Vellalar

Vellalar is a generic Tamil term used primarily to refer to various castes who traditionally pursued agriculture as a profession in the Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and northeastern parts of Sri Lanka.[lower-alpha 1] The Vellalar are members of several endogamous[lower-alpha 2][lower-alpha 3][lower-alpha 4] castes such as the numerically strong Arunattu Vellalar, Chozhia Vellalar, Karkarthar Vellalar, Kongu Vellalar, Thuluva Vellalar and Sri Lankan Vellalar.[7][8]

For other uses, see Vellalar (disambiguation).

Vellalar
ReligionsHinduism, Jainism[1]
LanguagesTamil
Subdivisions
[2]
Related groupsTamil people

Despite being a relatively lowly group, they were dominant communities in Tamil agrarian societies for 600 years until the decline of the Chola empire in the 13th century, with their chieftains able to practise state-level political authority after winning the support and legitimisation of Brahmins and other higher-ranked communities with grants of land and honours.[9]

Etymology

The word Vellalar may come from the root Vellam for flood, which gave rise to various rights of land; and it is because of the acquisition of land rights that the Vellalar got their name.[10]

The earliest reference to the name is attested in the Tolkāppiyam, which divided the society in four classes Arasar, Andanar, Vanigar and Vellalar.[11]

History
Vellālars worshipping lingam, snake-stones and Ganēsa from Castes and Tribes of Southern India (1909).

The Vellalars have a long cultural history that goes back to over two millennia in southern India,[12] where once they were the ruling and land-owning community.[13][14] Though the Vellalar have generally been associated with the landed gentry and agriculture, they are not a homogenous group and various people from diverse backgrounds have identified themselves as a Vellalar in the course of history.[4]

The Velir

The Velir were an ancient group of Tamil chieftains who claimed Yadava (Yadu) descent.[15] The Ay Vels were one such Velir group that ruled the territory in and around Venad during the Sangam period. The word Venad is derived from Vel -nadu, that is the country ruled by Vel chieftains.[16] We know of a queen of Vikramaditya Varaguna, an Ay king of 9th century who is referred to as Murugan Chenthi and as Aykula Mahadevi from inscriptions. Her father, an Ay chief called Chathan Murugan is described as a Vennir Vellala that is a Vellala by birth,[17] in the Huzur plates of king Karunandakkan, the predecessor of Vikramaditya Varaguna.[18]

The Irunkovel or Irukkuvel chieftains were another ancient Velir clan who ruled from their capital Kodumbalur (near Pudukottai district). They were related to the Cholas by marriage.[19] In an inscription of Rajadhiraja Chola an Irukkuvel feudatory who was a high-ranking military officer (Dandanayaka) of the king is described as a Velala.[lower-alpha 5]

The Irungovels are considered to be of the same stock as the Hoysalas as in one of the Sangam poems, the ancestor of the Irungovel chieftain is said to have ruled the fortified city of Tuvarai. This city is identified with the Hoysala capital Dwarasamudra by some historians.[21] Also, the legend of the chief killing a tiger (Pulikadimal) has a striking resemblance to the origin legend of the Hoysalas where ‘'sala'’ kills the tiger to save a sage.[22] As per historian Arokiaswami, the Hoysala title ‘'Ballala'’ is only a variant of the Tamil word ‘'Vellala'’.[23] The Hoysala king Veera Ballala III is even now locally known as the ‘'Vellala Maharaja'’ in Thiruvannamalai, the town that served as their capital in 14th century.[24]

The Chola period

According to the anthropologist Kathleen Gough, "the Vellalars were the dominant secular aristocratic caste under the Chola kings, providing the courtiers, most of the army officers, the lower ranks of the kingdom's bureaucracy, and the upper layer of the peasantry".[14]

Even today, the Vellalas of northern Tamil nadu vividly trace their legendary migration to the northern Tamil coast with their royal Chola ancestor after conquering the Kurumbas, a pastoral tribe of Karnataka.[lower-alpha 6] Two identical Tamil inscriptions from Avani and Uttanur in Mulbagal Taluk dated in the 3rd year of Kulottunga I (about 1072-1073 AD) speak of one such event. They describe how the great army of the right hand class (perumpadai valangai mahasenai) having arrived with great weapons of war from the 78-nadus of Chola-mandalam and the 48000-bhumi of Jayangonda-cholamandalam (the northern districts of Tamil Nadu that is Tondaimandalam) conquered and colonized southern Karnataka (Kolar district) by the grace of Rajendrachola (Kulottunga I).[26]

Historian Burton Stein who has done a detailed analysis of this inscription equates the Valangai military forces and the Velaikkara troops of the Cholas with the Vellalas and notes that the contents of the above inscription confirm this identification.[27] The Velaikkara troops were special units of armed forces drawn from the right-hand castes that were close to the king. The units were generally named after the king like Rajaraja-terinda-valangai-velaikkarar, that is the known (terinda) forces of king Rajaraja Chola I.[28] The Chola inscriptions state that the Velaikkara forces pledged under oath to commit suicide in case they failed to defend their king or in the event of his death.[29]

Current usage

Even though at present, the term Vellalar has come to mean a farmer or agricultural people, a number of non-cultivating landholding castes like Kaarukaatha Velaalar and the Kondaikatti Velaalar who served ruling dynasties in various capacities also identify themselves as Vellalar.[lower-alpha 7] Likewise, the Kottai Pillaimar who were traditionally land-holders and lived inside forts, neither lease land for agriculture nor do they till their own fields. They also do not supervise cultivation directly due to the stigma attached to farming and manual labor.[31] Similarly, the Vellala Chettis, a branch of the Chozhia Vellalars were traders and merchants.[32] The Adi-saiva vellalar sect is a strictly vegetarian Saivite group that traditionally served as priests.[33]

Sri Lanka
Main article: Sri Lankan Vellalar

The Vellalars of Sri Lanka have been chronicled in the Yalpana Vaipava Malai and other historical texts of the Jaffna kingdom. They form half of the Sri Lankan Tamil population and are the major husbandmen, involved in tillage and cattle cultivation.[34][7] Local Sri Lankan literature, such as the Kailiyai Malai, an account on Kalinga Magha, narrates the migration of Vellala Nattar chiefs from the Coromandel Coast to Sri Lanka.[35]

Their dominance rose under Dutch rule and they formed one of the colonial political elites of the island.[36][37]

In Jainism

At present, most of the Tamil Jains are from the Vellalar social group.[1] Also, the Saiva Velaalar sect are originally believed to have been Jainas before they embraced Hinduism.[lower-alpha 8] The Tamil Jains refer to the Saiva Velaalar as nīr-pūci-nayinārs or nīr-pūci-vellalars meaning the vellalars who left Jainism by smearing the sacred ash or (tiru)-nīru.[lower-alpha 9] While some of the Jains assign this conversion to the period of the Bhakti movement in Tamil nadu others link it to a conflict with a ruler of the Vijayanagar empire in the 15th century.[39] The villages and areas settled by the Saiva Velaalar even now have a small number of Jaina families and inscriptional evidence indicate that these were earlier Jaina settlements as is evident by the existence of old Jaina temples.[40]

Varna Classification

During the British colonial period, the Vellalars who were land owners and tillers of the soil and held offices pertaining to land, were ranked as Sat-Sudra in the 1901 census; with the Government of Madras recognising that the 4-fold division (four varnas) did not describe the South Indian, or Dravidian, society adequately.[41] Following the arrival of Dutch missionaries in the early 18th century, some Vellalar converted to Christianity.[42]

See also

Notes
  1. The term(Vellalar) extends beyond notions of caste and seems rather to be a generic term for farming groups dispersed over space.[3]
  2. Coming to the Vellalas, Andre Beteille, an authority on caste in South India writes: The term 'Vellala' is rather confusing because of its comprehensive use. Even the Vellalas proper, those who are of Vellala origin-are not a homogeneous unit but are subdivided into small sections. These sub-groups are always segmented and are endogamous.[4]
  3. Without going into detail, it must suffice to say that in Sripuram the Vellalas proper are segmented into three endogamous units: Chozhia Vellala, Karaikathu Vellala, and Kodikkal Vellala.[5]
  4. The Kongu Vellalar is an engogamous group. They use 'gounder' as a title and hence they are also known as Kongu Vellala Gounders.[6]
  5. Records in his third year gift of 90 sheep for a lamp by Velala Madurantakam alias Tandanayakan Rajadhiraja Ilangovelan of Nadar, a village in Tiraimur-nadu which was a sub-division of Uyyakondan-valanadu in Solamandalam.[20]
  6. Vellala gentry in the northern Tamil coast trace their origins to a royal Chola ancestor who migrated north with 48000 Vellala families, conquering Kurumba hunters[25]
  7. Among the Tamil castes, both Karkattar Vellalas (Arunachalam, 1975) and Kondaikatti Vellalas (Barnett, 1970) have much the same profile as the KP (Kottai Pillaimar): both are non-cultivating land-holders, with a history of service to ruling dynasties.[30]
  8. It is also widely believed that the Saiva Vellalas of Madras State who are stricter vegetarians than even Tamil Brahmins, were Jainas.[38]
  9. All of those who feared for their lives converted to Saivism (and not any other religious sect) adorning the sacred ash, 'throwing away their sacred threads', they assumed the identity of Saiva (nir-puci) vellalars or nir-puci-nayinars (the Jainas who smeared sacred ash).[39]

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    3. Vijaya Ramaswamy (2017). Historical Dictionary of the Tamils. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 303.
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    40. R. Umamaheshwari (2018). Reading History with the Tamil Jainas. A Study on Identity, Memory and Marginalisation. Volume 22 of Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures. Springer. p. 223.
    41. Pamela G. Price (3 December 2007). Kingship and political practice in colonial India. Cambridge University Press. p. 61. ISBN 9780521052290. ...when government census officers placed Vellalar in the Sat-Sudra or Good Sudra category in its 1901 census, Vellalar castemen petitioned this designation, protesting this designation..
    42. Etherington, Norman, ed. (2005). Missions and Empire. Oxford University Press. p. 112. ISBN 978-0-19153-106-4.

    Further reading
    • Lucassen, Jan; Lucassen, Leo (2014). Globalising Migration History: The Eurasian Experience. BRILL. ISBN 978-9-00427-136-4.
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