The Mystery of South India

Nazar Sahib,
``They are combined with sambhar (dal), rasam (tamarind dal), dry and curried vegetable and pachadi (yogurt)``

Small correction, pachadi is pickle not yougurt. Yogurt is called ``perugu`` in telugu (My mother toungue is telugu)

Each state has its own cuisine, and of all the states Andhraites eat the most spicy food ( I am not saying this, In US i had roommates from Tamilnadu, Karnataka, Kerala all of them used to complain about the red chilly/spices in Andhra curries and pickles, but at the same time they liked them).

Of the SI food items i like these best.
Tamilnadu - Sambhar is best ( the tiffin and breakfast places in Chennai are best.)
Karnataka - Bisi bheli bath is the best kannada food i tasted (there may be more)
Andhra - Chepala Pulusu ( Fish curry in tamarind gravy), Hyderabad Biryani ( Its the best biryani in my opinion, tried lot of variety`s here in US from various parts of the subcontinent)

Dost-Mitter, Alephnull, Mitran, Nikki, Gandiv, Avkrishna

Thanks for your authentic and personalized observations and interacts. Listening is learning.

It must be great visiting the thick lush green habitat of the South - the beaches, palmgroves, old colonial style buildings, unusual food and some Bharatnatyam. Probably, some thick dark clouds and some torrential rains at times. Does South have some local popular liquer?

NHK

SameerJb

On a lighter note. So areas falling in Pakistan have a monoply over some invaders like the Bactrians, Parthians, Scythians, Alexander and Arabs.

The Punjab was covered with forests until 70 years ago when the British brought in the canals. I have myself seen Sind as a desert just 30 years back from the air. Baluchistan and NWFP are still mountainous barreness barring the Peshawar valley.

So essentially, anyone with some spare time, a spare horse and some spare food could walk into these areas - and be called a conquerer. There was a little to get from here and no one to resist.

NHK

Hi Nazar , Salam , Vanakkam and Namaskaram to you. Great start at introducing SI to other cultural groups from Chowk.

Generally speaking the vast majority of South Indians are not vegetarians, except for the traditional minded Brahmins and others who are vegetarian by choice.

Marumakkathyam - it literally means that nephews inherit property, was prevalent in Kerala , but it may be a matter of history now. However that is not to say that generally speaking women are probably slightly better off in Kerala.

Carnatic actually comes from two Dravidian or Tamil words that mean Black earth or Karu Nad , this being the name given to modern day Karnataka in the past.

Regarding dietary habits , the entrees that were mentioned are typically prepared in Brahmin households. The South and Kerala in particular is one place where Hindus have beef apart from Chicken , Mutton and Fish.

Regarding physiognomy theories only go so far, generally speaking people from the West coast are fairer than people from the East coast, given that this area has had contact in the form of mercantile activities with many nations from the West. The Chinese influence is also palpable in such things as the Cheena Vala meaning the Chinese fishing nets and teh Cheena Chatti which is the Chinese Wok.

Coffee may be popular in TN but Kerala prefers Tea, in particular it is one part of India where people have tea or coffee without milk sometimes.

There is also a distinct difference in cutlure and ambience between two given states as for example when one crosses the Western Ghats from Kerala into TN.

Speaking of diversity another state that comes to mind is Karnataka where many languages other than Kannada are also spoken.

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From the article:

{{That brings us to the Dravidian family of languages – Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu, which are distinctly different than the North Indian languages like Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali and Gujarati which belong to the Indo-Aryan family with a different principles for construction of words.}}

The major languages of South India do not have grammatical gender, i.e. words for inanimate objects are not grammatically ‘male’, ‘female’, etc. and their modifiers do not take gender into account. That may be the most salient difference to a South Indian learning Hindi, for instance. My impression is that most ‘Aryan’ languages of North India do have grammatical gender [though Bangla is a obvious exception].

Several South Indians have observed that the ‘Sanskritised’ Hindi vocabulary patronized by the GoI is actually easy for South Indians to learn because of massive borrowings from Sanskrit into their own languages (though sometimes the meaning shifts in the course of the borrowing). My observation from my mother tongue is that a borrowed Sanskrit word that is the standard or commonly used term for a completely mundane concept, may be slightly high-flown or obscure when used in Hindi.

Kabulliwallah

#15

{{Arabs have been trading, settling and intermarrying in the South since even before the advent of Islam. St. Thomas the Apostle brought Christianity to the south and ancient Jewish communities have lived in harmony in the south for millenia. It is significant that minority communities in the south speak their native tongues and not some other language which they perceive as more in tune with their religion.}}

#19 SameerJB

{{Not only Arab and gulf Muslims but before them Syrian Christians as well as Jews settled there without any problem for centuries.}}

The traditional Syrian Christian origin myth claims indigenous descent from Namboodiri Brahmins who accepted the True Faith from the Apostle Thomas (‘doubting Thomas’). Neither the Namboodiri origin nor the visit or even the existence of Thomas (or of Christ, for that matter) can be substantiated. The presence of Christianity in Kerala can be attested from about the third/fourth century AD, but from Syriac and Greek authors rather than indigenes. The community did maintain ecclesiastical links through the millennia with the Chaldean church– they were under the Patriarch of Antioch and used to receive bishops from Syria. Their liturgical language was Syriac until its gradual replacement by Malayalam starting from schismatic and ‘reform’ movements in the middle of the 19 th century. In most other respects they functioned as just another Indian endogamous community or ‘caste’ (or cluster of related castes). IMO they have a minimal degree of ‘foreign’ ancestry; today, at any rate, there is no prestige, and apparently some stigma, attached to being of Levantine origin; and they are not visibly distinguishable as physical types from the range found among other Malayalis.

FarzanaVersey #22

{{Malayalees from Palakkad are considered honorary Tamilians because they are more Brahminised and some say less loud, though given that former Chief election commissioner T.N.Seshan hails from there, I would not be too sure.}}

Seshan is supposed to have said of his hometown that it produced four major types: civil servants, musicians, cooks and crooks! Such is the man when in form.

Kabulliwallah

#29

{{As regards Kerala, the historian that travelled with the Chinese Muslim admiral Zheng He, was fascinated by the similarities between the cultures of China and Cochin.}}

There was apparently extensive trade for a long period between China and Kerala. Zheng He (Cheng Ho) was actually the figure associated with the final Chinese naval surge past the Straits of Malacca. The mandarins of the Ming dynasty decided to shut down their naval endeavours shortly thereafter. Unfortunately the vacuum in the Indian ocean was filled by European pirates, not by Indians.

The kadhai/wok is still referred to as a “cheena chatti” (literally, Chinese pot) in Malayalam. There may also be a connection between the local martial art (Kalaripayat) and similar martial arts traditions in China.

#43 by AlephNull ,

# 37 by Gandiv,

Precisely my sentiments too.. I think this AIT is designed to make us feel inferior and divide the country by North/South. It`s sad that even some of the North Indians fall into the trap of supporting it.

Anyways to be academically honest, this Aryan invasion theory needs to be thoroughly investigated and either confirmed/debunked once and for all.. Thanks for providing these links. Let me know if you know more about any active research into it..

Thanks,
Avkrishna

# 33 by warpster..

Thanks, I shall try to do some of research.. I will reserve my opinion till I saw more info..

- Avkrishna

From the article:

{{Finally, let us call in the anthropologist who invariably brings along the fair-skinned Aryan. One theory says that the fair-skinned Aryans pushed the dark-skinned Dravidians, the earlier settlers, to the South. Another theory suggests that the racial stock is the same but there is a difference between the North and the South like the blond blue-eyed Swedes and the tanned dark hair Mediterranean. There are also some general observations like the average stature is higher in the North than in the South or the South Indians are more dolichocephalic or long-headed or they are usually medium-nosed (mesorrhine) as compared to the narrow-nosed (leptorrhine) people in the North. The Indian racial criteria is normally the skin colour, hair form, stature, shape of the head as measured by the cephalic index and shape of the nose as given by the nasal index.}}

In the Indian subcontinent, ‘Aryan’ and ‘Dravidian’ make good sense only as linguistic categories, not as racial or ethnic ones. It may interest you that the word Tamizha, Tamil, is cognate (as a word) with Dramila, Dravida and also apparently with Dravi, Brahui. Apart from four major (i.e. associated with a linguistic state) and some minor languages of South India, there are Dravidian languages spoken in pockets through the Indian subcontinent.

The Aryan invasion theory has no supporting evidence, archaeological, epigraphic or literary. However it fit very well with the British colonial project of constructing India as a country vanquished and ruled by outsiders from time immemorial as its natural and inevitable destiny, and inhabited by people unfit, unworthy and incapable of ruling themselves. Today it still finds support for what are basically political reasons, among left-inclined Indian historians, and among those who want to kindle a sense of Dravidian grievance against ‘Aryans’.

And finally the image of tall, fair, sharp-featured, handsome ‘Aryans’ on horseback, slaughtering, driving out, enslaving, subordinating and then ‘civilizing’ short dark coarse-featured snub-nosed ugly ‘Dravidians’, fits very well with the preferred ideology of wannabe Islamic/Persianate supremacists and dispossessed Mughals. It may be the one major point where these characters find it convenient to agree with the British imperialists, who they otherwise hate with a passion. That is why the AIT as well as those lurid and ludicrous binary oppositions are endlessly recycled on Chowk.

NHK #18

{{In contrast, South India is a matriachal society. The woman exercises a strong influence in the household. And her position is more elevated in the society.

This is only a matter of relative comparison.}}

The ‘relative comparison’ disclaimer is what may give this claim some marginal plausibility; though I seriously doubt that women in North India rarely exert strong household influence.

Let me suggest a generalization that may perhaps be better founded in fact. Marriages among most communities in India are traditionally conducted between families, not just two individuals. Some communities take the position that the groom’s family attains a superior status as a consequence of contracting the marriage, and the bride’s family an inferior status. [This is technically referred to as hypergamy; the situation where the presumption is of equal status is called ‘isogamy’.] A consequence of hypergamy is that families that already possess high status (on account of their wealth, power, etc.) have limited marital prospects for their daughters.

The generalization I would like to suggest is that the common traditional pattern in North India (e.g. UP, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana) was hypergamous; while the common traditional pattern in South India was isogamous. It is as potentially fallible as all broad generalizations are; I offer it only as a hypothesis against which people can compare their own knowledge and experience.

You may also want to distinguish between matriarchy, matrilocality, matrilineality. The last two terms may better describe what might have been the traditional practice of some communities in South India.

#37 by Gandiv on August 5

Mr Dhanushya, what is the ecidence that AIT was a deliberate conspiracy? I think to say that it (AIT) is flawed is ok, but what makes it a deliberate malicious act on part of the British.

Echo, i have never seen brahmins supporting AIT or anything like that, on what basis do you insist that it is a Brahmin-British nexus? Is this just part of your hope-delusion? Overall most Indians (incl brahmins) have not been very interested in the whole topic is what I see. As far as brahmins think, they claim their ancestors (which are specific sages which designated a brahmins Gotra) were born in India and have no tales of Aryan migration.

Nazar Saheb:
If you keep writing like this, we will soon start calling you Pandit Nazar Khan :-).
You have really started a fascinating thread and let`s keep it focussed as long as we can. Some loose ends have triggered some good interacts and are sure to stimulate some more (paging harimou!).
I grew up with the usual misconceptions of punjabis re. ``madrassis``. We thought that all south indians are iyers or iyengers, wear big caste-marks on their foreheads, ate dosas and idlis and spoke madrassi and english in a rapid-fire accent. My first reality check came when I first visited Madras and saw several `hindu military hotels`. On enquiry, it appeared that these were basically meat serving establishments run by non-muslims. When Kamraj Nadar, a famous congress president`s mother died, we found that she was buried and not cremated like other hindus - another revelation. Then I met a teugu friend who was married to his niece (bhanji), a no-no among us panjabis, and he told me that a mama had practically the first right of refusal over his bhanji`s marriage. I read in a sociology book that keralites are matriarchal, but then discovered that this was restricted to a few castes and that too with a difference; namely that the head of the family was not the mother but the maternal uncle (the mamoo). Then I found out about the namboodri brahmins that only the eldest son is allowed to become a namboodri, the others cannot even marry although he can have any number of women for his pleasure. So, the education continues.
Back in 1967, I stayed for a couple of weeks at the faculty hostel of IIT, Madras. More than once, a faculty member asked me that if I were a punjabi, why was I clean shaven and not wearing a turban? I heaved a sigh of relief that ignorance about the others was not limited to us ignorant punjabis.

nikki7777#38:
``Some syrian christians still look for brides in Syria and from the druze community in Lebanon even now``
Are there are any druze in TN, and are druze not nominally muslim?

Gandiv: 37
A very refreshing and azaad-hind post.

Thank you indeed. That Aryan hokum has finally been debunked. But I believe it was a Brahmin-British nexus. The caste-system of ``hinduism`` and the class-system of anglo-saxon coglommerate. The racial multi-national of the times. The baboons from the dark-ages trying to bring enlightenment--what a joke indeed!

I find it strange that no archeological ``discoveries`` are made in lands which colonised and robbed others. France, Portugal, Britain, Holland, South Africa, Australia , Canada and US. [just asking , just asking ]

When eras die, their legacies
are left to strange police
professors in new england guard
the glory that was Greece.

Time to wake up and kill some dragons. Are they still spreading their white-man`s-burden cult?

Its been a long long time.

The concept of Aryan-Dravidian is fallacy reincarnated. There is no truth in it. Shunya!

During early age of their arrival in India, the british were dismissive and ignorant of Indian culture and history. However after William Jones in 1871 found the beauty and superiority of Sanskrit, and related it to other european languages as the root of most european languages, they needed to prove that Indians are derivative of Europeans than the other way around.

The weapon they used to achieve this was History and the criminal that they hired specifically for this was an unemployed German Max Muller. They needed to know about Indian ethos and its root, in order to weaken and eradicate it.

Even afetr strenuous efforts to find an evidence in anicient texts, they could come up with nothing that insinuated about foerign invasion or inbound migrant population, or discriminated among population based on race, size, color or structure.

In order to establish superiority of white race, they came up with genuinely imaginary concept known as Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT), which in essence, meant that people from the mountain of Caucasus have invaded this area in the past, and thus, its their inherited right to do over again and again.

However this theory is challenged and proven to be bogus by a team of Indian archaelogists and historians including the well-known N.S.Rajaram and Koenraad Elst.
Here`s the artice by Elst which fittingly refutes the racist concoction.
http://www.swordoftruth.com/swordoftruth/archives/byauthor/koenraadelst/aitaptcodd.html

FYI, there is no historian/archaelogist in the West today that stands in support of the ill-conceived theory.

About the term ``Dravidian``, it was the Scottish missionary Bishop Caldwell who coined the term `Dravidian` to poltically divide the people of India. In Sanskrit Dravida means south, and Dravidian equates to nothing more than what texan Southerners mean to New yorkers.

Read out this article by distiguished scholar N.S.Rajaram published on this subject.
http://www.swordoftruth.com/swordoftruth/archives/byauthor/navaratnarajaram/ootadd.html

Pakistanis never have pride in the past glory of their forefathers who lived on the land of Sindhu and Saraswati and and stood high and mighty but lived such an ethics as to allow the minons to live with pride.

Its sad that desis(Pakistanis and Many Indians) succumb to this imperial design of permanent mental slavery and repeat the spell conceived by predatory missionaries.

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