HAS any one studied the village life of the South? Are there no facts to be collected from a careful examination of it, which would be useful to some future Sir Henry Maine? If there are, surely you should be the people to collect them. It makes one who has a strong feeling for South India a little sad, to read such a book as Professor Max Müller’s India, What can it teach us? and to see how very little it has to do with India south of the Vindhyan range." So said our late Governor, Sir M. E. Grant Duff, in the remarkable address he delivered last year to the Madras University graduates, when, in his capacity of Chancellor of the University, he drew their attention to the several branches of study to which they could usefully devote their time and in which they might instruct their Aryan brother of the West. Life in an Indian village is a very interesting study, and it is the object of the present book to picture the life of the Hindu as seen in a South Indian village.
It is a fact well known even to the most superficial observer of Hindu society that every portion of the system upon which that society has been constructed is tinged with religion. The Hindus are essentially a religious people, and our ancient lawgivers taking advantage of this characteristic of the nation, constructed a system which was made to be religiously binding. The manners, the customs, and the ordinary daily duties have their origin in religion. For instance, daily washing of the body, which is considered good from a sanitary point of view, is enjoined as a religious duty, and, even to this day, a person who disobeys this religious duty is shunned and avoided by his friends. Thus, in fact, the Hindu lives, moves, and has his being in religion.
Besides this, it is a fact also well known that there is no nation in the world so conservative as the Hindus—no people who stick with such wonderful tenacity to the manners and customs instituted by their forefathers as we ourselves. Ask a Hindu why he follows this custom or that, and he will immediately say that his father taught him to do so, and that it was handed down to him from time immemorial. And yet to none are the words of the poet—
“ We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow; No doubt our wiser sons will think us so,”
more applicable than to many of us of the present generation.
No doubt, the Mohammedan conquest, which was felt in a greater or less degree for nearly seven centuries, and the influence of Western civilization modified to a great extent our beliefs and superstitions. But the Mohamme- dan conquest was felt only in Northern India, where its influence has been most marked. Southern India was rarely visited by the followers of the Prophet ; they simply pounced upon it occasionally for the sake of plunder. In proof of this, we note the fact that large temples and religious institutions founded by Hindu rajahs in the south remain intact. The cruel hand of the Mohammedan did not demolish those wonderful architectural structures that remain even to this day. We note also the fact that, while the languages of Northern India have been considerably affected by Mo- hammedan contact, the Dravidian languages of the south retain a special distinctiveness of their own. Again, the influence of Western civilization is felt only in large towns, and it has not yet penetrated into the inner recesses of Indian villages. It is, therefore, to the villages of Southern India that we must go to see Hindu life at its best, unaffected as it is either by the Mohammedan conquest or by the influence of Western civilization. Life in a South Indian village presents many interest- ing points to the historian and to the student of antiquities.
There are about 55,000 villages in the Madras Presidency, and out of a population of about thirty-one millions, nearly twenty- eight millions or about 90 per cent. of the whole population of the presidency live in villages, while the remaining 10 per cent. live in towns. In trying to describe the manner in which the bulk of the people in- habiting Southern India spend their lives in their village homes, I shall take a typical village and describe it by enumerating the different persons living in it and the several duties they perform.
A cluster of trees consisting of the tamarind, mango, cocoanut, plantain and other useful Indian trees, a group of dwellings, some thatched and some tiled, a small temple in the centre—these surrounded on all sides by about five hundred acres of green fields, and a large tank capable of watering those five hundred acres of land for about six months— this is the village of Kélambakam, situated in the Chingleput district, midway between Con- jeeveram, and Mahabalipuram, two very old and important towns that played a most con- spicuous part in the ancient history of Southern India. For over five hundred years, from the fifth century after Christ, the Pallavas, a power- ful race of kings, carried on a constant warfare with the Chalukyans, and the country between these two ancient towns was the scene of many a pitched battle between the two races. Ancient inscriptions relate how the Pallavas were con- stantly harassed by their enemies, how, con- sequently, they held sway, at one time in Conjeeveram, at another in Mahabalipuram, and how badly the vanquished and their country were treated by the victorious. The result of this constant antagonism was that the country became almost a deserted waste in spite of its natural fertility. The soil is rich and the broad Palar runs through it. The hand of man was the only thing wanting to convert the arid plains into smiling green fields. Of course, we, who live under favourable conditions, may be disposed to think that the picture I have drawn exists only in imagination, but when we read that, for nearly six centuries, there was constant warfare, that the vanquished “were trodden to death by elephants in battle,” and that all the rules of modern warfare were un- known in those days, we need not wonder that the country between Conjeeveram and Maha- balipuram was most devoid of cultivation and uninhabited. It was not till after the middle of the eleventh century that a deliverer ap- peared on the scene in the person of Adondai, son of Kulotunga Chola, who finally put an end to the conflict between the two contending races and established his own supremacy with Con- jeeveram for his capital. It was not till after that time that peace was restored and the country settled down.
Kélambakam accordingly came into exist- ence about the end of the eleventh century. It comprises some fifty or sixty houses, and has a population of about three hundred. The most influential people in the village are Tuluva Vellalas, and there are about ten families belonging to that caste living in it. Tradition says that Adondai, after he conquered the country, brought people from the Tuluva country to colonize his newly conquered domin- ions, and that he gave them lands to cultivate on easy terms. Even to this day we find Tuluva Vellalas, a very respectable class of people, scattered over the whole of Thonda- mandalam—the country conquered by Adondai. The headman of the village, or, as he is com- monly called, the village munsiff, is Kothunda- rama Mudelly, a Tuluva Vellala by caste. He owns some fifty acres of land in the village. His father, a very pious man, left him the sole heir of all his properties. His ancestors were Saivites by religion, but the family, in common with others, embraced Vaishnavism about the 12th or the 13th century, when the great reformer Ramanuja went about the country preaching and converting people. It was about this time that the temple above-men- tioned and dedicated to Kothundarama was built by one of the village munsiff’s ancestors in his zeal for the religion which he had newly embraced, and the present Kothundarama Mudelly was named by his father after the idol. The villagers place the highest con- fidence in him. He is respected by the people of the village, not so much owing to the fact of his being the village munsiff as for his sterling worth. He is
" beloved by all its men, Their friend in times of need, their guide in life, Partaker of their joys and woes as well, The arbiter of all their petty strifes."
As village munsiff, the whole management of the village is vested in him. He has the power of deciding petty civil cases, and also of trying persons for petty crimes. He can impose slight fines and give a few hours imprisonment. The imprisonment is not real, and the power of awarding it is scarcely exer- cised. In the case of Sudras, the accused person is put in charge of the taliyari, the village police peon, and in the case of Pariahs and other low caste people the accused person’s hands or legs are shoved into a wooden instrument with large holes, and the criminal is made to remain in that humiliating posture for several hours. This is the kind of imprisonment the munsiff has the power of administering, but, as I said before, he very rarely exercises that power. The headman has also the power of collecting revenues from the ryots, of granting them receipts, and he remits the money to the taluk treasury. He must report to the head of the taluk (sub-division of a district) serious cases of theft and accidental deaths, send regularly a statement of the rainfall of the village, and of births and deaths, assist the authorities, revenue or other, in their official duties, and even supply those authorities with necessary provisions, when they go there in their official capacity or for the sake of pleasure. These with his own duties of looking after the cultivation of his fifty acres of land occupy a good deal of his time. Kélambakam, which is situated on the road between Conjeeveram and Tirukalukunram, where there is a very important Siva shrine, is a halting place for religious mendicants travelling to and fro. To these Kothundarama Mudelly every day distributes rice, and it is a pleasure to him to collect stray travellers halting for the night in his village and take supper with them. In the village, he has to do a thousand and one things. He has to settle disputes arising between the villagers, preside at festivals, marriages, and other social gather- ings. In short, he is the most important man in the village, and well might he exclaim in the words of Alexander Selkirk—
“I am the monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute.”
Next in importance to Munsiff Kothun- darama Mudelly is Ramasami Pillai, the kurnam or the accountant of the village. He has to keep a register of accounts. He is expected to know the extent, name, rent, &c., of every field in the village ; he has to assist the munsiff in preparing accounts, when money is remitted. Whenever the villagers have letters to write to relations, documents to be executed and calculations of interest to be made, when disputes arise, the assistance of the infallible kurnam is invoked, as he is considered to be the neatest writer and the most accurate accountant of the village. Ramasami Pillai is a mighty person in the village, and he is also a wily person. There is a Tamil proverb— " Confide if you will in the young one of a crow, but never believe the son of a kurnam." The kurnam, though he may be a good man, has come to be regarded with distrust by the villagers, and such is the case with Ramasami Pillai. Nobody would dare to oppose him or incur his displeasure. Nevertheless, the simple villagers go to him whenever they have any business transactions, for nobody else in the village can perform their work so well as he, and Ramasami Pillai calculated interest so quickly, wrote documents so neatly and accurately, and, readily gave out, without reference to his register, whatever information was wanted regarding each and every plot of land in the village, that the people of Kélambakam viewed him with admiration and wondered—
“That one small head could carry all he knew.”
Next comes Muthu Naick, the taliyari, or the person who does the duties of the police in the village. He is a tall, powerful, broad- chested man, fair in complexion, of middle age, and carries a strong bamboo stick, some six feet in length. He has to assist the munsiff in cases civil and criminal, and when persons are convicted by the munsiff, Muthu Naick is the jailor. He has to watch the villages at nights, patrol the fields when crops are ripe and see that no thefts occur. He has also to go to the treasury in charge of money when remittances are sent from the village. Such are the duties discharged by the village munsiff, the kurnam, and the taliyari.