¹ Washbrook, D. A., ‘Law, State and Society in Colonial India,’ Modern Asian Studies 15:3 (07 1981), pp. 678–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² Edward, Said, in his Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), p. 86, says, among other things, that this ‘discovery’ involved a decision ‘to restore a region from its present barbarism to its former classical greatness;… to feel oneself as a European in command, almost at will, of Oriental history, time and geography;…to transmute living reality into the stuff of texts, to possess (or think one possesses) actuality mainly because nothing in the Orient seems to resist one's powers.Google Scholar

³ I Should like to thank Gyan Prakash for reading and commenting on an earlier version of this article.Google Scholar

⁴ See Bakhtin, M. M., Rabelais in his world (Cambridge, Mass.; The M.I.T. Press, 1965), trans. by Helene Iswolski.Google ScholarIn speaking about the language of the marketplace he says, ‘The words are actually a cry, that is, a loud interjection in the midst of a crowd, coming out of the crowd and addressed to it. The man who is speaking is one with the crowd; he does not present himself as its opponent, nor does he teach, accuse, or intimidate it. He laughs with it’ P. 167. There are many other points where the question about the authorship of culture is placed in this interactive mode.Google Scholar The term ‘dialogic’ is from another work by Bakhtin, , The Dialogic Imagination, trans. by Caryl, Emerson and Michael, Holquist, and ed. by Michael, Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981).Google Scholar

⁵ Lionel Place, Report on the Jagir, 1799, para. 164, Board of Revenue (BOR), Misc., v. 45, Tamil Nad State Archives (TNSA). Hereafter this document will be referred to as Place 1799 Report.Google Scholar

⁶ The land area of the Jagir as it existed in 1763 was 2,284 sq. miles. ‘British Acquisitions in the Presidency of Fort George, St.’, Madras Journal of Literature and Science, 1879, p. 121.Google Scholar

⁷ Place 1799 Report, para. 95.Google Scholar

⁸ Crole, C. S., The Chingleput, late Madras, District (Madras: Lawrence Asylum Press, 1879), p. 32.Google Scholar

⁹ ‘Tondaiman cakkiravartti carittiram’ [The history of Tondaiman Cakkiravartti], Mackenzie MSS R 8350, Madras Oriental Manuscripts Library (hereafter MOML); ‘Nerumpur kurumpar kottai kaipitu’ [Narrative account of the Kurumbar fort at Nerumbur], Mackenzie MSS R 7754, MOML; ‘Kurumpar carittiram’ [History of the Kurumbar], Mackenzie MSS, R 8189, MOML, and translated into English in the early nineteenth century in another version in Mackenzie MSS. Class 11, #21, India Office Library (hereafter IOL).

¹⁰ Ellis's and others’ work on these oral histories concerning the Kurumbar was reflected in the definitions provided to Wilson, H. H. when he was compiling his A Glossary of Judicial and Revenue Terms and of Useful Words Occurring in Official Documents etc. (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1968, published originally in 1855).Google ScholarUnder the entry ‘Tondaimandalam’ there is the comment: ‘Mr. Ellis supposes it to have derived its appellation from Tondaiman, a prince so named, who conquered the country probably before the era of Christianity, and granted peculiar privileges to the first settlers.’ p. 524.Google Scholar

¹¹ Appendix [to the] replies respecting meerasi right by Ellis, F. W., 1816, Board of Revenue (Misc), v. 233, TNSA. This document will be referred to as Ellis Appendix. The discussion which follows is based on it. Ellis came out to India as a writer in 1796. He knew how to read Tamil, Telugu, Sanskrit, and probably Persian.Google Scholar

¹² The dating of this interaction by Ellis was probably the result of, among other things, the existence of a ‘history’ which related the Kurumbar to the coming of St Thomas to Mylapore, traditionally considered to have been the spot where Thomas arrived in India. See the Mackenzie Mss. R 8141, ‘Mayilapur kantapparacan caritam’ [The history of Kandapparajan of Mylapur], MOML. The manuscript is noted as having been translated from Latin by a certain Nanapirakasa Pillai. The manuscript speaks about Thomas being appointed to go to supervise the propagation of Christianity in the area where the Kurumbar king, Kanatappa Raja, was ruling. The story seeks to show the way in which Thomas was able to defeat local Brahmans by the use of miracles and convert many people to Christianity.

¹³ In Tamil the two kinds of payirkkaris or tenants were called the ulkkudi who had lived in a village for a considerable time, who could not be dispossessed, had the right of hereditary succession but who did not have the right to mortgage or sell the land so long as he paid the stipulated rent to the mirasidar. The second type of payirkkari or tenant was called the parakkudi who was a migratory or non-resident tenant, who had no proprietary rights. He could simply cultivate lands in the village for a stipulated term at pleasure. Wilson, A Glossary of Judicial and Revenue Terms, pp. 401 and 531.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Place 1799 Report, para. 59. ‘Mudali’, is the shortened form of ‘Mudaliyar’ the surname of all Tondaimandala Vellalas.

¹⁵ Ibid., paras. 62–3, 65.

¹⁶ BOR minute, 25 January 1796, v. 149, Board of Revenue Proceedings (hereafter BORP), TNSA.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Kolff, D. H. A., ‘Sannyasi Trader-Soldiers’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 8:2 (06 1971), pp. 211–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Bayly, C. A., Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 142–3.Google Scholar

¹⁸ See the account of the coming of the Maratha Bargirs into Bengal as described by Ganga, Ram in The Maharashta Purana: An Eighteenth-Century Bengali Historical Text, translated and edited by Edward, Dimock and Gupta, P. C. (Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1965), pp. 26–8.Google Scholar

¹⁹ For an account of flight during the Bengal famine of 1769–70 see Hunter, W. W., The Annals of Rural Bengal (Calcutta: Indian Studies, 1965), p. 25.Google Scholar

²⁰ See the remarks of David Ludden in his unpublished paper ‘Agricultural Expansion, Diversification, and Commodity Production in Peninsular India, c. ‘1550–1800’, presented at the Association of Asian Studies meeting, San, Francisco, March 25, 1988.Google Scholar

²¹ Tenants or payirkkudis in the Baramahal area of Tamilnadu moved around in the period right before the monsoon ‘especially during the months of March and April, the period at which the ryots from motives of caprice, superstition, or other causes migrate from one village to another, and that at which they received their cowle [agreement] for the year from the renters’, Quoted in Brian, Murton, ‘Key People in the Countryside: Decisionmakers in Interior Tamilnadu in the Late Eighteenth Century’, Indian Economic and Social History Review X:2 (06 1973), p. 177.Google Scholar

²² Pres. and Council to Committee of Assigned Revenue, 26 July 1783, Abstract of the Jaghire Revenues by… time of Nabob Sadootoolala Cawn, Jaghire Records, v.2, TNSA; Jaghire Committee to Govt., 3 January 1784, ‘Account of Collections of the Revenues of the Hon'ble Company's Jaghir for 9 years from Fasli 1181 to 1189, that is from 1771 to 1790 [sic. 1780], Chingleput Collectorate Records, v. 440, 1784–1786.Google Scholar

²³ Though the British in the Madras area abandoned the use of tax farmers or ‘renters’ in 1792 after the war with Tipu Sultan, in their dependence on tax farmers to revive the productive power of the Jagir they were, in many ways, following the example of the Marathas and other Indian powers which often used tax farmers to ‘restore areas which had fallen behind their normal productivity, yet were not totally ruined.’Google Scholar See André, Wink, Land and Soureignty in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 354–5.Google Scholar

²⁴ For example, the income from the Jagir (in Pagodas) between 1786–1787 (fasli 1196) and 1792–93 (fasli 1202) was as follows: Income from the Jagir 1786–93) Fasli 1196 (1786–87) 115,180 Fasli 1197 (1787–88) 176,534 Fasli 1198 (1788–89) 111,803 Fasli 1199 (1789–90) 62,617 Fasli 1200 (1790–91) 53,941 Fasli 1201 (1791–92) 141,182 Fasli 1202 (1792–93) 193,107 Average for 9 years 186,332 Source: Minute by White, C. N., Member of the Board of Revenue, 23 December 1793, BORP, TNSA. A Fasli was the revenue year which started on July 11.Google Scholar

²⁵ Eugene, F. Irschick, ‘Peasant Survival Strategies and Rehearsals for Rebellion in Eighteenth Century South India’, Peasant Studies 19, 4 (Summer 1982), pp. 226–7.Google Scholar

²⁶ See fn. 24 above.

²⁷ Place to Governor, 11 June 1799, Bds Collections (BC) 2111. IOL.Google Scholar

²⁸ BOR Minute 5 June 1800, BC 2112, IOL.Google Scholar

²⁹ Ibid., and Hodgson to BOR 29 May 1800, BC 2112, IOL. This income helped the Board of Revenue to convince themselves that the Collector ‘has successfully secured to the state their just demands without encroaching upon the rights of the Inhabitants’.

³⁰ Greenway to BOR, 20 May 1801, BC 2113, IOL.Google Scholar

³¹ During the war of 1780, despite the dependence of the Nawab of Arcot on the British for all the assistance they had provided him, they could not get the Nawab to grant them enough money to run their army. In December 1781, however, the Nawab temporarily made over what came to be known as the Assigned Territories to the British East India Company to provide monies to defend the Carnatic against Hyder Ali. One-sixth of these tax revenues were to be returned to the Nabob for his own use. However, it was only in 1782 that the Nawab was actually willing to allow the British to collect the tax revenues. Between 1782 and 1784 the British were able to collect 73 percent more than the Nawab appears to have received even in the three years before the war. Committee of Assigned Revenue to Governor in Council, 31 January 1785, Board of Assigned Revenues, v. 8, TNSA.Google Scholar

³² Wilson, W. J., History of the Madras Army (Madras: E. Keys at the Government Press, 1882), 11: 101.Google Scholar

³³ Ibid., pp. 141–2.

³⁴ Ibid., p. 135.

³⁵ Alexander Read to Board of Revenue, 31 March 1793, v. 9, BORP, TNSA.Google Scholar

³⁶ Board of Revenue to Govt. of Madras 13 April 1793, v. 70, BORP, TNSA.Google Scholar

³⁷ Minute of White, C. N., 21 October 1793, v. 81, BORP, TNSA.Google Scholar

³⁸ Gleig, G. R., The Life of Major General Sir Thomas Munro, Bart (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bently: 1831), I: 161–2;Google ScholarMinute by Lionel Place on his resignation from the Special Commission 7 October 1802, BC F/4/150, IOL, complaining about the appointments of Thomas Munro, Alexander Read, and John Ravenshaw; and letter from Benjamin, Roebuck to Paul Benfield, 3 March 1795, Private Letter-books v. 41, TNSA.Google Scholar

³⁹ According to an account presented in Love's Vestiges of Old Madras, the British in 1779 expected to get about Pagodas 2,969,109 from all sources. Of that amount the Nabob was responsible for Pagodas 700,000, the Raja Tanjore for Pagodas 400,000 while the taxes from the Circars (which came into the hands of the British in 1767) provided Pagodas 776,800. The combined revenues of the Jagir and Poonamallee (both rented out to the Nawab of Arcot himself) was Pagodas 368,350. However, none of this was a product of a European officer dealing directly with the Company revenue servants.Google ScholarLove, H. D., Vestiges of Old Madras (London, 1913), III: 142.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ BOR Misc., Minute of the Board of Revenue, 5 January 1818, p. 24, v. 257A, TNSA.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Ibid., p. 30.

⁴² See Irschick, ‘Peasant Survival Strategies,’ pp. 215–41.Google Scholar

⁴³ Minute of the Board of Revenue, 5 January 1818, v. 257A, BOR Misc., TNSA.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ A mirasidar, for example, received a number of payments in kind which were deductions from the harvest even before the government tax or the mirasidar's own share was taken. These payments were called the kuppattam merai, the kaniyatcimerai, and the kalavasam merai (for the support of the untouchable laborers). The payirkkudi paid all these to the mirasidar, but got no part of the produce of the various kinds of waste land called the purambokku or the tarisu, or another right of the mirasidar called the mirasi maniyam. These payments were those received by the mirasidar. There were other payments which the mirasidar paid to the state, such as that for the renovation of the tanks. Ibid.

⁴⁵ According to the figures in Crole, the revenue of the district (in Rupees [1 Pagoda = 3.5 rupees ]) was as follows: Revenue of the Chingleput District 1776–77 1,105,050 1786–87 1,178,926 1796–97 1,825,187 Place's Collectorship 1806–07 710,870 1816–17 1,452,636 1826–27 1,324,909 1836–37 1,482,917 1846–47 1,419,634 1856–57 1,582,753 1866–67 5,251,884 Includes the quit rent and Abkary or tax on drink from Madras city 1877–78 3,701,853 Madras city revenues not included but salt tax revenues are included.

⁴⁶ See the case of the 16th century Italian miller named Menochio who resisted the meanings and endings of stories about the church and other matters about which he had strong feelings concerning hierarchy and other matters. For Menochio ‘the account of the miracle [ in the Legendario delle vite de tutti li santi by Jacopo da Voragine] was unimportant, and the reaffirmation of Mary's virginity, which he repeatedly rejected, even less so. He singles out only an action by the priest, the “dishonor” to Mary during her burial, evidence of her miserable condition. Through the filter of Menocchio's memory Voragine's story is transformed into its very opposite.’ Carlo, Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), p. 36.Google Scholar Richard Fox has rightly pointed out that Ginzburg's presentation is a variety of ‘moral economy’ Fox characterizes the resistance which Menochio displayed as not growing ‘out of long-standing, popular, peasant, or folk religious traditions, but is always a product of “traditions” that are constantly in the making.’ Richard, Fox, Lions of the Punjab (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 250–1.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Place 1799 Report, para. 49.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Ibid., para. 66.

⁴⁹ Sanskritic cosmology posits four yugas called the Krita, Treta, Dvapara and Kali. Each of these represents ‘a progressive decline in piety, morality, strength, stature, longevity and happiness.’ The age called the Kali Yuga, is the dark age in which the Indians to whom Place talked situated the society of the time. Tamil cosmological ideas, however, describe the existence of several ulis. An uli is also defined as the ‘time of universal deluge and destruction of all things [and the] end of the world.’ An ulikarru is the ‘destructive wind that prevails at the end of the world.’ Tamil Lexicon, I: 502, and Basham, A. L., The Wonder that was India (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1954), pp. 320–1. I would like to express my thanks to George Hart for useful discussions on this matter.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Ramaswami, Naidoo Bundla, Memoir of the Internal Revenue System of the Madras Presidency, Selections from the Records of the South Arcot District, no. 11 (Madras: Superintendent, Government press, 1908), p. 5.Google ScholarThe Preface is dated January 1, 1820. The document is filled with many such observations.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Place 1799 Report, para. 53.Google Scholar

⁵² Ibid., para. 280. When Place resigned from the Board of Revenue three years later because he felt that the Collectors such as Alexander Read and Thomas Munro, both military appointments, were getting treatment which the civilian appointments in the revenue line were not, he also reported a ‘crisis’ which he had to overcome. Part of his feelings of irritation concerned the fact that the Special Commission, which was competing with the Board of Revenue in setting the terms of what came to be called the Permanent Settlement left the mirasidars of the Jagir unprotected. Place's minute 7 October 1802, BC v. 150. IOL.

⁵³ Minute of White, C. N., 28 March 1793, BORP, v. 27, TNSA.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Minute of White, C. N., 15 March 1793, BORP, v. 27, TNSA.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Minute of White, C. N., 23 December 1793, BORP, v. 88, TNSA.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Place 1799 Report, para. 25.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ See the remarks of Crole, C. S., author of the Chingleput Manual. ‘The presidency town closeby is at the bottom of the backwards nature of the district which is called the “most backward in the whole Presidency.” The chief land owners, some holding government appointments, live in Madras, either wholly, or in great part, and the district is thus deprived of a capital of its own. Living there is costly, and expensive tastes are formed, for the gratification of which the farm or estate is rack rented, and the expenditure for its improvement, or even for its maintenance infertility, curtailed. Little interest in good farming is shown by the rich and well to do, and the cultivation…is not advancing because it is left in the hands of the ignorant’. Later Crole says: ‘the effect of [neglect] is disastrous for the land is generally too inferior to stand bad farming without resenting the neglect’. Crole's remarks against the carrying off of what were called by the British ‘brattis’ (Tamil: virattikal) —dried cakes of cow dung used for fuel—is on p. 66.Google ScholarCrole, C. S., The Chingleput, late Madras, District (Madras: Lawrence Asylum Press, 1879).Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Hastings to Lord, Mansfield, 25 August 1774Google Scholar, Gleig, G. R., Life of Warren Hastings, I: 401Google Scholar, quoted in Eric, Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), p. 3.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Peter, Marshall, The British Discovery of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 42.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ George, M. Foster, ‘Colonial Administration in Northern Rhodesia in 1962,’ Human Organization 46:4 (Winter 1987), p. 367. The emphasis is in the original. I am very grateful to Elizabeth Colson for bringing this article to my attention.Google Scholar

⁶¹ See the account of Mattison, Mines, The Merchant-Warriors: Textiles, Trade and Territory in South India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 70.Google Scholar

⁶² See the account of the dispute over mirasi rights and the right to build in the village between the Reddis and Agamudaiyars in Viravorum, near Manimangalam, about 16 miles southwest of Madras city, in 1785. Eugene, Irschick, ‘Peasant Survival Strategies,’ pp. 218–19. There are many other instances in the 1780s.Google Scholar

⁶³ Ibid., pp. 237–8.

⁶⁴ For relations between mirasidars and agrarian servants in Uttiramerur to the southwest of Madras city, see Place to BOR, 28 January 1796, Board's Collections # 840, IOL; also for Uttiramerur, Place wrote that the agricultural servants of the mirasidars there ‘had been defrauded by their masters of the hire which was due to them, while working on the tank; and from the injustice thus done to them, many had deserted and others could not be prevailed upon to engage with them, on an adjustment of the previous year's produce, every species of peculation also appeared to have been committed.’ Place to BOR 28 June 1796, BC, v. 36, IOL. In Karankuli, to the south of Madras city, Place said that the ‘inhabitants [mirasidars] had allowed their servants to go away after the expiration of Fasli 1204 [1794–95] and neither entered into new engagements with them, nor procured substitutes till after the tanks had filled.’Google Scholar

Ibid.

⁶⁵ In the Jagir, the site of the village itself and that of the village temple was called the nattam. The mirasidars believed that they could build their houses only in the nattam and nowhere else. Minute of the Board of Revenue, 5 Jan 1818, v. 257A, BOR Misc., TNSA.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Place 1799 Report, quoted in the Fifth Report, II: 43.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Place to BOR, 26 November 1795, BORP v. 140, TNSA.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Place 1799 Report, paras 69–99, 189–203, 212–15, and 342–51. It is not without interest that it is exactly these sections of Place's 1799 Report that the Fifth Report quotes on pp. 298–317.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Ellis, F. W., ‘Appendix [to the] replies to the questions respecting meerasi right,’ BOR, Misc. v. 233, TNSA.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Minute of the Board of Revenue, 5 January 1818, v. 257A, BOR Misc., TNSA.Google Scholar

⁷¹ These are Munro's remarks of 31 December 1824 printed in the Appendix to the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons on the Affairs of the East Indian Company of 1832.Google Scholar

⁷² Despatch of the BOR 28 July 1841Google Scholar, quoted in Bayley, W. H., Memorandum on Mirasi Right (London, 1856), p. 12 and BOR Order 1 MarchGoogle Scholar, 1849 quoted in ibid.

⁷³ Bayley, , Memorandum, p. 13.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Ibid., p. 17.

⁷⁵ For example, in the 1880s the irrigable lands which were uncultivated were as follows: 1885 29,000 acres 1886 26,000 acres 1887 25,000 acres 1888 26,000 acres Source: J. H. A. Tremenheere, ‘Note on the Pariahs of Chingleput,’ G.O. 1010 and 1010A, 30 sept. 1892, Revenue, TNSA.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Venkatachalla, Naicker, The Poy Kharis versus Meerasidars or the Revenue System of Madras (Madras, 1870).Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Memorandum of the Board of Revenue, 1 April 1874, in Board's Proceedings 25 May 1875, 110. 1415, quoted in Revenue, 30 October 1892, nos. 1010 and 1010A, TNSA.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Revenue, G. O. 6297, 21 October 1887Google Scholar, quoted in ibid.

⁷⁹ Revenue, G. O. 260, 26 February 1884Google Scholar, quoted in ibid.

⁸⁰ Tremenheere, ‘Note on Pariahs.’

⁸¹ Quoted in ibid.

⁸² Ibid. The following discussion is based on this report.

⁸³ Ellis, in 1816, had witten that the Paraiyar sometimes ‘claim miras or hereditary private property’ and that ‘it is generally allowed to them and their descendents on proving their former residence in the village, however long they may have been absent.’ Quoted in the Minute of the Board of Revenue, 5 January 1818, vol. 257A, BOR Misc. TNSA.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ In connection with another untouchable group in Bihar, the Bhuniyas who claim that they were once warriors and occupied high ranks, Gyan Prakash concludes that these oral traditions ‘that resisted, reproduced, and transformed the dominated existence of the Bhuniyas’ was an example of a group which ‘did not have to wait for modernity and its language of equality in order to mount resistance.’ Gyan, Prakash, ‘Empowered resistance and contested power of South Asia,’ pp. 8–9, paper delivered at the American Historical Association, Washington D. C., December 1987. Ellis also noted that the Paraiyar in the Tondai country ‘consider themselves as the real proprietors of the soil; the Vellalar, they say, sells his birthright to the Sanar [toddy-tappers], the latter is cajoled out of it by the Brahmans, and he is swept away before the fury of a Muhammedan invasion; but no one removes or molests the Pareiyar, whoever may be the nominal owner or whatever the circumstances of the times.’ F. W. Ellis, ‘Appendix [to the] replies to the questions respecting meerasi right,’ BOR Misc., v.233, TNSA. Place, however, put a much less euphemistic construction on the position of the untouchables who, he said, were ‘doomed to the meanest offices, [and] can acquire no property in land.’ Place 1799 Report, para. 69, quoted in the Fifth Report, p. 298.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ See the instance of the Governor of Madras, Mountstuart Grant-Duff, who in 1886 urged those who were not Brahmans to protest ‘the constant putting foward.’ of Sanskrit literature' and lumping ‘up the Southern race as Rakshusas—demons.’Google ScholarIrschick, Eugene F., Politics and Social Conflict in South India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), p. 281.Google ScholarSee also the memo of the Madras Government in 1872 which sought to include the Muslims and the untouchables in the administrationGoogle Scholar, Irschick, Eugene F., Tamil Revivalism in the 1930s (Madras; Cre-A, 1986), p. 42.Google ScholarIn the case of Grant-Duffs speech, he invoked indigenous ideas in the Sanskrit epic, the Ramayana. The 1872 memo spoke about the ‘numbers and intelligence’ of the Muslims. Both of these were strategies to legitimize British innovations.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ According to Tremenheere the anticipated effects of his proposals were: ‘To remove the obstacles existing in practice to the acquisition of land by the Pariahs; To free their homes from tyrannous claims; To free their labour from semi-servile conditions; To educate their children.’

⁸⁷ Fox, Lions, p. 205.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Velan marapiyal [Vellala Custom] (Madras: Kudalur Kuppiya Pillai, 1880), passim;Google Scholar See the comments of Maraimalaiyadikal on the meaning of the discovery of the Indus Valley civilization for an analysis of ‘Tamil religion.’ Maraimalaiyadikal, , Tamilar matam [Religion of the Tamils] (Madras: Tirunelvelit tenintia caivacitanta nulpatippuk kalakam, 1958), pp. 124–5.Google ScholarThis work was originally published in 1941.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ John, Clammer, ‘Colonialism and the perception of tradition in Fiji,’ p. 199.Google Scholar In Talal, Asad (ed.), Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (New York: Humanities Press, 1973). I would like to thank Ms. Molly Lee who brought this article to my attention.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Ibid. p. 200.

⁹¹ Ibid. p. 210.

⁹² Ibid. p. 211.

⁹³ Ibid. p. 212.

⁹⁴ Ibid. p. 217.

⁹⁵ Ibid. pp. 218–9.