Paliyan.
A detailed account of the Paliyans of the Palni hills by the Rev. F. Dahmen has recently been published,[10] to which I am indebted for the following information. “The Paliyans are a nomadic tribe, who for the most part rove in small parties through the jungle-clad gorges that fringe the Upper Palnis plateau. There they maintain themselves mostly on the products of the chase and on roots (yams, etc.), leaves and wild fruits (e.g., of the wild date tree), at times also by hiring their labour to the Kunnuvan or Mannadi villagers. The find of a bee-hive in the hollow of some tree is a veritable feast for them. No sooner have they smoked the bees out than they greedily snatch at the combs, and ravenously devour them on the spot, with wax, grubs, and all. Against ailments the Paliyans have their own remedies: in fact, some Paliyans have made a name for themselves by their knowledge of the medicinal properties of herbs and roots. Thus, for instance, they make from certain roots (periya uri katti vēr) a white powder known as a very effective purgative. Against snake-bite they always carry with them certain leaves (naru valli vēr), which they hold to be a very efficient antidote. As soon as one of them is bitten, he chews these, and also applies them to the wound. Patience and cunning above all are required in their hunting-methods. One of their devices, used for big game, e.g., against the sambar (deer), or against the boar, consists in digging pitfalls, carefully covered up with twigs and leaves. On the animal being entrapped, it is dispatched with clubs or the aruvāl (sickle). Another means consists in arranging a heap of big stones on a kind of platform, one end of which is made to rest on higher ground, the other skilfully equipoised by a stick resting on a fork, where it remains fixed by means of strong twine so disposed that the least movement makes the lever-like stick on the fork fly off, while the platform and the stones come rapidly down with a crash. The string which secures the lever is so arranged as to unloose itself at the least touch, and the intended victim can hardly taste the food that serves for bait without bringing the platform with all its weight down upon itself. Similar traps, but on a smaller scale, are used to catch smaller animals: hares, wild fowl, etc. Flying squirrels are smoked out of the hollows of trees, and porcupines out of their burrows, and then captured or clubbed to death on their coming out. The first drops of blood of any animal the Paliyans kill are offered to their god. A good catch is a great boon for the famished Paliyan. The meat obtained therefrom must be divided between all the families of the settlement. The skins, if valuable, are preserved to barter for the little commodities they may stand in need of, or to give as a tribute to their chief. One of their methods for procuring fish consists in throwing the leaves of a creeper called in Tamil karungakodi, after rubbing them, into the water. Soon the fish is seen floating on the surface. Rough fashioned hooks are also used. When not engaged on some expedition, or not working for hire, the Paliyans at times occupy themselves in the fabrication of small bird-cages, or in weaving a rough kind of mat, or in basket-making. The small nicknacks they turn out are made according to rather ingenious patterns, and partly coloured with red and green vegetable dyes. These, with the skins of animals, and the odoriferous resin collected from the dammer tree, are about the only articles which they barter or sell to the inhabitants of the plains, or to the Mannadis.”
Concerning the religion and superstitions of the Paliyans, the Rev. F. Dahmen writes as follows. “The principal religious ceremony takes place about the beginning of March. Mayāndi (the god) is usually represented by a stone, preferably one to which nature has given some curious shape, the serpent form being especially valued. I said ‘represented,’ for, according to our Paliyans, the stone itself is not the god, who is supposed to live somewhere, they do not exactly know where. The stone that represents him has its shrine at the foot of a tree, or is simply sheltered by a small thatched covering. There, on the appointed day, the Paliyans gather before sunrise. Fire is made in a hole in front of the sacred stone, a fine cock brought in, decapitated amidst the music of horn and drum and the blood made to drip on the fire. The head of the fowl ought to be severed at one blow, as this is a sign of the satisfaction of the god for the past, and of further protection for the future. Should the head still hang, this would be held a bad omen, foreboding calamities for the year ensuing. The instrument used in this sacred operation is the aruvāl, but the sacrificial aruvāl cannot be used but for this holy purpose. Powers of witchcraft and magic are attributed to the Paliyans by other castes, and probably believed in by themselves. The following device adopted by them to protect themselves from the attacks of wild animals, the panther in particular, may be given as an illustration. Four jackals’ tails are planted in four different spots, chosen so as to include the area within which they wish to be safe from the claws of the brute. This is deemed protection enough: though panthers should enter the magic square, they could do the Paliyans no harm; their mouths are locked.” It is noted by the Rev. F. Dahmen that Paliyans sometimes go on a pilgrimage to the Hindu shrine of Subrahmaniyam at Palni.
Writing concerning the Paliyans who live on the Travancore frontier near Shenkotta, Mr. G. F. D’Penha states[11] that they account for their origin by saying that, at some very remote period, an Eluvan took refuge during a famine in the hills, and there took to wife a Palliyar woman, and that the Palliyars are descended from these two. “The Palliyar,” he continues, “is just a shade lower than the Eluvan. He is permitted to enter the houses of Eluvans, Elavanians (betel-growers), and even of Maravars, and in the hills, where the rigour of the social code is relaxed to suit circumstances, the higher castes mentioned will even drink water given by Palliyars, and eat roots cooked by them. The Palliyars regard sylvan deities with great veneration. Kurupuswāmi is the tribe’s tutelary god, and, when a great haul of wild honey is made, offerings are given at some shrine. They pretend to be followers of Siva, and always attend the Adi Amavasai ceremonies at Courtallum. The Palliyar cultivates nothing, not even a sweet potato. He keeps no animal, except a stray dog or two. An axe, a knife, and a pot are all the impedimenta he carries. An expert honey-hunter, he will risk his neck climbing lofty precipices or precipitous cliffs. A species of sago-palm furnishes him with a glairy glutinous fluid on which he thrives, and such small animals as the iguana (Varanus), the tortoise, and the larvae of hives are never-failing luxuries.”
Paliyan.
The Paliyans, whom I investigated in North Tinnevelly, were living in the jungles near the base of the mountains, in small isolated communities separated from each other by a distance of several miles. They speak Tamil with a peculiar intonation, which recalls to mind the Irulas. They are wholly illiterate, and only a few can count up to ten. A woman has been known to forget her own name. At a marriage, the father, taking the hand of the bride, and putting it into that of the bridegroom, says “I give this girl to you. Give her roots and leaves, and protect her.” The value of a bride or bridegroom depends very much on the quantity of roots, etc., which he or she can collect. When a widow does not remarry, the males of the community supply her with roots and other products of the jungle. Marriages are, as a rule, contracted within the settlement, and complications occasionally occur owing to the absence of a girl of suitable age for a young man. Indeed, in one settlement I came across two brothers, who had for this reason resorted to the adelphous form of polyandry. It would be interesting to note hereafter if this custom, thus casually introduced, becomes established in the tribe. As an exception to the rule of marriage within the settlement, it was noted that a party of Paliyans had wandered from the Gandamanaikanūr forests to the jungle of Ayanarkoil, and there intermarried with the members of the local tribe, with which they became incorporated. The Paliyans admit members of other castes into their ranks. A case was narrated to me, in which a Maravan cohabited for some time with a Paliya woman, who bore children by him. In this way is the purity of type among the jungle tribes lost as the result of civilisation, and their nasal index reduced from platyrhine to mesorhine dimensions.
The Tinnevelly Paliyans say that Valli, the wife of the god Subramaniya, was a Paliyan woman. As they carry no pollution, they are sometimes employed, in return for food, as night watchmen at the Vaishnavite temple known as Azhagar Koil at the base of the hills. They collect for the Forest Department minor produce in the form of root-bark of Ventilago madraspatana and Anisochilus carnosus, the fruit of Terminalia Chebula (myrabolams), honey, bees-wax, etc., which are handed over to a contractor in exchange for rice, tobacco, betel leaves and nuts, chillies, tamarinds and salt. The food thus earned as wages is supplemented by yams (tubers of Dioscorea) and roots, which are dug up with a digging-stick, and forest fruits. They implicitly obey the contractor, and it was mainly through his influence that I was enabled to interview them, and measure their bodies, in return for a banquet, whereof they partook seated on the grass in two semicircles, the men in front and women in the rear, and eating off teak leaf plates piled high with rice and vegetables. Though the prodigious mass of food provided was greedily devoured till considerable abdominal distension was visible, dissatisfaction was expressed because it included no meat (mutton), and I had not brought new loin-cloths for them. They laughed, however, when I expressed a hope that they would abandon their dirty cloths, turkey-red turbans and European bead necklaces, and revert to the primitive leafy garment of their forbears. A struggle ensued for the limited supply of sandal paste, with which a group of men smeared their bodies, in imitation of the higher classes, before they were photographed. A feast given to the Paliyans by some missionaries was marred at the outset by the unfortunate circumstance that betel and tobacco were placed by the side of the food, these articles being of evil omen as they are placed in the grave with the dead. A question whether they eat beef produced marked displeasure, and even roused an apathetic old woman to grunt “Your other questions are fair. You have no right to ask that.” If a Paliyan happens to come across the carcase of a cow or buffalo near a stream, it is abandoned, and not approached for a long time. Leather they absolutely refuse to touch, and one of them declined to carry my camera box, because he detected that it had a leather strap.
They make fire with a quartz strike-a-light and steel and the floss of the silk-cotton tree (Bombax malabaricum). They have no means of catching or killing animals, birds, or fish with nets, traps, or weapons, but, if they come across the carcase of a goat or deer in the forest, they will roast and eat it. They catch “vermin” (presumably field rats) by smoking them out of their holes, or digging them out with their digging-sticks. Crabs are caught for eating by children, by letting a string with a piece of cloth tied to the end down the hole, and lifting it out thereof when the crab seizes hold of the cloth with its claws. Of wild beasts they are not afraid, and scare them away by screaming, clapping the hands, and rolling down stones into the valleys. I saw one man, who had been badly mauled by a tiger on the buttock and thigh when he was asleep with his wife and child in a cave. During the dry season they live in natural caves and crevices in rocks, but, if these leak during the rains, they erect a rough shed with the floor raised on poles off the ground, and sloping grass roof, beneath which a fire is kept burning at night, not only for warmth, but also to keep off wild beasts. They are expert at making rapidly improvised shelters at the base of hollow trees by cutting away the wood on one side with a bill-hook. Thus protected, they were quite snug and happy during a heavy shower, while we were miserable amid the drippings from an umbrella and a mango tree.