. The term kankānichchu213 means the land was cultivated under the
domination of the tenurial relations mediated by the dominant land holding
groups like Kārālar and the temple servants like kutipothuvāl and the
pathavāramākkal. It was under the system of tenurial dominance under the
kankāni that the labour was realised to expand the cultivation and to
appropriate the surplus generated with the labour of the cultivating kutis and
the Atiyār /Āl / Pulayar groups. Certain dues were collected from the
occupational groups like four kutis of Īzhavar and the members of this kuti
were called as Izhakkyar, Vannārakuti214, ēnikkānam and thalakkānam on
Īzhavar. It can also be presumed that two kuti of Chiruviyar and oru kuti
Thachchar215 who settled in the land, ippumiyil kkutikaleyum.216 The
Vāniyar and inkammālar mentioned in the Viraraghava Plate217 indicate that
they were also professional groups and kutis.

The thalaivilai and mulaivilai218 mentioned in the document and

interpreted as professional dues indicates the process of subjugation of
occupational groups to the dominance of the polity of the Nāttutayavar and
their labour was expropriated in the form of professional dues on their
occupation by the nāttutayavar. The atimai and the ālkāsu219 mentioned in the
document suggest that slave transaction was prevalent in the port town called
nakaram and the polity of Nāttutayavar and the Chēra Perumāl collected the
dues from such transaction. It shows the way in which the occupational kutis
213
Kollurmatham Plates mentions ‘nāontrukankānichu kolvithu’, M G S,B-15. The epithet
Kārālanum pathavāramākkalum pothuvālum kūti kankānichu, Trikakara plate [, MGS,
A-41.
214
Tarisappali inscription,M G S,A-2Ls.6-8.
215
Tarisappali inscription,M G S,A-6.Ls.1.
216
Ibid,L.18.
217
Ilam kulam Kunjan Pillai, ‘Vīrarāghava Pattayam’, Ilamkulam Kunjanpillayute
Thirenjedutta Kritikal [Ed]M Sam, op. cit.,pp.747-763.
218
M G S Narayanan, Perumals of Kerala, op.cit., p.133.
219
M G S,A-6-L.29. ivakal kollum adimaikku ālkāchu kollapperārākavum.

446
and the labouring populations including the people transacted as atimai were
subjugated to the political structure that developed under the Nāttutayavar
and the Perumāl.

Certain Pothuvāl of the temples were deputed to supervise the

cultivation done by the kutis and they came to be known as the kutipothuvāls
as mentioned in certain documents. Kutipothuvāls220 were the temple
functionaries under the sabha of the temple and functioned as the executive
committee to manage the affairs related to the cultivation in the lands under
the control of the temples, which were cultivated by the kutis as tenant
cultivators and the Atiyār groups attached to lands. The pathvāramākkal were
also entrusted to collect the pathvāram, usually one –tenth of the produce,
from the cultivating kutis for the temples.

The surplus was appropriated and re/distributed among a number of

non-cultivating groups comprised of the Nāttuayavars and their functionaries
like Vāzhkai, Pathi, Nātu, Pani and Nūttuvar. The Chēra Perumāl, his
Adhikārar, Pathavāramākkal, Āttaikolvār were also part of the apropriators.
Vāzhkai, Nātu, Pani, Nūttuvar developed among the land holding households
and became part of the polity of the Nāttutayavar. They were also the groups
that developed as kin groups and as the retinue of the Nāttutayavar.
Kutipatis221 developed from the elder members of the extendedhouseholds of
the kutis and functioned as the descent heads of the respective kutis. The

220
Porangattiri [ M G S,A-14 ]and Avittattur temple [ [M G S,A-10,L.3] inscriptions
mention īrandu kudipothuvālum.
221
Tarisapalli Plate mentions punnaithalaipathiyum pūlaikutipathiyum M G S, A-6.L.42.
Ayiranikalam inscription mentions the kutipatis of two ūrs and the latter were donated
to the temples, ivvīrandūrilum olla pathiyēyum, Puthusssery Ramachandran op. cit.,
No.8L.6, p.22. Similarly, Perunnai inscription mentions two kutipathis who were
deputed to collect the aranthai from the perunnaithal ūr settlement, kāpali
mangalathum muththūttumolla kutipatikku, Puthusssery Ramachandran op. cit.,
No.64.Ls.39-43, p.103.

447
kutis in turn recognized the Kutipatis and gave them customary dues called
patippatavāram.

When the ūrs of the cultivating kutis came under the over lordship of
the Nāttudayavar, obligatory payment called kutima was given to the
Nāttutayavar and retained their rights over lands they cultivated and settled.
Kutipatis as descent heads of the kutis were incorporated to the polity of the
Nāttutayavar and they began to function as the collectors of dues to the
Nāttudayavar. The suppression of the kutis was done by the martial groups
like Nūttuvar and it was mediated by Kutipatis along with the retinue and of
the Nāttutayavar. When the Chēra Perumāl made over lordship over the nātus
and the Nāttutayavar officials of the Perumāl called Adhikāris were
superimposed upon the Kutipatis to control the kutis.

Another significant development in the case of the appropriation of

surplus was the āttaikōl and Āttaikolvār222, the latter were persons deputed to
collect the attaikōl to the Chēra Perumāl which were collected from the kutis.
Documents mention the collection of such annual dues.223 Sometimes, the
Kutipatis were deputed to collect the āttaikōl from the kutis settled in the
ūrs.224 This indicates the process of integration of the kutipatis to the political
authority of the Chēra Perumāl and they became the mediators to appropriate
the surplus from the cultivating kutis. It shows the way in which a mechanism
of appropriation that was already existed under the Nāttutayavar was
integrated to the political structure of the Chēra Perumāl as and when the

222
Trikkadithanam inscription [M G S, A-31, L.3].
223
The attaikōl collected by the Vēnāttatikal is donated to the Kulaththur temple
[Kulaththur inscription, Puthusseri Ramachandran, op cit, p.72, Ls.7-8].Āttaikkōl
collected from the Pullur Kodavalam [M G S,A-39,Ls.7-8] and Peruneythal [Puthusseri
Ramachandran,op cit ,No.64,Ls.15-17. Attaikōl is collected from the Panthalayani
[Puthusseri Ramachandran, No.68. and from Nallur [M G S, A-66
224
The āttaikōl is collected by the Kutipatis from the peruneythal ūr is mentioned in the
Peruneythal inscription, Puthusssery Ramachandran, op. cit., No.64.Ls.39-43, p.103.

448
Chēra Perumāls were able to establish their authority over the Nāttutayavar
of various nātus in different parts of the region. The cultivating kutis were
forced to give the surplus they produced. in the form of āttaikōl, in addition
to the dues given as kutima and pāttam to the Nāttutayavar and the temples
respectively. Araintai was another form of appropriation made from the
cultivating kutis to the Chēra Perumal225 to meet the contingency expense in
the time of war226.

The groups like Vāzhkai, Pathi, Nātu, Pani, and Nūttuvar functioned
as the mediators and arbitrators of the polity of Nāttudayavar and Chēra
Perumāl and they controlled the kutis and servile labouring population.
Nūttuvar were the most powerful agency of the polity of the Nāttutayavar
who suppressed the cultivating groups. The process of appropriation of
resources and its redistribution consolidated these functionaries who engaged
in the mediation of power and suppression of the producing class.

Property of the Brahman Urs and Temples

Dēvasam and brahmasvam227 mentioned in the documents indicate the

fact that they are mentioned only in a few documents while the documents of
the major Brahman settlements and the temples do not mentions the existence
of brahmasvam and dēvesvam forms of possession over matrial resources.
The property forms that developed under the temple emerged as the corporate
form of possession.228 Wile the collective form of property developed in the

225
Peruneythal araithai is mentioned in a Perunnai inscription, Puthusseri Ramachandran,
op. cit.,No.64,Ls.19-20,p.103.
226
M G S Narayanan, Perumals of Kerala, op. cit., p.135.
227
Porangattiri inscription[M G S,A-62,L.6 ,Tiruvannur Plate[ M G S,A-14, Ls.13-14
thirumannūr patārarutaiya thēvettuvamum piramattuvamum and Devidevesvaram
plates [M G S,B-15]mentions the brahmasvam and devasvam form of rights over the
landed property .
228
Thēvethānattil pukkuvilakkivithum porul kavaravum perār, Trippunittara inscription ,M
G S,A-16,L.7.

449
Brahman ūrs. The Brahmans were settled as groups rather than as individual
families and were given lands as patakāram as a collective form rather than as
smaller units of lands to individual families.229 Similarly, landed property of
the temples and the lands from where the produce was donated to the temples
were controlled by the Brahman sabha as a collective Brahman assembly
rather than by individual members.

The material possession of the temple was also known as thvam.230 The
ūrānmai right of the Brahman families in the temples was collective the right
of the Brahman families in the ūrs rather than the rights of the individual
members of the families. The functionaries of the temples belonged to the
Brahmans were rewarded lands called virutti231 and jivitham with adequate
collective rights. It reveals the property right that developed in the temples
was managed by the Brahman sabhas. The property right that developed in
the Brahman ūr appears to have developed and vested in the ūr rather than
among the individual members of the ūr and it was developed as collective
form of possession managed by the assembly of the ūr.

It not only indicates that the property had not been developed into the
individual forms of private property rather was in the form of right called
thvam meaning owned as a collective rather than as individual possession.
The development of the rights over the landed property and other forms of

229
Devidevisvaram Plates and Tiruvattur plates mention the Brahmans were made to settle
as groups of individuals given them productive lands with the stipulations that the lands
should be cultivated without fail.
230
Patārakarkkulla tvam / the property of the temple, Kilimānūr plate, L.30.Thvam of the
Sripatmanabha temple, Puthussery Ramachandran, op cit, No.104, L.11.
231
Panivazhi virutti , the virutti lands held by the temple servants and the cultivation done
in such lands should not be disturbed and the produce from such lands was not taken by
the by the ūrālar is mentioned in Porangattiri inscription, Porangattiri inscription,M G
S,A-14,Ls.28-30.The virutti lands are given to the ūrālar of the temple, Kilimanur
Inscription mentions the lands given to the ūrālars of the Trippalkkatal temple,
Puthussery Ramachandran, op. cit.,No.96,Ls.4-9.

450
wealth and the way in which it was protected and transmitted determined the
nature of property rights. The juridical and legal structures were constituted to
protect it. It appears that the kachams developed by the various temple
assemblies with the support of the Nāttutayavar in the presence of the
kōiladhikāri, the representative of the Chēra Perumāl indicates that the
political authority developed under the Nāttutayavar and the Chēra Perumal
helped to develop a juridical –legal structure to legitimise the corporate and
collective form of property that was developed under the temples and the
Brahman ūrs.

This property system and the legal - juridical practices that became a
powerful form of authority under the temples, which subjugated the
producing class to the institutional structure of the temples which was
legitimised in its ritual idioms as well. The households in the Brahman ūrs,
the structural temples and its functionaries were part of the ruling class who
appropriated the surplus produced by the producing class. The ritual
dominance of the temples and Brahman ūrs was materialized by the way of
pattam / mēlodi and fines from the cultivating kutis. The socio-legal codes
and ritual and distancing strategies were functioned as the ideological weapon
of the temples and Brahmans to suppress the producing class. The rights or
avakāsams developed under the households over the property were subjected
to the legal - juridical practices dominated by the temples.

Manai232 was a house site located within the Brahman ūrs where the
Brahmans inhabited in households. When the Brahmans were made to settle
by granting productive lands, the names of the previous settlement localities
and the names of the house sites of the settler cultivators were adopted and
retained by the Brahman. It indicates the way in which the Brahmans were
232
Kumaranallur plate mentions the development of manai and purai / puraiyidam and the
spatial dichotomy existed among the settlement and the family structure between the
Brahman and non-Brahman groups.

451
integrated to the local society accepting and acknowledging the rights and
privilages enjoyed by the original settlers of the area. It must have been the
reason to adopt the names of urs, settlements and house sites of the settler
cultivators by the Brahmans. The puraiyidam is the compound site where
extended households of the landholding groups including the cultivating kutis
inhabited in puras. Thara and kuti were also important as it make sense of the
settlement sites of the cultivating kutis and the occupational and labouring
groups. Both purayidam and manai indicate the development of house sites
of the landed non-Brahman and Brahman groups respectively. It appears that
individual families had not been developed among them and property that was
developed within the extended households was collective in nature. Tiruvalla
copper plates mention certain kazhanjankuttumuthal233 indicating the
collective form of property that was being developed. There developed
families and households among the functionaries of temples, Nāttutayavar
and the Chēra Perumāl.

This was also the case of the households of the ruling families of the
Nāttutayavar. Kūru system that developed among the ruling lineage of the
Nāttutayavars indicates that they also developed as extended households. The
property that developed within the structures was inherited on kūru system
that was also the extension of the rights of the senior members in the
extended households over the property and its inheritance. It shows that the
family and property systems that developed in the period under discussion is
collective and corporate in nature that could not have been developed into an
individual form.

233
M G S,A-80,Ls.44-45.

452
Development of Property Rights among the Ruling Lineages

Kilimanur plates reveal that Vira Adichchavarma Tiruvadi purchased certain

lands from the members of the extended households of the royal family and
granted to the Trippālakatal temple to meet some of its expenses.234 These
lands were mixed crop lands consisted of kādu, kara, karapurayidam and
parambu lands. These lands were held by some of the members of the
extended households of the royal family and they are found to have held it in
their individual capacity. Certain Manikandan Umayammai pillaiyar,
Kizhperur Kothai Avani Pillaiyar and Trippappur Devadaran Avani Pillaiyar
held lands in their individual capacity revealing the development of individual
property among the households belong to the ruling family.235 Similarly,
certain individuals held land as thvam236 and otti.237 The development of
individual holdings from the jivitham lands among the royal functionaries
called kōilkarmikal is also mentioned.238 They were also known as thvam239.

234
TAS.5.Part.1.pp.63-85.
235
Ibid.
236
King purchased 107 para seeding capacity of lands consisting of nilam, kādu, kara and
karapurayidam and Āl attached to it from Kumara Narayanan of
Chengazhunīrmangalam in nagarūr. The thvam / svam held by Kandan Uzhittaran of
Kunnalaththūr are also purchased. Kandamangalam thvam in vempāyamkunram
jīvitham, kizhmanai thvam in nērpadu jīvitham, Kandan Iravi of melachchery who holds
certain lands as thvam, thvam for mēvūr and Cheruvala Katharan of ānādu holds lands
as thvam are also purchased by the Adhikārār of the king to meet the expense of the
Trippālkadal temple, ibid. Certain Perumānar Pāndan Chēnnan donates land which he
has possessed as his own thvam to Nedumpuram temple, Nedumpuram Tali inscription,
M G S,A-27.
237
Certain land called adimayālakōdu in kizhkilakireyūrkal is held as otti
ottikondathikarikkintanilam adimayālakōdu by Keralan Adithyavarman of mullaikkal, is
purchased for the temple.
238
Neduvila purayidam is held by Iruriman Kesavan Damodiran, Kanda Narayanan of
govindamangalam who owns the lands manjaikalappara nilam in mevurkkal,
karapurayidam held by Maniyan Maniyan of Maruthakachchery, perungulathu
Narayanan Narayanan held the urakandam tudava and kādu kara and karapurayidam
and perumbulam Kesavan Narayanan held the āttara nilam. Private individuals own
these lands in their personal capacity.
239
Certain private individual Kandan Uzhittiran of Kunnalattur holds certain land as thvam
[Kilimānūr Plates, Ls.50-51], Kandan Iravi of mēlachēry holds certain thvam

453
There developed the rights to transact the holdings of the members of the
extended households of the Kizhpērūr family. It indicates that there began to
develop individual property among the members of the households of the
royal family. However, such property was also brought under the control of
the temples as the Nāttutayavar of kīzhperūr donated such lands by
purchasing it from the members of the royal households.

Mortgage and Pledge: Changing Rights of Property

The development of otti indicates that the there began to appear the alienable
right over the landed possessions and the groups developed along with it. This
was developed in the period in relation to the household structure and the
transaction that developed over the collective form of property. There
developed certain intermediary tenurial rights called idayītu which was
possessed by a group called idaiyītar over temple lands. It also shows that
itayītu lands could be mortgaged. Sometimes, provisions were made that the
lands given to the Brahmans as padakāram could not be mortgage [otti]240 as
a safeguard against the transferring. The lands granted to the temples as
kīzhīdu were to be protected from making it otti which is supposed to be made
by the ūrālar or itaiyītar.241 It indicates the development of itaiyītar as
landed gentry who possessed certain intermediary rights over the kīzhītu lands
of the temples.

[Kilimānūr plates, L.54] and the thvam of Kēralan Adichchavarma [Kilimānūr Plates,
L.63] Thevan Iravi of Thilathamangalam holds certain thvam.
240
23 padakāram lands consisting of 1325 para lands mentioned in Mampalli Plates, M G S,
B-11.
241
Mampalli Plate, M G S, B-11. There is a provision in the Tiruvalla plates that padakāram
lands should not be made otti for each other for money, Tiruvalla Plate, M G S, A-80,
lines 382-383. Certain individual called Amrithamangalaththavan holding idiyīdu land
is also mentioned in the Tiruvalla plate, M G S,A-80,.line.451.

454
 Itaiyītar groups often intervened in the temple affairs and objectected
including feeding of Brahman in the temple.242 The itaiyītar also developed as
important functionaries of the temples.243 There developed the tendency that
the virutti holdings of the temple functionaries like drummers were likely to
be mortgaged244 by the Itaiyitar. Itaiyitar were warned against unneceessery
intervention in the cultivation in the land given to the head of the carpenter
called Rāyinga Perunthachchan.245 Ūrālar of the temple could be the itaiyītar
of the temple lands.246 Ūrālar possessed the idaiyīdu right over the landed
property of the temple and they were restricted to transact it on otti247 shows
that the extent to which the intermediary tenure holders could be developed to
transfer the temple property, the property of the functionaries and private
individuals.

242
Trikkadithanam inscription makes the stipulation that those idaiyīdan who make
obstruction in the feeding of God, tiruvakkiram, at the temple would remit the fine in
gold to Kōilathikāri, Nāttudayavar, Vāzhkaivāzhumavar and ttaikolvār, M G S,A-31.
243
Thenchēri Chēnnan Thāyan, an idaiyīdan, whose possession including his idayīdu was
confiscated on account of his misappropriation of temple wealth, M G S.A-64. The
mānushyam of the temple can be idaiyīdar, Parambantali inscription, M G S, C-30.
244
There is a provision in one of the documents of Trikkatittanam temple that the viruththi
holdings of the drummers in the Trikkadithanam temple should not be taken on otti and
make it cultivate by ūrālar, idaiyīdar and pothuvālar, M G S,A-47 ūrālarum
idaiyīdarum pothuvālum ottikollumaval …
245
Tiruvanchikkalam inscription mentions that idiyīdan would lose his idaiyīdu when
makes obstruction in the puaiyidam given to Rāyinga Perunthachchan by the
kōiladhikāri, MGS,A-58.
246
Ūrānmaikkidayīdumkettu, M G S, A-64. Kaviyur inscription indicates that an ūrālar can
be idaiyīdar of the temple, M G S, B-6.
247
The ūrālar of the Irijālakuda temple who were also the itaiyitar of the temple property
were restricted to mortgage [otti] the lands, idaiyīdullayidaththu ottivaykkavum
kollavum …………. perār’, M G S, A-3. Chennadayā ullapūmikondu ottivaykavum
ottikollavum perār, Tirupparangodu temple inscription, and there is a provision in the
same document ‘thēvarudaiya pathavāramazhippithāka pūmi ottivaypithāka cheyyavum
perār , M G S,A-14. Idaiyidar are restricted to stop the cultivation in the lands of the in
Maniyur temple, AR.No.448/1929.

455
 This must have led to frame the provision in the temple to check the
power assumed by the Itaiyitar in the temple affairs.248 Members of the
249
Brahman ūr and Brahman illam could have held itaiyitu right.250
Sometimes, the members of the Brahman ūr were the ūrālar of the temple and
the itaiyitar of the same temple lands as well.251 The ūrālar were also landed
groups and they were restricted not to transact the temple lands on otti or on
sale252indicating that there developed the practice of mortgage and sale of
kīzhīdu lands granted to the temple by Idaiyīdar or ūrālar.253 The Nūttuvar
held the itaiyitu lands of the temple.254 Sometimes, the temple property could
be transferred as otti, panayan [pledge] and īdu [surety against an amount of
loan] indicate the tendency developed towards the character assumed by the
property in course of time.255

248
Idayīdan ichchelavinu virōthikkil iththandam ponnum pattu thavaikkum panthīru
kazhanju pon thandam vaichchu pāttam perakkadavan, M G S, C-42.
249
Kumaranallūr plate mentions ūrkkidayīdumkeduvithu,M G S,C-43.
250
Illamkaludayaidayīdu, TAS.Vol.3.pp.191-196.
251
Avittaththūr temple inscription states that those ūrālar who make disturbances to the
kudikal who settled in the temple land would lose their idaiyīdu that they have in the ūr,
M G S,A-10. pāttamidumūrālan ūrkkidayīdumkettu, Pukkāttūr inscription , M G S,C-23.
252
Irānikkalam temple inscription mentions ipūmi vilkavum ottivaykkavum manti ontrum
cheyypperār ūrālar, Ayiranikkalam inscription, Puthusseri Ramachandran, op.cit., It
also stipulates ivvūrkudikala [rkka]ttu karaipūmi ivvūrkanayāthavaralālantri
puramoruvar vilkavum ottiveykavum perār ,ibid.
253
Temple lands were held as idaiyīdu in Panniyankara inscription M G S,A-53.
254
The idaiyīdu lands of the tiruvannūr temple are entrusted to the arunnūttuvar of
Rāmavalanādu, M G S, A-62. Yidayīdar pukkuvilakkilum porul kavarkilum.
255
Ālaththūr Jain document mentions ottiyum panaiyavum vaikkavun thandam āka
kkodaikkavum īdukodukkavum perār , palli lands should not be mortgaged , pledged ,or
transferred as īdu and fine. Kannapuram inscription mentions ivai vilakkaperār; otti
idapperār ottikolvōr; vilakkapperār vilaikolaperār, Transaction of the temple lands on
otti and sale is restricted, M G S, B-2.

456
Property Form and Legal Structure

256 257
The term ītu and muthal are important in this context as it indicate that
the landed property had acquired certain rights to be made it against otti or
panayam. The legal structure developed by the temples in the form of
kachams was to protect its property from making it otti, panayam and ītu by
the ūrālar and the Itiyītar of the temples. This was also to protect the
corporate nature of the temple property with the help of the Nāttutayavar and
the Perumāl. It was developed at a time when the landed property began to
assume certain character. However, the contestation that evolved between the
temples and the functionaries of the temples including a sizable number of
ūralar and the itaiyitar who tried to set against the corporate form of the
property developed under the temples. The ītu, panayam and otti indicate the
growth of mortgaging and pledging of landed property. It led to contentions
and negotiations between the temples and the Nāttutayavar and the Chēra
Perumāls on the one hand and the Urālar and the Itaiyītar on the other to
retain the temple property in its corporate form by controlling the latter that
evolved certain socio-legal structures called kachams.

Kachchams developed to protect the corporate property of the temples

and the consolidation of which was aimed at to control the fissiparous
tendencies that developed against the corporate structure of the temple
property. This was also to control the intermediary tenure holders and the
functionaries of the temples and to subjugate the producing class. It was in
this context that temples framed provisions and it was made part of the
kachchams to consolidate the overlordship of the temples on the lands and to
subjugate the cultivating kutis settled in the lands. It incorporated the kutis

256
Idukodukkavum perār, Ālaththūr Jain document, Puthussery Ramachandran, op .cit.,
No.127, L.9.
257
Koduththu muthal chimāvāvithu, M G S, A-14.

457
and the primary producers to the legal structure of the property relations
develoed under the domianance of the temples.

The institutional control made by the Nāttutayavar and the temples

over the production process resulted in the development of labour realization
strategies for the expansion of agriculture in both wetland and parambu areas.
It provided impetus to the growth of trade and exchange which incorporated
the already developed occupational gradations into the political structure of
the Nāttutayavar. The institutional control made by the polity of the
Nāttutayavar over the production localities was the product of the
consolidation of a number of local power centers of non-producing groups
predominantly developed from the households with martial and tribal cultural
features. They began to evolve as the collectors of dues from the cultivating
communities. The kin groups of the dominant households developed as the
martial groups and the retinue of the nāttutayavar. They became the Vāzhkai,
Pani, Pati, Nātu, Prakriti, Adhikārar, Nūttuvar etc and functioned as the
arbitrators and the mediators of the political power of the Nāttutayavar. They
developed as local power centeres collecting dues, delegating political power
and suppressing the cultivating and occupational groups.

Thus, temples began to be developed as an institutional structure due to

the tenurial dominance it made over the production localities where the
cultivating kutis and the primary producers generated the agrarian wealth with
the support of a number of kutis of occupational and artisanal groups which
ensured the resource requirement of the leisure and ritual culture of the
temples and Brahmans. The tenurial dominance made by the temples was
established through juridical and legal structures. It was materialised with the
help of the political power of the Nātttutayavar and the Perumāl. This was
aimed to ensure the protection of the corporate and the collective property
developed within the temples and Brahman ūrs. The Nāttutayavar and the

458
temples protected their rights and privilege each other to dominate the
producing class, which gave definite shape to the institutional structures of the
respective overlords. The property structure developed within the extended
households of the various functionaries under the political structure of the
Nāttutayavar and the functionaries of the temples were collective in form. The
property form developed in the dominant households of the ruling lineages
and the structure of the households with kūru form of rights made constraints
in the development of the polity of the Nāttutayavar from its lineage
structure.

Property Form and Political Structure

The political authority of Chēra Perumāls developed in the Perumāl area by

establishing control over the production localities of the cultivating kutis and
the occupational groups. The Perumāls were able to control the internal and
international trade that was developed in relation to the port towns. It helped
the Chēras to control the political territories of the Nāttutayavar and to
incorporate the functionaries of the latter by superimposing political control
over the institutional structures of the polity of the Nāttutatayavar. The
institutional structure developed by the temples and the ritual and cultural
dominance made by the Brahman ūrs sought the political support of the
Chēra Perumāls to protect collective and corporate forms of possession
developed in the Brahman ūrs and under the temples. The institutional
structure of the temple was constituted itself as a corporate entity, the
property could not have been developed into the individual form within the
institutional structure of the temples and in the Brahman ūrs.

The institutional functioning of the polity of the Nāttutayavar had

shown that the functionaries and retinue of the former were developed mainly
from the land holding groups organized as extended households with kinship
descent relations. The form of material possession developed among this class

459
was also collective in nature. It was developed within the households and
extended house sites, many of them were clan groups with tribal structures
and clan rights over the resources and its inheritance. The nāttututayavar,
Chēra Perumāl and the temples made constrains on the intermediary tenure
holders, the functionaries of the temples, the individuals among the
landholding groups and the members of the households developed private
property under individual control. Thus, the household structure developed
within clan relations and the collective forms of possession over the material
and cultural resources did not develop property into individual form. This
collective and corporate form of possession not only developed a propertied
class of non-producing groups. They were not only the functionaries of the
institutional structure of the polity of the nāttutayavar, the Perumāl and the
temples but also a sizable number of landholding Brahmans in the ūrs ,
households of non Brahmans , traders and commercial groups. The political
structure developed under the authority of the nāttutayavars corresponded to
the structure of the extended households and the collective form of possession
held by various groups. The system of household, form of possession and the
structure of political power made the propertied class to develop a kind of
arrangement of gradations of rights and privileges.

The state system in the early medieval sense of the term would not
have been developed from the polity under the Nāttutayavar, which was on
kūruvāzhcha, political power assumed by the segmented lineages of the
extended households of the ruling houses. The Brahmans and the temples
maintained collective property under the Brahman ūrs and as corporate under
the temples which was politically and legally protected by the Nāttutayavars
and the Chēra Perumāl. The extended households developed among various
social groups in both producing and non-producing class were also congenial
to develop the collective and corporate form of material possession. It shows
that the political structure developed under the Nāttutayavar and the ritual and

460
religious dominance of the temples was homologous to the form of
households and property form developed during the period. This makes the
point that whatever the political structure that was maintained under the
Chēra Perumāl it did not transform the corporate form of property developed
under the temples and the collective property of the Brahman ūrs. It also did
not transform the household structure and the form of collective possession
developed under both the propertied and producing class. Therefore, the
system of form of possession developed during the period and the dominance
made by the temples and the Nāttutayavar in the political economy created
debilitating tendency in the consolidation of an independent political structure
under the Chēra Perumāls. Instead the Perumāls superimposed certain
cultural and symbolic power over the functionaries of the existing political
structure of the Nāttutayavar to claim the over lordship of the Perumāl.

Social Stratification and Hierarchy

The process of consolidation of occupational and service hierarchies along

with the structure of endogamous households and collective property forms
transformed occupational and service hierarchies into varna jati system
through a process of incorporation and mediation. Jāti formation can also be
seen in relation to the process of realization of labour and subordination of
producing groups to a number of overlords in an exploitation system of
agrarian hierarchy. The functionaries and service groups formed due to the
development of the polity of the Nāttutayavars and the Perumāl and the
institutional structure of the temples were developed as endogamous groups.
Thus their services and occupations became hereditary. One needs to ponder
over the nature of production relations at this period of time. We find that
various categories of people belonging to the producing groups engaged in the
production operations as cultivating kutis, primary producers of Āl / Atiyār or
Pulayar and a number of occupational and artisan groups who were also kutis.

461
The growth of the kutis and Atiyār show that they were important groups in
the agrarian production. They began to develop as social groups with cultural
features and distinct way of life. Thus producing groups transformed into
hereditary occupational or service groups as endogamous collectives.

Various occupational groups like Thachchan, Kollan, Thattān, Vannār

etc and the toddy tappers and the occupational groups associated with palm
and coconut like Izhavar and Chāntar also developed into endogamous
groups with hereditary occupation or profession. They functioned as kutis
with distinct cultural features and ways of life, the products of their labour
were important for the development of agriculture and trade. The service
groups attached to the producing groups in the production localities came to
be constituted as kutis of endogamous groups and their life activities became
hereditary as well. There also occurred differentiation within these groups
with regard to their spatial location, occupational differences and the rights
they held to possess the resources including land, knowledge and skill to
utilize their skilled labour and professional knowhow with the resources.

The term Uzhavar indicates people who engaged in cultivation in wet

land in the riverine and riparian areas in the early historical period. In early
medieval times, the term uzhavu was meant for plough agriculture. Many of
the fertility cults and magical rites were developed in connection with the
expansion of wetland agriculture and the formation of Uzhavar
communities.258 The fertility cults and propitiatory rituals evolved in relation
to agriculture expansion in both wetland and parambu areas. The magico-
ritual acts show the expansion of agriculture and the way in which the
producing class were subjugated to the political authority of the Nāttutayavars
and its retinue and to the dominance of the temples and Brahmans. The tribal

Rajan Gurukkal, Miththu Charithram Samūham, [Prasakti Books Pattanamthitta, 2009],

p.13.

462
groups who followed the hunting gathering practices and slash and burn
agriculture in addition to collection of forest produces were also subjugated to
the authority of the Nāttutayavar, temples and Brahmans. They were
subjugated with their cultural features and kinship descent structures. This
must have been a prolonged process and the historical memory of which is
embedded in many of their ritual acts and oral traditions.

The cultivating kutis were differentiated groups with their own kinship
descent structures, housesites and cultural features. Though kuti signifies
cultivating kuti and the kutis of occupational groups, kuti may be defined in
terms of kinship descent structures and clan identity of these groups. The
house sites and households developed with endogamous marriage relations
formulated rights over the resources, occupations, skill and knowledge as a
hereditary form. The location of kutis in the production process also
developed the gradation of rights among various occupational and cultivating
kutis. The incorporation of these groups into the system of agrarian hierarchy
dominated by the political authority of the Nāttutayavar and the Perumāl and
the temples made them to be subjugated as endogamous groups who
maintained their occupations and livelihood forms in a hereditary form.

Cultivating kutis who held rights to cultivate and the occupational

groups who engaged in craft production and metal working possessed the
rights over their resources. It determined the relational positions they assumed
in the occupational and service gradations and the position in their lateral
movements as well. The rights they possessed to make use of the resources in
an area they settled and their potentialities including professional skill and
knowhow to make use of the available resources determined their status in
their settlement localities and their relational positions among the
occupational groups. It made them settle at specific spatialities in production
localities in particular ways resulted in lateral differentiation and gradation of

463
occupations. This was also based on their location in the labour process, the
importance of the the products or produces they created and the way in which
it had been circulated among the community at large. This resulted in the
development of cultivating kutis and occupational groups as heterogeneous
and differentiated groups. Thus, the kutis began to be constituted as particular
social collectives lived in specific socio-cultural milieu with hereditary
occupation and endogamous marriage relations.

Certain occupational groups like potters and gold smiths and even
carpenters and sculptures were mobile groups and their lateral movements
enabled them to develop as groups of specific identities with their cultural
features as endogamous groups. The cultivating kutis and those occupational
groups who engaged in coconut and palm related occupations were more
inclusive in their growth and cultural features, and clan endogamy had been
gradually developed in such groups. The clan endogamy that developed in
these groups and the rights possessed by them over the resources including
the lands and their occupations transformed them into endogamous marriage
groups who retained their occupation hereditary. Occupational and
professional skills were retained within the groups through thalamura as
endogamous groups led to the consolidation of their rights over the resources
and skill. This was also applicable to a number of forest dwellers and
collectors of forest produces who followed clan endogamy and their
integration to the settled agrarian order did not occur at this period of time.
Such groups lived as clan groups within the tribal world. The people engaged
in fishing and salt manufacturing are found to have developed their profession
in a hereditary manner and retained it through endogamous structures.

Primary producers like the Adiyār /Āl, / Pulayar and Parayar were tied
to the lands as instruments of production and they were dispossessed groups
who did not have rights to occupation and cultivation of land as that of the the

464
cultivating kutis. The most effective resource that they possessed was their
skilled labour power. They were not allowed to hold right over the material
possession including land and, therefore, they need not maintain such rights
through the generation or thalamura. The transitory nature of their existence
in the land they attached was also important for their dispossession of material
resources as the land they attached were being transferred from one holder to
another. They developed as inclusive groups and they hardly maintained
exclusive and definite clan ties and endogamous relations and therefore left
the possibility to include more groups as primary producers in the course of
expansion of cultivation and generation of surplus. They were denied rights to
possess lands and other forms of resources unlike the cultivating kutis and
other kutis of occupational and artisanal groups. Thus, the primary producers
were tied to the lands and inhabited in the production localities called ūr
settlements devoid rights and attached to the lands as instruments of
production.

However, the groups like Parayar who mainly were engaged in basket
making from bamboo also worked in agricultural fields as seasonal
agricultural labourers. They also seem to have developed certain kinship ties
and clan relations. The relation of Adiyār/ Āl to the land to which they were
attached and their status in relation to their condition of existence must have
been the atiyāymai, which is a form of forced labour. Terms like Āl and Atiyār
that we come across in epigraphical documents and oral literature also make it
clear that they must have been transferred along with the lands they were
attached.

The marriage relations among the Atiyār groups like Pulayar enabled
them to develop as clan groups in later period. The most important aspect in
this context is the question of labour process and the way in which the
labouring population were engaged in various labour activities as

465
endogamous group of servile laboures. Our analysis of cultivating kutis and
kutis of occupational groups suggest that they were largely defined through
tenurial and occupational terms Atiyār or Āl / Pulayar / Parayar were related
to labour process. They engaged in the labour process without having the
rights as enjoyed by the kutis of cultivating and occupational groups.
Therefore, one important aspect that we have taken into account in our
analysis is what actually was the labour form in the period under discussion
and how did it realise.

We find that pāttāli, kutis and Atiyār were groups who formed out of
an agrarian process in which the hierarchy of rights including land rights and
customary relations developed. The terms such as Āl or Atiyār primarily
signified labour as these terms were being related to the productive lands and
the labour activities involved in it. It shows the way in which the people who
possessed skilled labour operationalised in the labour activities to produce a
material product, say, paddy cultivation predominantly in wetlands and multi
crops in the laterite parambas. The skilled and potential labour endowed with
the primary producers was realized in the form of production of various
produces in multiple economies. It also reveals the fact that the skilled labour
of the primary producers was tied to the land for producing the surplus.
Therefore, land as means of production and labour as instruments of
production could not have been detached in the process of production. The
labour form that existed and attached to the cultivable lands could not be
taken away from the lands as the labourers were also tied to the means of
production. It was a condition of labour, in which labour and labouring groups
became one and the same and was attached to the means of production. The
Atiyār or Āl was not only a condition of labour but also the labourers itself.
Thus, the Atiyār or Āl became labour in itself.

466
 Socially mediated human practices created socially necessary labour.
Adiyār labour was a socially necessary labour. Why did it become socially
necessary labour?. It is precisely because their labour created use value. It was
because the value created by the skilled labour of the Adiyār was accumulated
as surplus, which was necessary for the existence of the non-producing class
that the Atiyār were controlled as a servile group. It shows that the Adiyār
were being subjugated not because of their labour was cheap or inferior one
or an inferior ethnic group produced it. Since the primary producers were
developed endowed with the knowhow of agriculture practices and skilled
labour, the Atiyār / Āl /Pulayar could have created use value and produced the
surplus in terms of mono crops like paddy and other mixed crops in both
wetland and parambu areas and they became bonded groups attached to the
lands. This process made them the instruments of production and they did
their skilled labour in the lands they were attached which denied them to
possess the right over the lands. The separation of the primary producers from
the surplus they produced could be materialized by way of not only attaching
them to the lands as instrument of production, instrumentum vocale, but also
keeping them below the subsistence. It is because of this process that the
labouring groups were denoted by the plural terms like Āl /Atiyār, ie, the
men/women at the feet and Pulayar, Parayar etc indicating their collective
existence as labouring groups. This makes the point clear that the labouring
groups like Pulayar were collective entity and it was a generic term259 to
indicate their collective identity as subjugated social and cultural group in the
period under discussion. It makes us postulate that being the primary

259
As far as the general categorization of marginalized and the subordinated groups in
ancient India is concerned Aloka Parasher-Sen has argued that there was always a
conscious effort to refer to these groups by their generic or occupational designations,
Aloka Parasher-Sen,Subordinate and Marginal Groups in Early India, [OUP, Delhi,
2004], Introdiction,p.18

467
producers Atiyār /Āl were subjugated class260 in the multiple economies in
early medieval Kerala and the endogamous collectives like Pulayar and
Parayar were sustained as bonded groups.

Varna and Caste Hierarchy

The wider spectrum of agrarian process that we have analysed in previous

chapters reveals the fact that the formation of agrarian hierarchy occurred due
to the production and distribution of agrarian surplus and its differential
means of appropriation that developed the hierarchical social relations.
Therefore, Perumāls, Nātttutayavars, temples, Brahmans, landholding
households became the overlords one way or the other. The landholding
groups who held intermediary tenures as Itaiyītar, temple functionaries who
held the virutti or jīvitham holdings , the retinue / functionaries of the
Nāttutayavars such as Vāzhkai, Pani, Nātu , Nūttuvar, Nizhall and Prakriti
and the members of the extended households of the Nāttutayavar developed
as powerful landholding groups. These social groups and functionaries
developed as part of the consolidation of the the polity of the Nāttutayavar
and the Chēra Perumāls and the ritual and ideological dominance of temples
and Brahmans. They were the non-producing groups who functioned as the
mediators and delegators of the political power of the Nāttutayavar and the
Perumāl and the ideological and ritual dominance of the temples.

We find the formation of the subordinated groups mainly from the

kutis and Atiyār/Ās. The cultivating kutis, the kutis of the occupational groups
and the primary producers called Atiyār / Āl were subordinated. It paved the
way for the development of agrarian hierarchy. Production process and the
formation of jātis represent the manner in which the kutis of the cultivating
260
G E M .de Ste Croix has described the way in which the surplus was extracted from the
primary producers in ancient societies , especially in the ancient Greek society, see his
article ‘Slavery and Other Forms of Unfree Labour’ in [Ed] Leonie J. Archer ,Slavery
and Other Forms of Unfree Labour ,[Routledge,London,1988],pp19-32.

468
and the occupational groups as well as the primary producers were subjugated
to the domination of the non producing groups in the agrarian hierarchy.

The process that consolidated the stratified agrarian social order also
developed an agrarian hierarchy in which those who were already evolved as
prominent under the polity of the Nāttutayavar, Chēra Perumāl, and
institutional structure of the temples and the households of the ruling lineages
come to be constituted as the dominant social groups. The cultivating kutis
and occupational groups like metalworkers, craft groups and primary
producing groups developed as producing class came to be constituted as
endogamous groups with hereditary occupation within this hierarchy. This
process of hierarchisation incorporated large number of functionaries, service
groups, cultivating and occupational groups belonged to both producing and
non-producing groups in the multiple economies within vertical and
horizontal relations. Vertical configuration of the dominant social groups
consisted of various Brahman groups, Nāttutayavars and members of the
various households of the ruling lineages of the nāttutayavars, the
functionaries of the political structure of Perumāl and nāttutayavar and the
temple functionaries which later evolved as endogamous jāti groups. The
duties, functions and services of each groups among the dominant social
groups were transformed into particular occupations and services both
hereditarily and locally by specific jātis positioned within the hierarchy.

The Brahmans, the members of the households of the Nāttutayavar, the

households developed from the groups like Pani261 , Vāzhkai,Nātu,Prakriti,
Nizhal262 , Adhikāris etc, temple functionaries and groups of militia called
nūttuvar were part of this social groups who came to be constituted vertically

261
Certain paniyutayanayan mentioned in a Tirunelli Plate,M G S,A-36,L.7.
262
Certain nizhalum paniyunnātum itavakaiyum pirakiritiyum mentioned in a Tirunelli
Plate, M G S,A-36,Ls.8-9.

469
in the hierarchy. Documents mention certain Paniyutayanayan263, puraināttu
Mēnāyan264 and kōmakkātu Nāyar265etc who must have developed from such
groups. It indicates that dominant social groups must have developed from
these functionaries. Epigraphical documents refer to groups who developed as
temple functionaries like kīzhchānti266, mērchānti267, purattatikkumavar268,
thēvitichi269 etc. Large numbers of functionaries also developed in the
temples.270 Temple as an institutional structure began to control the economy
and society. The sabha or parisat of the temple were the Brahmana
landholders who were the custodians of the temple wealth who were
proficient in agamic and Vedic scholarship. They gradually emerged as
separate endogamous group called tantrikal and secluded themselves from the
rest of the Brahmanas. Those Brahmanas who received the lands as the
reward of their services in the temple in the form of virutti and jīvitham came
to be known as pattakal [bhatarar] chāttirar and sānti. The internal division
developed among the Brahmans because of the services they performed in the
temple and their entitlement to the landed wealth. It made adhya and asya
groups among the Brahmanas.271 Those who did managerial and executive
functions in the temples as members of the temple committee called vāriyam
and they were rewarded by virutti and they came to be constituted as Potuvāl
and Vāriyar. Other functionaries of the temple such as drummers, dancers,

263
Tirunelli Plate,M G S,A-36,L.7.
264
Ibid.,L.24.
265
Tivalla Plates, M G S,A-80. L.162.
266
Kilimanur plate, L.22.
267
Kilimanur plates, Ls.21-22.
268
Tiruvalla Plates, L.430.
269
Tiruvalla Plate, L.436 and Kilimanur plate.
270
Rajan Gurukkal, Kerala Temple and Early Medieval Agrarian System,[Vllathol
Vidyapeetham, Sukapuram,1992],pp.50-52. K K Pillai, The Sucindaram Temple, [The
Kalakshetra Publication, Adyar, Madras,1953],pp.241-297.
271
Ibid.

470
musicians were rewarded by virutti lands and they too evolved as separate
jātis.

The foremost among the non- Brahmana order was the kārālar. Most
of the temple lands, lands in the Brahman ūrs and the virutti holdings were
leased to them. The cultivating kutis and the artisanal groups who were
already constituted as endogamous groups in both parambu and wetland areas
with hereditary occupation began to function as particular jatis with specific
cultural features. The Atiyār as bonded groups began to develop as separate
endogamous groups. These occupational and cultivating groups were
horizontally deployed in the evolving hierarchy as untouchables and
outcastes.

The socio- economic relations that evolved in the early medieval

period shows that castes had evolved as a material relation embedded in
production relations in which the historical contingency of the social relation
of power and the subjugation of the primary producers was materialized.
Kutis and Atiyār/ Āl were the producing groups in the production process.
Similarly, Urālar, Kārālar, Pāttamālar, Itaiyītar, had specific role in the
production process, though they were not engaged in the production
operations. The artisanal groups like Kollan, Thattān, Chāliyar etc were also
functional groups. The groups like sānti, thēvitichchi, nangaiyar, kuttachchi,
uvachchakal were also service groups who were functionally associated to the
temples and they were related to the process of production as they possessed
certain virutti or jīvitham lands. This was also the case of the number of
intermediary groups like Vāzhkai, Kutipatis, Nizhal, Pani, Prakriti,
Adhikārar, Nātu etc who functioned as the delegators and mediators of
political power of the Nāttutayavar and the Perumāl. They had certain role in
the total relations as functional groups. They were not merely functionally
related one another but historical contingency of the social relation of power

471
that evolved due to the total relation of the production of material and
ideological resources and the the redistributive process made them specific
functional groups.

The various groups who positioned as the producing and non

producing groups groups objectively located in the social relations of power
and they were subjectively related as kinship groups. It indicates that the
objective and subjective relations were developed to define the location and
the functionality of each group. As far as the kutis who involved in the
various production operations are concerned they were objective categories
and they were subjectively related to their settlements as a particular kinship
groups. The objective connotation of kuti was that the kutis engaged in the
cultivation operations or any other occupational activities as objective
functional group. The kuti was subjectively located in the particular area as a
settlement groups with particular kinship descent structure practicing
endogamous familial household relations. The term kuti and the term il /illam
make sense of the objective and subjective relation of the kuti indicative of
the kutil.

The avkāsams on male and female line [ānvazhi and penvazhi] were
permanent rights and the rights of thara, kuti, dēsam and nātu were
transferred or passed on through thalamura. Kuti rights were collective rights;
it provided the material basis for the development of endogamous groups to
form as particular jātis sharing common cultural features. It developed
through hereditary cultural structure of rights called kramam, mura and
thalamura. Hereditary occupation and the hereditary rights over the material
possessions, skill and knowhow developed on the basis of the rights of the
kutis who engaged in various labour activities. Kuti maintained a collective
form of material possession that was collectively belonged to the kuti.
Property rights mean the rights over the resources or means of production,

472
and material and cultural resources. The perpetual rights over the resources
could not be alienated.

The rights possessed by various groups belonged to producing and non

producing class were incorporated into and made part of the legal structure
through kachchams. The hierarchy had a material basis and it developed
particular subjective dispositions in various social groups who were
positioned at different levels in the social relations of power. This was based
on gradation of rights over the landed possessions or other resources or skills
related to occupations or profession or services. This developed a subjective
orientation to the objective structure of the hierarchy in which various groups
were positioned according to the gradation of rights. The hierarchy also
developed a hierarchical legal structure through specific legal-juridical
practices with the support of the political authorities and the temples and the
base of which was the dharmasāstra notions of the Brahmans. However, the
hierarchy existed in a chiefdom is structurally different from the hierarchy
that developed in a state system. The various forms of over lordships called
kōima under the political power of the Nāttutayavar and Chēra Perumāl
indicate the difference that existed in the hierarchical formations.

The Brahmanical canonical literature of the post - Perumāl period like

sānkara smriti and a number of shaucha texts represent the anterior
development of jātis, though it was largely an inverted representation of the
Brahmanical perception of the conglomeration of a number of jātis. The
hierarchical order of caste represented in the dominant Brahmanical literature
was the product of the inverted representation of caste as the Brahmans were
in need of an ideological legitimation of the already developed hierarchical
formation of the social order. The hierarchy was structured by incorporating
large number of rights and the occupational and service gradations. A number
of socal groups were incorporated into the agrarian hierarchy on vertical and

473
horizontal ways. The endogamous social groups with particular cultural
dispositions were incorporated either horizontally or vertically in the already
developed hierarchical social order.

Social groups were positioned in various social and cultural locations

in the horizontal and vertical spaces and this was mediated with the
Brahmanic - sanskritic ideology. Brahmans became the reference society for
endogamous caste groups to define themselves with strict notions of purity
and impurity. Structuring of this hierarchical social order was mediated by the
political power of the Nāttutayavar and the Chēra Perumāl who made use of
the dharmasastra concept and the world view provided by the Brahmans.
Brahmanic-Sanskritic ideology functioned as the cultural practice and system
of knowledge for the legitimization of the hierarchy of caste. The economic
activites and the social relations engendered in this hierarchy were cohesively
operationalised by the political power of the Chēra Perumāl and the
Nāttutayavar. This was ideologically legitimized with the Brahmanic-
sanskritic ideology by the Brahmans and the temples.

There developed an oppositional relation between the jātis who

produced the subsistence and surplus and those who came to be appropriated
it on account of the complex process of redistribution. Those social groups
who had access to material and cultural resources were positioned as
dominant groups in the caste hierarchy. They were in alliance with Brahmans
and the Brahmanic-sanskritic culture and they became the Brahmanic upper
castes. Being the primary producers the Āl /Atiyār /Pulayar/ Parayar and
others were attached to the lands and were structured at the bottom of jāti
hierarchy and relegated to the position of untouchables and outcastes.
Cultivating kutis and the occupational and artisanal groups were deployed
above the Atiyār / Āl, though they were producing class they had access to
material possessions and retained the rights over their resources.

474
Opportunities and resources were locally available to many of the cultivating
groups and artisanal communities to accumulate material and cultural
resources. This was, however, completely sealed off to the primary producers
who were bonded groups attached to the means of production.

Jati hierarchy was indispensable part of the material interest and

ideology of a class who controlled the economy and society. The economic
and cultural base of production process and the mechanism of power were
engendered in the material practice of jātis. This materiality of jātis created
the economic and cultural condition that reproduced the institutions of
endogamy and patriarchy. The Brahmanic-sanskritic culture expressed and
transmitted the ideology of jāti and patriarchy. Since the ideology of jāti and
patriarchy found expression in the material practices, the very existence of its
ideology had materiality in its social practice.

Thus, the gradation among the social groups belonging to the

producing and non-producing class that developed vertical and horizontal
social relations. The vertical relations generated hierarchy and social
subordination.272 The horizontal relations made conflicts, fragmentation,
segregations producing graded inequality. This process created particular jātis
among the producing and non-producing groups. The process of containing
and resolving conflicts and tensions in the social order was mediated by the
political power of the Nāttutayavar and the Chēra Perumāl and the ritual and
ideological power of the temples and Brahmans. It was in this process that the
socio-cultural logic of caste that had taken root in the already developed
occupational and service gradation was integrated to the political power
structure of the Nāttutayavar and the Chēra Perumāl and the ritual and
ideological dominance of the temples and Brahmans. The agrarian hierarchy
272
David Ludden, ‘Caste Society and Unit of Production in Early Modern South India’. In
Burton Stein and Sunjay Subramanyam [Eds], Institutions and Economic Change in
South Asia, [OUP, Delhi, 1998], pp.106-110.

475
and fragmentation developed under the polity of the Nāttutayavar and the
Chēra Perumāl simultaneously took hierarchical forms incorporating various
social groups. It produced social and cultural subordination of the kutis of
cultivating and occupational groups and the subjugation of the primary
producers created multiple forms of suppression. The Brahmanic –Sanskritic
ideology worked through diverse forms of mediation, which not only
legitimized hierarchy developed through ritualisation of space but also
enclavisation and socio-cultural segregation.

Varna was an ideological schema of the cultural universe of the

Brahmans which was used to include and to relegate various jātis in the
hierarchy. Brahmans became a point of reference and the significance of
varna was used as an ideological scheme to relegate the people of producing
class out of the varna schema as out castes and untouchables and to make the
kārālar and Brahmanic upper castes into the sūdra varna. Therefore, the
varna and the jāti system developed in relation to class relations exited in the
period under discussion. The social tensions developed between the producing
class and the non-producing groups, i.e., between the Brahmans and
Brahmanic upper castes on the one hand and the cultivating jātis, the artisanal
communities and the primary producers on the other. However, being the
primary producers the Atiyār / Āl groups like Pulayar and Parayar were
oppositional groups in terms of class relations and cultural dispositions to the
class who dominated the economy and society and percolated the Brahmanic-
sanskritic culture and ideology.

Caste: Ideology and Practice

How did brahmas create their own purity –pollution norms and controlled the
socio-cultural spaces of others?. Why did they develop themselves a secluded
group and make their space a sacred one to control the social groups of
producing castes as their ‘other’? .It shows that population density and

476
dispersed settlement pattern, environment, availability and use of water, etc
influenced to evolve the socio-cultural segregation strategies like purity and
pollution and a number of occupational and cultural codes which were
developed in relation to the former. Brahmans were in need of a subject
population as the former were few in number and developed as a secluded
community. It made them insulated and spaces of their location were also
made sacred distancing others as impure or inferior. However, Brahmans
could not have developed as group with an interpersonalrelationship and
culture without evolving a human and cultural geography of their own. It
forced them to engage with already developed social relations into caste
hierarchy with the concepts of purity and pollutions prevalent in the
normative literature of the Brahmanic tradition.273 Specific and particular
interpersonal and intergroup relations developed among the Brahmans and
Brahmanic upper castes and among the lower groups in relation to Brahmans
as a reference group in the society.

Brahmans themselves became a reference group in defining and

ligitimising the hierarchical formation and codes and norms around the
hierarchy. Being a part of the same hierarchical system they could have
transcendalised the material base of the hierarchical formation into an
ideological system as well. It was made in such a way as to seclude
themselves and to see the rest as the ‘other’. This self seclusion was mediated
in terms of a number of codes and concepts related to purity and pollution
assigned to varna and jātis as mentioned in major Brahmanical canonical
literature. This was materialized by maintaining the producing groups like

273
It is relatively late, in between third and sixth centuries C E, that the exact litaral
equivalent for ‘untouchable’ in Sanskrit [‘aspsrya’] occurs, Aloka Parasher –Sen [Ed],
Introdiction in Subordinate and Marginal Groups in Early India,op .cit.,p.66 ,foot
note,No.6. Bhairabi Prasad Sahu, 'Brahmanical Conception of Origin of Jātis: A Study
of Manusmriti’ in B D Chattopadadhyaya [ed],A Social History of Early India,[History
of Science , Philosophy and Cultue in Indian Civilisation,Vol.2,Part.5],[PHISPC,New
Delhi,2009],pp.43-52.

477
kutis and Atiyār groups as impure and inferior bodies. It indicates that
Brahmanic ideology was developed in accordanc to the strategies of
appropriation of the surplus produce created by the producing castes.
Untouchability and codes related to occupation, dress and meanings attached
to the body were used to create an attributed space for Brahmins and
Brahmanic upper castes and thereby seclude themselves from the producing
castes and to exclude the producing castes as the ‘other’ socially,
economically and culturally. This ‘other’ was represented as the impure and
inferior one and was denied occupation of the attributed sacred space of the
Brahmans and Brahmanic upper castes.

The notion of impure was crucial to the ideology of caste system. Caste
relations developed and structured in accordance with the nadappu and
maryada [local customs and practices]. The Brahmanical ideology played a
dominant role in structuring and maintaining these practices. Local customary
practices were incorporated to the Brahmanical varna and juridical systems.
The concepts of sudhi and asudhi / purity and impurity were developed and
deployed by the Brahmans to maintain their lived spaces called the mana and
illam as sacred spaces. Ritual and religious spaces like the sacred temples
were made insulated entities and were protected from the interference of the
producing groups. Varna- jāti norms and the ritual and religious dominance
of the Brahmans were transformed into cultural practice which was
ligitimised by the political authority legally and juridical. This Brahmanical
ideology was developed as a material practice to transcend the materiality of
jati in an inverted form. This Brahmanical ideology became the knowledge of
the ruling class and was used as system of dominance.

Jāti had subjective and objective dimensions, the land relations and
occupational positions determined the objective structures of jatis. The
cultural economy that came in to being under the polity of the nāttutayavar

478
legitimized the various form of avakāsams that existed as customary relations.
The households developed to wield political and social power. Structure of
maryada or local customary practices developed around the power centers
which functioned to operationalise caste and gender relations in the local
societies. The Nāttutayavar and their functionaries upheld and protected these
maryādas.The dispositions developed within each caste group due to the
cultural and ideological functioning of caste forced the members of particular
caste to accept the subjective orientations to the objective structure of caste
hierarchy. The endogamy practiced within particular caste, the concepts
developed in connection with distancing practices of one caste from the other
caste groups, the behaviour pattern developed within the caste structure in
terms of the avakāsams or rights, privileges and the power over various forms
of resources developed particular caste dispositions among the members of
the caste groups .

The material structure and the structure of relations developed out of

the hierarchy of land relations and occupational gradations engendered
particular understanding of the hierarchy in the mental structure of individuals
and groups who were positioned at the different locations in the caste
hierarchy as well. This was developed as dispositions and world views. The
material structure of caste hierarchy and its subjective dispositions produced
certain mental structure in the members of different caste groups homologous
to the hierarchical structure of the social order. The consciousness of one’s
own caste and of others was produced in relation to the mental structure and
the hierarchy of the social order. The process and pattern of working
mechanism of caste as revealed in the oral texts also show the multiple
processes involved in the formation of caste groups, labour process and
kinship and descent relations of the social groups. This also makes sense of
the servile and non-servile segment in the society and the complex inter-
linkages that developed in multiple economies related to labour relations and

479
the exchange process. Tribal groups were incorporated in a larger process of
transition of tribal groups into agrarian production. Therefore, varna was to
be extended to incorporate many groups and to provide the institutional and
ideological base for the growth of a wider society hierarchically.

Why did there develop the pollution on the basis of touching?. There
developed the pollution concept regarding the touching menestrous women.
Certain form of pollution was attributed on the people who worked in mud.
Those who worked on the soil were treated as polluted groups. Pulaya women
were treated as polluted as she had been worked in mud. It shows that the
touching on human body both male and female was considered as something
which was believed to have created certain form of pollution. It developed in
relation to certain objective content274 in a complex process which made
certain people as polluted group and those who were treated as polluted were
controlled for some other purpose as well.275

The objective content was related to the sexuality and the sexuality of
women was controlled. The control of sexuality meant for creating certain
restrictions on the body of women for the purpose not to make sexual
relations with the members of other clans or groups. There developed certain
notions on the body of the members of opposite group /clan who were
believed to be the ‘other’ of one’s own group/ clan. This developed due to the
fact that procreation with the members of the other clan or group led to the
breaking of the endogamous practice. The pollution concepts must have been
developed to prevent the exogamous relation by which body especially the
female body became an object of control leading to the practice of body

274
The effects of social distance also depend on the function that the social relationship
aims to achieve, Pierre Bourdieu , The Logic of Practice, [Polity
Press,[1990]1992],p.168.
275
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo
[1966], [ARK, Paperbacks, New York], pp.2-5.

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related pollution. Body began to be defined in terms of pollution and this
became a powerful tool to prevent the clan endogamy in early period and
caste endogamy in later periods as well.

The practice of body related regulation of human movements was

started when the kalavu form gender and mating relation began to be
disappeared and karpu form of union of sexual relation was institutionalized
in the form of marriage based on conjugal fidelity as represented in the
classical Tamil texts. This was a kind of regulations developed within clan
groups for the selection of the mating partners. This was used to maintain
endogamy, gendering and controlling sexuality of women. When the karpu
developed there also appeared the concept called thīndal or notions on human
body controlling the sexual relation of women with the members of other clan
or groups. This was meant for the continuation of the endogamous
households and marriage for the sustenance of the endogamous clan group.
There also developed certain notions with regard to the labour and those
bodies which engaged in labour activities were equated with defiling
substance. There also developed the simultaneous practice of endogamy and
the observance of thīndal, the bodily defilement on touch. Jāti began to be
attached to body and it was used to the biological reproduction of particular
endogamous jāti with a view to restrict the procreation with a particular
endogamous jāti group.276 There began to treat the labouring bodies as
defiled bodies which had to be controlled and distanced not only from the
bodies that assumed ascribed status as pure and from the resources which
were created by the labouring bodies. There also evolved certain devises to
reproduce the labouring bodies and the touch on such bodies was also
considered as a defiled act. The labouring and defiled bodies became the
untouchable bodies. The Brahmanical canonical literature and the
276
Partha Chatterjee, ‘Caste and Subaltern Consciousness’ in Ranajith Guha [ed] Subaltern
Studies, Vol.6, [OUP, Delhi,[1989]1994],p.203.

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dharmasāstra injunctions treated these bodies as impure ‘other’ to be
condemned and despised.

The concept of pēdi or fear is another important aspect which was also
developed with regard to breaking of endogamous marriage or sexual union
leading to the breach of caste endogamy. It developed as the social fear in the
morale of each group and certain mechanism was developed to control such
breaking of endogamous relations. When the Brahmans became the legal and
ritual authority of interpreting the dharmasastras, the society and social
relations began to be regulated on ascribed status and certain distancing
devices based on purity- pollution were incorporated to the varna. The
dharma notions and the purity-pollution concepts became part of the
hierarchy of castes in which endogamous castes were attributed ascribed and
defiled status in relational positions. This was also used to control the sexual
union among the members of endogamous jātis. Therefore, the practice of
thīndal or pollution on touch and the concept of fear on the breaking of the
endogamous relations and marriage rules show the complexity of the
sustenance of endogamous jāti groups and the reproduction of individual
castes.

Class is found to have developed as a relation277 maintained by various

social groups in the multiple economies and the social groups of particular
jātis were positioned at different locations in the hierarchy of castes indicating
the same hierarchy engendered class relations as well. Therefore, Class
relations functioned as mediated relations and it was mediated through a
number of extra economic forms. Class was mediated through a number of
occupational and customary relations and land relations were objectified in

277
G E M .de Ste Croix, Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, [Duck Worth, London
[1981]1983], p.32. E P Thompson, the Making of English Working Class, [Penguin
Books, [1963]1986], Preface, pp.8-9.

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the jāti relations existed in the hierarchy of caste as jātis had taken root in the
already developed agrarian hierarchy in which land relations were important.
The ideology and practice of caste endogamy and patriarchy also engendered
class relations as these power structures had taken root in a society where
class relations were immanently developed. It not only shows that caste
relations and class relations were part of the same hierarchy in which gender
relations and patriarchy engendered both caste and class relations but also
that the caste was to be legitimized through the mediation of the class
relations.

Historical Trajectory of the Primary Producers

The historical trajectory of the Atiyār /Āl groups is important for us to

problematise the historical experiences of the primary producers. One of the
much-discussed terms in the context of the formation of the category Adiyār
is the term Pulaya. Travel narratives and colonial anthropology / ethnology
attributed certain meaning to the term Pulaya. The origin of the term Pulaya is
commonly attributed to either pulam [wet land] or pula [pollution] and these
have certain meanings and significance as well. We have epigraphic
references to the terms pulam and pulaikāval as to give the sense that these
groups were engaged as laboring groups in agriculture and in the protection of
such lands as primary producers. Therefore, the term Pulaya must have
developed from the labour activities involved in the cultivation and the
protection of cultivated lands.

Protection of agriculture lands were necessary and agricultural fields

and its produce might have been either stolen or destroyed by predators or
wild animals. We have references to a group called kāvalar in classical Tamil
texts and pulaikāval in epigraphical records of the early medieval period. It is
in this context we can think of a group who had been given charge of
protecting the pulam, cultivated land or its produce, the labour activity and the
people engaged in it collectively came to be known as pulaikāval. Here kāval

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is linked with the practice and the concept of pēdi. The cultivation in the land
and the protection of these fields were associated with fear and insecurity. Yet
another term is pollution / pula. Pulayar can also be associated with pollution,
as a polluted group. It is difficult to say exactly how and when did the
category Pulaya had become a polluted group, but it can be seen that pollution
must have been imposed and attributed upon them in the course of a complex
process of making people Atiyār or Āl by which they were being subjugated
as a servile population.

It is important to note that the migrant settlers who reclaimed and

cultivated the lands in the river valleys and wetland plains were the people
who came from the chirukutis in the mullai – kurinchi region. The non-
agricultural labourers, punam cultivators and primordial settlers were brought
from the hilly areas and from midlands were settled for wetland cultivation.
These migrants were treated as polluted groups as they were being brought
detaching from their original clan ties and kinship relations. The conception is
that migrant body is polluted as much as labouring body is polluted. The
dispossessed and displaced people were believed to be polluted groups
moving with polluted body as they were being employed in the cultivation
operations as servile groups. The people who either migrated or were brought
and settled as displaced group had the historical experiences of a polluted and
low born and the descendants of these groups must have been the Pulayar and
Cherumar groups. The former are the descendants of the people who treated
as izhichinan and cultivated in the wetland as the servile groups and the later
are the people who developed from the chirukutimākkals who were brought
from the chirukuti settlements in the hilly areas.

The subjugation of these groups occurred through a process by which

the producing groups became the ‘other’ of the non-producing groups who
were largely mediated by the Brahmanic - sanskritic ideology. Brahmans and
brahmanical upper castes developed the concept of purity and pollution as an
ideological weapon to subjugate the primary producers. The tribal concept of

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purity which developed in relation to clan endogamy was also used to detach
a subject population from the fruits of their labour. This must have developed
as part of the process of alienation of the primary producers from the surplus
they generated with their labour and they were subjugated by keeping them
below the subsistence level. They were subjugated to the hierarchy developed
on occupational gradation and gradation of land rights and the notion of purity
and pollution were used as powerful mechanism to ensure the institutional
control over the primary producers as polluted groups. When they became
endogamous jāti groups and were placed at the bottom of the jati hierarchy,
purity and pollution became part of the ideology of caste.

The primary producers resisted their everyday subordination through

cultural ways, by way of symbolic and ritual acts. The material aspects of
culture rested on the social world in which caste subordination and oppression
determined the everyday life. The complex social world of the primary
producers was indispensably connected to their material life activities under
the dominant power structures. It is also related to the subjective dimension
of their life. Both these factors influenced in shaping the consciousness and
the worldview of this group. Their culture and world view were organically
linked and was inseparably connected with the process of social labour and
material life activity.

The meanings produced in the world of hierarchical relations and

oppression was created at different levels. The meaning they created of the
social world could not be sealed off from their material life activity and every
day suffering. It produced a negative and oppositional consciousness in
relation to the existing multiple power structure, i.e., Nāttutayavar, Perumāl,
temples, Brahmans, functionaries of the temples and the Nāttutayavar and a
number of local power centers. The social conflicts developed not only
between the primary producers and the cultivating kutis and the artisanal and
other occupational groups but also between the primary producers and the
Brahmans and Brahmanic upper castes which were embedded in ritual

485
inversions. A number of ritual acts and cultural artifacts produced by the
primary producing groups like performances of oracles and thullals both
parayan and seethankan, the theyyam, oral songs of various genres and a
number of ritual acts do reflect upon the social imaginaries of these groups
and most of them have had the cultural roots in egalitarian tradition. There
was no singular mode of dissent and resistance in the cultural tradition of the
primary producing groups, symbolic and cultural ways were adopted to mark
their dissents and protests.

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