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Kallars
Kallar (or Kallan, formerly spelled as Colleries) is one of the three related castes of southern India which constitute the Mukkulathor confederacy. The Kallar, along with the Maravar and Agamudayar, constitute a united social caste on the basis of parallel professions, though their locations and heritages are wholly separate from one another. Etymology ''Kallar'' is a Tamil word meaning ''thief''. Their history has included periods of banditry. Kallars themselves use titles such as "landlord", Other proposed etymological origins include "black skinned", "hero", and " toddy-tappers". The anthropologist Susan Bayly notes that the name Kallar, as with that of Maravar, was a title bestowed by Tamil ''palaiyakkarars'' (warrior-chiefs) on pastoral peasants who acted as their armed retainers. The majority of those poligars, who during the late 17th and 18th centuries controlled much of the Telugu region as well as the Tamil area, had themselves come from the Kallar, Maravar and Va ...
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Piramalai Kallar
Piramalai Kallars is a sub caste of the Kallars and thus are part of the Mukkulathor community that also includes the Maravar and Agamudayar castes.They belong to Most backward class/Denotified class in Tamil nadu. History Copper plate inscriptions dated 1645, 1652, 1655 and 1656 are the most important artefacts about the Piramalai Kallars. According to these, during the period of Thirumalai Nayak, members of the community were appointed as guards ("kavalkarars") of villages. The Piramalai Kallar group responsible for a village had to compensate for any theft in that village. Piramalai Kallar local chieftains, such as Tirumal Pinna Thevar, also performed judicial duties by organising panchayats. This is described in the 1655 inscription. With a separate system of judiciary and policing, they refused to accede to British rule. In 1767, around 5000 Kallars were killed by British forces near Melur in a single day when they refused to pay tax. With the introduction of British ...
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Adimurai
Adimurai is a Tamil martial art originating in modern-day Kanyakumari, the southernmost region in India. It was traditionally practiced in the Kanyakumari district of modern-day Tamil Nadu as well as nearby areas in southeastern Kerala. Its preliminary empty-hand techniques are called Adithada and application of vital points are called Varma Adi, although these terms are sometimes interchangeably used to refer to the martial art itself. Adimurai is a portmanteau in the Tamil language where ''adi'' means "to hit or strike" and ''murai'' means method or procedure. In modern period it is used alongside other Tamil martial arts. History Adithadi is a non-lethal version of Adimurai which was developed in the Tamilakam region of ancient India. It saw most of its practice in the Chola and Pandya kingdoms, where preliminary empty hand techniques were used. Practice Adimurai is traditionally practiced outdoors or in unroofed areas. It is mainly practiced by Thevar, Kallars, and ...
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Mukkulathor
The Mukkulathor people, who are also collectively known as Thevar, are a community or group of communities native to the central and southern districts of Tamil Nadu, India. They comprise the Agamudayar, Kallar and Maravar communities that share a common myth of origin and claim to have once been members of various ancient South Indian dynasties. Origins and development The terms and ' are used synonymously. According to R. Muthulakshmi of Madurai Kamaraj University, ' "literally means celestial beings or divine-natured people" and means "three clans united together". The three constituent communities of Agamudayar, Kallar and Maravar believe themselves to share a common myth of origin formed through being the offspring of a relationship between Indra and a celestial woman. The three groups traditionally each believe themselves to be superior to their fellow Mukkulathors. While they share a common mythological ancestor, the three communities also claim ancestral differences ...
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Maravar
Maravar (also known as Maravan and Marava) are a Tamil community in the state of Tamil Nadu. These people are one of the three branches of the Mukkulathor confederacy. Members of the Maravar community often use the honorific title ''Thevar''. They are classified as an Other Backward Class or a Denotified Tribe in Tamil Nadu, depending on the district. The Sethupathi rulers of the erstwhile Ramnad kingdom were from this community. The Maravar community, along with the Kallars, had a reputation for thieving and robbery from as early as the medieval period. Etymology The term ''Maravar'' has diverse proposed etymologies; it may come simply from a Tamil word ''maram'', meaning such things as ''vice'' and ''murder. or a term meaning "bravery". Social status The Maravars were considered as Shudras and were free to worship in Hindu temples. According to Pamela G, Price, the Maravar were warriors who were in some cases zamindars. During the British colonial era, the Maravars were some ...
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Valai Tādi
A valari ( ta, வளரி) is a traditional weapon, primarily used by the Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. The valari resembles, and is used like, a boomerang. It has been used by the Tamil people in ancient battles, for protecting cattle from predators, and for hunting. The valari has a long history, dating back to pre-historic times. Valaris are described in the Tamil Sangam ''Purananuru'': a historical version of the Sangam literature, the Purananuru 233rd Poem, mentions the ''thigri'' or valari. The techniques and philosophies of valari are long periods of interaction with Tamil (India) peoples, cultures, and Traditional Arts. Valari is a synthesis of the game which is played in various methods with same name. Valari received international exposure from 2018 onwards, demonstrated and played in various states of India. In 2018, the International Valari Federation (IVF) came into existence and compiled standard rules. After formation of the International Valari Fede ...
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Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a States and union territories of India, state in southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of India by population, sixth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil language—one of the longest surviving Classical languages of India, classical languages in the world—is widely spoken in the state and serves as its official language. The state lies in the southernmost part of the Indian peninsula, and is bordered by the Indian union territory of Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh, as well as an international maritime border with Sri Lanka. It is bounded by the Western Ghats in the west, the Eastern Ghats in the north, the Bay of Bengal in the east, the Gulf of Mannar and Palk Strait to the south-eas ...
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Presidency Armies
The presidency armies were the armies of the three presidencies of the East India Company's rule in India, later the forces of the British Crown in India, composed primarily of Indian sepoys. The presidency armies were named after the presidencies: the Bengal Army, the Madras Army and the Bombay Army. Initially, only Europeans served as commissioned or non-commissioned officers. In time, Indian Army units were garrisoned from Peshawar in the north, to Sind in the west, and to Rangoon in the east. The army was engaged in the wars to extend British control in India (the Mysore, Maratha and Sikh wars) and beyond (the Burma, Afghan, First and Second Opium Wars, and the Expedition to Abyssinia). The presidency armies, like the presidencies themselves, belonged to the Company until the Indian Rebellion of 1857, when the Crown took over the Company and its three armies. In 1895, the three presidency armies were merged into a united Indian Army. Origin The origin of the British Indian ...
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Kalaripayattu
Kalaripayattu (; also known simply as Kalari) is an Indian martial art that originated in modern-day Kerala, a state on the southwestern coast of India. Kalaripayattu is known for its long-standing history within Indian martial arts, and is one of the oldest surviving martial arts in India. Kalaripayattu is mentioned in the Vadakkan Pattukal, a collection of ballads written about the Chekavar of the Malabar region of Kerala. In the Vadakkan Pattukal, it is stated that the cardinal principle of Kalaripayattu was that knowledge of the art be used to further worthy causes, and not for the advancement of one's own selfish interests. Kalaripayattu is a martial art designed for the ancient battlefield (the word "Kalari" meaning "battlefield"), with weapons and combative techniques that are unique to Kerala. Like most Indian martial arts, Kalaripayattu contains rituals and philosophies inspired by Hinduism. The art also bases medical treatments upon concepts found in the ancient ...
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Louis Dumont
Louis Charles Jean Dumont (11 August 1911 – 19 November 1998) was a French anthropologist. Dumont was born in Thessaloniki, in the Salonica Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. He taught at Oxford University during the 1950s, and was then director of the ''École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales'' (EHESS) in Paris. A specialist on the cultures and societies of India, Dumont also studied western social philosophy and ideologies. Works His works include '' Homo Hierarchicus: Essai sur le système des castes'' (1966), ''From Mandeville to Marx: The Genesis and Triumph of Economic Ideology'' (1977) and ''Essais sur l'individualisme: Une perspective anthropologique sur l'idéologie moderne'' (1983), in which he contrasts holism with individualism. Dumont died, aged 87, in Paris. See also *Alliance theory The alliance theory, also known as the general theory of exchanges, is a structuralist method of studying kinship relations. It finds its origins in Claude Lévi-Straus ...
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Throwing Stick
The throwing stick or throwing club is a wooden rod with either a pointed tip or a spearhead attached to one end, intended for use as a weapon. A throwing stick can be either straight or roughly boomerang-shaped, and is much shorter than the javelin. It became obsolete as slings and bows became more prevalent, except on the Australian continent, where the native people continued refining the basic design. Throwing sticks shaped like returning boomerangs are designed to fly straight to a target at long ranges, their surfaces acting as airfoils. When tuned correctly they do not exhibit curved flight, but rather they fly on an extended straight flight path. Straight flight ranges greater than 100 meters have been reported by historical sources as well as in recent research. Distribution The ancient Egyptians used throwing sticks to hunt small game and waterfowl, as seen in several wall paintings. The 18th-dynasty pharaoh Tutankhamun was a known lover of duck hunting and used ...
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Pudukkottai State
Pudukkottai was a kingdom and later a princely state in British India, which existed from 1680 until 1948. The Kingdom of Pudukkottai was founded in about 1680 as a feudatory of Ramnad and grew with subsequent additions from Tanjore, Sivaganga and Ramnad. One of the staunch allies of the British East India Company in the Carnatic, Anglo-Mysore and Polygar wars, the kingdom was brought under the Company's protection in 1800 as per the system of Subsidiary Alliance. The state was placed under the control of the Madras Presidency from 1800 until 1 October 1923, when the Madras States Agency was abolished, and until 1948 it was under the political control of the Government of India. Pudukkottai State covered a total area of and had a population of 438,648 in 1941. It extended over the whole of the present-day Pudukkottai district of Tamil Nadu (with the exception of Aranthangi taluk which was then a part of Tanjore district). The town of Pudukkottai was its capital. The ruler o ...
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Thondaman Dynasty
The Thondaimans are chieftains who ruled the region in and around Pudukottai from the 17th to 20th century. The Pudukkottai Thondaiman dynasty was founded by Raghunatha Thondaiman, the brother-in-law of the then Raja of Ramnad, RaghunathaKilavan Setupati. The Pudukottai Samasthanam was under Thondaiman dynasty for one year even after Indian Independence. The Thondaiman dynasty had a special Valari regiment. History In 1686, the Ramnad kingdom was ruled by Raghunatha Kilavan Setupati, the Raja of Ramnad and the Pudukottai region was ruled by a chief called Pallavarayan. The Raja of Ramnad suspected the chief's loyalty to the Ramnad kingdom and believed that the chief would shift his allegiance to the ruler of Thanjavur. So the Raja of Ramnad ousted the chief and appointed his brother-in-law Ragunatha Raya Tondaman, the brother of his queen Kathayi Nachiar, as the new ruler of Pudukottai. Thondaiman, the son of Avadai Raghunatha Tondaiman, was earlier ruling Thirumayam. In ...
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