Sacred Groves and Local Gods: Religion and Environmentalism in South India

copy Koninklijke Brill NV Leiden 2009 DOI 101163156853508X394490

Worldviews 13 (2009) 1-39 wwwbrillnlwo

WORLDVIEWS

Sacred Groves and Local Gods Religion and Environmentalism in South India

Eliza F KentColgate University

ekentmailcolgateedu

AbstractIn recent years environmentalists and scholars of religion have shown an enor-mous interest in the pan-Indian phenomenon of ldquosacred grovesrdquo small forests or stands of trees whose produce is set aside for the exclusive use of a deity Th is article seeks to contribute to scholarship on sacred groves by considering the meanings that Tamil villagers in the Madurai region attach to them First I describe the answers that people give when asked why they do not cut the trees in sacred groves namely the trees are the shade-giving temples or beauty-enhancing adornments of the deity Second I contextualize local discourse about sacred groves in the environmental and political history of the region to uncover old paradigms that inform present-day beliefs and practices Th e forest gods of Tamil Nadu I argue are closely modeled on the pālaiyakkārars (or poligars) of the sev-enteenth and eighteenth centuries fi erce local chieftains who formed alliances with and sometimes defi ed generations of rulers seeking to subdue the region Th e often violent modes of worship these gods require has evoked considerable criticism but I believe they have a lot to teach us about how people thrived for centuries in an unusually harsh environmental milieu

Keywordssacred groves Tamil Nadu fi erce gods guardian deities poligars violence

Introduction

In recent years environmental NGOs botanists specialists in traditional medicine and anthropologists in India have shown an enormous interest in the pan-Indian phenomenon of ldquosacred grovesrdquo small forests or stands of

2 EF Kent Worldviews 13 (2009) 1-39

trees whose produce is set aside for the exclusive use of a deity With the deepening of the global environmental crisis many Indians concerned about the eff ects of deforestation have claimed the sacred groves of India as an ancient indigenous ecological tradition Known by a variety of diff erent names in diff erent parts of Indiamdashin Tamil they are called kōyilkātu (liter-ally ldquotemple-forestrdquo) and sāmitōp (lit ldquogod groverdquo) or are referred to more simply in spoken Tamil as kāttle irukka kōyil (ldquothe temple that is in the forestrdquo)mdashthe beliefs and practices surrounding forested shrines also show considerable variation as does their fl oral composition their size and their embeddedness in concrete relations of property and patronage1 Indeed when one closely examines the phenomena across India it seems ldquosacred grovesrdquo in diff erent regions share little in common beyond the fact that their maintenance leads to the conservation of pockets of abundant and diverse fl ora and fauna in areas otherwise denuded by deforestation

Village dwellers in India rely on the natural resources of forests for their everyday subsistence Th e trunks branches and leaves of trees are used for fi rewood medicine animal fodder and housing materials In addition one must consider the value of the land itself in a densely-populated area where every small tract of potentially arable land is put under the plow What beliefs or values motivate people to sacrifi ce such benefi ts in order to main-tain these diminutive scraps of undeveloped forest In this article I pro-vide two diff erent ways of considering the meanings that people in villages in one region of Tamil Nadu attach to these forested shrines First I describe the answers that people whom I have interviewed in villages north of the great Tamil pilgrimage center of Madurai provide when asked why they do not cut the trees in sacred groves Th eir answers are direct and quite straightforward when regarded from the perspective of local cultural and religious assumptions In addition though I believe there are subtler less easily articulable reasons why it is important to maintain forested shrines While the fi rst approach adopts an emic point of view the second takes a more critical perspective contextualizing discourse about sacred groves in the history of the region to uncover very old paradigms that inform present-day beliefs and practices

1) For an overview of sacred groves around India see Ramakrishnan et al (1998) For per-ceptive analyses of sacred groves in particular regions of India see Amrithalingam (1998 [Tamil Nadu]) Apfel-Marglin and Parajuli (2000 [Orissa]) Freeman (1999 [Kerala]) Gold and Gujar (1989 amp 2007 [Rajasthan]) and Kalam (2001 [Karnataka])

EF Kent Worldviews 13 (2009) 1-39 3

By examining four mythic narratives that feature the fi erce forest gods who typically preside over Tamil sacred groves I seek to show that the vil-lagersrsquo commitment to these groves is bound up with their commitment to the gods who reside there who embody values and qualities that stem from the communityrsquos past as fearsome warriors In this argument I fi nd confi rmation of Emile Durkheimrsquos well-known understanding of religion as ldquofi rst and foremost a system of ideas by means of which individuals imagine the society of which they are members and the obscure yet inti-mate relations they have with itrdquo (1995 [1915] 227) But like most societ-ies that of village Tamil Nadu is not simple but complex not homogenous but variegated not unitary but fragmented and split Th e forest gods so central to the tree protection practices that sustain these fragments of indigenous forest represent a part of Tamil village identity that is often disavowed but from which people derive considerable vitality the fear-some warrior-king who bends human and divine rivals and even nature to his will As I demonstrate through an analysis of the environmental and political history of the region this archetype does not come out of some shared human collective consciousness but out of the concrete history of this community in this place Forest gods in Tamil Nadu I argue are closely modeled on the pālaiyakkārars (or poligars) of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries fi erce local chieftains who formed alliances with and sometimes defi ed generations of rulers seeking to subdue the region I begin by providing some background information on how sacred groves came to the attention of environmentalists in India and around the world

Sacred Groves A Source of Hope

Madhav Gadgil a senior Indian environmental historian established one of the key ideas that brought attention to Indiarsquos sacred groves namely that they provide an ecologically signifi cant refuge for species (Gadgil and Vartak 1975) Gadgil drew on the work of evolutionary biologist GF Gause whose experiments with protozoa demonstrated that in an environment where no limits were placed on the population of either prey or predator one could prevent the extinction of prey species only by pro-viding them with an area inaccessible to predators from whence they could repopulate and colonize other areas (Gadgil and R Guha 1999 24) Sacred


groves he argued essentially provide that kind of shelter to plants and animals from human use By restricting or regulating the use of forest products the taboos surrounding sacred groves limit the over-utilization of species by human beings Other environmental benefi ts of the groves are that they serve as an in situ seed bank for native and medicinal plants recharge and stabilize the underground water table and help to prevent soil erosion In addition one frequently fi nds in sacred groves trees that are themselves considered sacred such as the banyan and the pipal Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha have observed that many such sacred trees are ldquokeystone speciesrdquo that provide habitat nesting material and food for a myriad of animals and birds (1999 24) Given all these ecological benefi ts Gadgil and others regard the sacred groves as an exemplary system of ldquotra-ditional community resource managementrdquo where natural resources held in common are conserved for the long-term benefi t of the community However unlike the forest preserves maintained by the Indian govern-mentrsquos Department of Forestry the ideology at work in the groves is not that of scientifi c natural resource management but religion and custom

Since the fi rst publication of Gadgilrsquos theories about sacred groves in 1975 scholarly and popular interest in the groves has grown by leaps and bounds Th ere have been numerous conferences in India bringing together botanists ecologists and environmental activists to share information and ldquobest practicesrdquo for managing sacred groves (Gajula 2007) Restoration projects have sprouted all over the country funded by federal and state government agencies as well as by local and international environmental organizations like the World Wildlife Fund for Nature Projects such as these entail I would argue more than just utilitarian goals In the face of criticism from abroad and deepening concern from within Indian society about the pace and direction of Indiarsquos development they also communi-cate an inspiring utopian model of society according to which the failures of the recent past can be reversed by developing more culturally sensitive methods that draw on the best elements from the ancient indigenous past updated for the present Yet environmental discourse surrounding sacred groves in India tends to represent the groves as a vanishing tradition part of a heritage of ancient wisdom that is being eroded as Indian society becomes more industrialized educated materialistic and imbricated in global networks of commerce and information In the 1970s Gadgil was already beginning to call for a national program that would preserve sacred


groves in the face of both increasing land pressure and the diminishing strength of traditional religious beliefs He wrote ldquoIt is therefore impera-tive to survey these sacred forests and properly assess their role in nature conservation so that these forests may continue to be preserved even if the religious beliefs associated with them weaken and may disappearrdquo (1975 320 [emphasis added]) Th e argument that Gadgil makes here has great appeal Th ere is evidence that forested shrines preserve in some regions the only existing patches of indigenous forest (Visalakshi 1995 Ramanujam and Kadambam 2001) And yet the rhetoric of the vanishing tradition can be used to sanction top-down appropriation of the eff ective ownership of sacred groves2

More gravely critics like Meera Nanda (2005) and Emma Mawdsley (2006) argue that the romanticized essentialized vision of tradition that accompanies much of the rhetoric about sacred groves feeds into a resur-gent and militant Hindu nationalism which glorifi es the Hindu past in a way that antagonizes others Even the scientifi c substance of claims made about the ldquopristinerdquo nature of sacred groves has been contested Claude Garcia and JP Pascal have argued that the assertion frequently found in scientifi c and popular literature on sacred groves that the groves preserve patches of climax virgin forest is not supported by the botanical and eco-logical features of such forests (eg species diversity tree density existence of ecologically valuable endemic species etc) (Garcia and Pascal) What I have learned in my research on groves in Tamil Nadu neither confi rms nor contradicts the arguments of such skeptics although I believe they merit further inquiry Rather this article seeks to correct what I see as widespread misrepresentations of the religious beliefs and practices sur-rounding the maintenance of forest shrines

Until recently much of the scholarly discourse surrounding sacred groves focused on their environmental aspects and tended to generalize

2) Recently enacted legislation seeks to prevent such government-sanctioned dispossession of communities A 2003 Amendment to the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 provided a mechanism for the legal recognition of community involvement in the protection of habi-tat for fauna and fl ora Government-owned land that is not inhabited nor already a National Park or State Wildlife Preserve can be designated a Community Reserve which guarantees both local control of the land and its protection through the management and oversite of a committee of community representatives But as is often the case in India whether or not the collaborative cooperative spirit of the law is achieved when it is actually implemented depends a great deal on local conditions


broadly about the religious beliefs and practices surrounding them Lack of careful sustained attention to the religious aspects of the groves has led to simplistic views of devotion in these groves as a form of nature worship (thus testifying to the inherently ldquoecologicalrdquo nature of Hinduism) or as gross superstition (thus testifying to the ldquoprimitiverdquo nature of Hinduism) Th e latter mode has dominated discussions of sacred groves in Tamil Nadu For example in his ground-breaking survey of the sacred groves of Tamil Nadu M Amrithalingam describes the animal sacrifi ces that take place in the groves as ldquoparticularly gory and cruel involving live impalement throwing animals from heights tearing them apart with bare hands biting live animals by the devoteesrdquo He continues ldquoIt is unfortunate that little has been done to educate people about the cruelty of this form of worshiprdquo (1998 17) So long as government agencies and NGOs regard the religios-ity surrounding sacred groves as a variety of ldquosuperstitionrdquo destined to be superceded either by a more refi ned religious sensibility or by rational secular thought it is diffi cult for communities who maintain forested shrines to enter into equal partnerships with them Sometimes the reli-gious convictions of environmentalists themselves leads them to disparage or seek to reform elements of local religious practice that they fi nd distaste-ful particularly animal sacrifi ce

Th e impulse to reform seen in the work of some environmental NGOs has multiple sources At one level it is part of a centuries-long vector of religious change in the direction of assimilating local religious practice with pan-Indian Brahmanical modes of religiosity ldquoSanskritizationrdquo the adoption of Brahmanical norms rituals and beliefs by upwardly mobile non-Brahman groups is a long-standing pattern in South Asian religious history which can be seen in diverse forms such as the placement of pro-tective curtains in front of formerly meat-eating deities when sacrifi ces are off ered At another level unspoken assumptions about religion held by many environmentalists may also contribute to the discomfort some feel in the face of the rituals of possession exorcism self-mortifi cation and animal sacrifi ce that are regular features of the worship found in sacred groves As Kocku von Stuckrad writes

Many scholarly publications are dominated by the normative assumption that an environmentally minded respectful and positive religion is better than a religion that encourages exploitative and environmentally negative


human behavior Although there may be good reasons for advocating the environmentally positive currents in religious traditions if we want the human species to survive this hidden agenda often leads to an ultimately colonializing attempt of lsquoimprovingrsquo religions that are deemed ecologically inferior (2007 43)

In a context in which policies are being designed and implemented about how best to preserve these ecologically signifi cant patches of forest some of which are guided by unconscious normative assumptions about reli-gion it seems especially important to listen carefully to what the people who have protected the fl ora and fauna surrounding sacred groves over time have to say about them What about so-called ldquosacred grovesrdquo is sacred to the people who maintain them

In my research I have found very little in the stated beliefs and practices of people who maintain these groves that could be seen as evidence of an ldquoecologicalrdquo ethos if by that we mean exhibiting a ldquoreverencerdquo for nature On the contrary the men and women with whom I spoke come across as hard-headed pragmatists who seek to draw liberally on all the resources available to them social material and supernatural in order to thrive in a diffi cult environment And yet it seems to me that there is a profoundly ecological ethos embedded in the religious cosmology that their beliefs and rituals articulate which rests on an awareness of being ensconced in a dense network of relationships with a wide range of beings such that if you aff ect one element you aff ect all others Moreover as one investigates the cosmo-logical framework that supports the protection of trees in these villages one fi nds a great deal that defi es conventional thinking about ldquofolkrdquo Hinduism in Tamil Nadu Far from being a crude form of superstition the religiosity surrounding these shrines exhibits great complexity and historical depth Before describing that religiosity in greater detail it is important to provide some background information on the environmental and historical context in which the sacred groves in this part of Tamil Nadu fi nd their meaning

Sri Azhagar Koyil Th e Environmental and Political History of a Sacred Center

Among the sacred groves that I have observed and visited since the sum-mer of 2001 are nine located in an area about three miles northwest of


Madurai a major pilgrimage destination growing center of commerce and the second largest city in Tamil Nadu Th e villages in which one fi nds the richest tradition of maintaining sacred groves are located in the Melur and Natham taluks Dindigul District to the east and west of the Natham road that connects Madurai city to the market town of Natham In the valleys that splay out from the ridges of the Azhagar Hills (on the East) and the Sirumalai and Perumalai Hills (on the West) are dozens of villages bound together into a single cultural region by their common orientation to Tirumāliruntildecōlai (ldquothe grove of Tirumāl or Vishnurdquo) a temple dedi-cated to a local form of the pan-Indian deity Vishnu Sri Azhagar the ldquobeautiful Lordrdquo A geographical and spiritual center of great antiquity located at the base of a forested mountain there are references to Tirumaliruncolai dating back to the time of the Alvars Vaishnava saints of the seventh to tenth centuries CE However the deity who is equally if not more important to local people than Sri Azhagar is his kāvalkkārardeyvam (guardian deity) Sri Patinettampati Karuppusami (lit ldquothe Dark God of the Eighteen Stepsrdquo) about whom we will learn more shortly

Figure 1 Topographical Map of Natham area


Some sense of the environmental history of the region can be gained by considering the changing conditions of the hills and plains surrounding Sri Azhagarrsquos temple According to a somewhat eccentric history of the temple (sthalapurānam) written in English in 1942 the site has been known through the ages by many names Its location in a solai a grove made cool and beautiful by the presence of many trees vines and herba-ceous plants is indicated by its formal name Tirumaliruncolai Beneath the dense tree cover a vast sponge-like network of roots retains rain water which in turn feeds many natural springs One of these Sri Noopura Ganga is considered a goddess tantamount to the Ganges and water from this spring is carried from the summit of Azhagar mountain to the temple at the base of the hill for use in all the temple rituals (Radha Krishna 1942 240-241) Even today water from Noopura Ganga is central to the religious rituals of people in the surrounding villages Th e mountain is also home to a Murugan temple Pazhamudhirsholai which is one of the six principal Murugan temples in Tamil Nadu

Th e mountain enjoyed distinction even as far back as the fi fth century CE when it was cited in the Jain epic the Cilapatikāram by Ilangō Describing ldquoVishnursquos mountainrdquo as a cool oasis in a landscape parched by summer heat where ldquodeer stand and cry aloud thirsty and panting for waterrdquo Ilango notes the existence of three pools that bestow miraculous gifts on those who bathe there (Parthasarathy 1993 112-113 [Canto 11 verses 87-130]) In the medieval and early modern period Azhagar koyil was an outpost of Madurai-centered kingdoms in the sparsely populated but strategically important territory north of the capital and was patron-ized by Vijayanagara Nayaka and Muslim rulers In fact the ruins of the fort of Tirumalai Nayaka (r 1623-55) the most famous of the Madurai Nayaka kings are still visible today in the modern town of Azhagarkoyil With steady increases in population however came considerable impact on the landscape First there were the eff ects of frequent warfare in the region between Mughals and Marathas Nayakas and Vijayanagara over-lords Political instability led to the disruption of agriculture in many places It is likely that in this region as in the northern plains of Tamil Nadu untilled land turned to thorny jungle (S Guha 1999 37) Second the rising population along with their herds led to unsustainable levels of tree cutting for fi rewood fodder timber and so forth When mature for-ests in this areamdashwith their tall trees and relatively sparse undergrowthmdash


were cut for lumber and fuelwood they were replaced by dense but short secondary growth forest known as ldquoscrub junglerdquo

To the degree that the Azhagar temple itself was one of the main land-owners in the area changes in its management also had profound environ-mental eff ects With the decline of Nayaka rule in the eighteenth century the temple passed through various hands as Muslim and British rulers vied for control of the area Under East India Company rule British adminis-trators assumed many of the functions of traditional Indian sovereigns including serving as the chief patrons of Hindu temples Th is was not motivated so much by religious tolerance but by strategic realpolitik Tem-ples were central nodes in what Arjun Appadurai and Carol Breckenridge (1976) call a ldquoredistributive networkrdquo of both tangible and intangible resources and as such were key sites for the constitution and legitimation of political authority in early modern south India Temples possessed vast tracts of lands held in the name of the deity the produce from which was shared among the many people who provided service to the deity at the templersquos center Tirumaliruncolai was no diff erent and much of the land surrounding the temple was eff ectively owned and managed by it in the name of Sri Azhagar However in 1801 the British District Collector of Madurai Mr Th omas Bowyer Hurdis sought to reorganize the function-ing of the temple in his capacity as chief trustee (Radha Krishna 1942 59) In a major departure from tradition Hurdis assigned permanent owner-ship of temple lands to people who had previously enjoyed only usufruc-tory rights in exchange for the services they rendered to the temple Th is move was consistent with British ideas that social stability was fostered better through private ownership of land rather than collective sharing of its use-value and it laid the groundwork for further radical changes in the administration of the temple and its properties

Th e temple was managed by the District Collector until 1817 and then by the Board of Revenue from 1817-1863 Finally control of the temple was transferred to the Temple Committee (a precursor of the Hindu Reli-gious Endowments and Charitable Trusts Board) under Act XX of 1863 (Radha Krishna 1942 60) It was in the course of the latter transfer of management that things became really confused and the temple lost con-trol over considerable property A particularly hard blow was the transfer of the forested hills surrounding the temple into the hands of the Forest Department in 1886 Th e historian of Azhagar Koyil Radhakrishna off ers a plaintive description of this loss


Another equally important item of property which we have lost very recently is the famous ldquoSri Alagarrsquos Hillsrdquo otherwise known as ldquoTh en Th iruppathirdquo Th ese hills were till 1886 in our absolute possession and enjoyment But by some grevious error the Government annexed these Hills Th e enjoyment of Sri Alagarrsquos Hills by the Devastanam [the Temple] has now practically van-ished except in respect of a few items as per GO No 2111 Ms Develop-ment dated 25-8-1939 How the Temple Administration also failed to advance their claim to these Hills when the Government attempted at annex-ation remains a mystery (71)

Representatives of the colonial administration naturally had a diff erent point of view on the transfer of the Azhagar Hills

W Francis writes in the Madura District Gazetteer that prior to their transfer to the control of the Government in 1886 the forests on the full ten-mile range of the Alagar Hills were almost completely denuded by the lack of protection He writes ldquoOn all these hills the growth (which is all deciduous) was cut to ribbons in the days before conservation began In 1871 it was reported that almost every stick had been cleared as far as the base of and for a considerable distance up the slopes of the Sirumalaisrdquo (Francis 1914 137) By 1914 Francis was able to report that due to con-servation practices introduced in the late-nineteenth century the southern slopes of the Azhagarmalai ridge facing Madurai were showing ldquonotablerdquo improvement (137) Nowadays the forests covering the Azhagar hills which are managed by the Dindigul Forest Division are quite dense and thick

One of the reasons that Azhagar mountain has attracted so much devo-tional and political interest is the way it stands out from the surrounding landscape as a green and cool oasis in the midst of a dry and in places virtually desolate land Th is territory has long had a reputation for being an ungovernable wasteland and has been regarded as the abode of thieves and bandits a set of assumptions reinforced by the belief held by many Tamils that people and the land they inhabit mutually reinforce each oth-errsquos character (Daniel 1987 79-95 Zimmerman 1988) As with other groups who inhabited the dry rain-fed areas of Tamil Nadu as opposed to the rich river-fed lands that have traditionally formed the religious and political centers of Tamil culture (eg Tanjore with the Kaveri river and Madurai with the Vaigai) the ecological marginality of the people in this region corresponded with their political and social marginality

Members of the dominant caste community of the area who today are primarily responsible for the maintenance of sacred groves refer to


themselves as Ambalakkarars though they are often known in colonial and post-colonial anthropological literature as Kallars Today the caste designa-tion ldquoKallarrdquo has very negative connotations and is rarely used since it means literally ldquothiefrdquo Indeed by all accounts it does appear that for at least three centuries the Kallars of Tamil Nadu had a fearsome reputation A numerous caste with branches and sub-castes extending from their putative native country West of Madurai to northern areas around the cit-ies of Melur Putukkottai and Tanjore Kallars were known as a martial group who off ered protection to other castes particularly from thieves and cattle-raiders3 Like many groups in early modern India they were involved in a variety of diff erent occupations especially herding and farming but they were known primarily for their role as village watchmen or kāvalkkāran According to a local system of policing called pātikkāval Kallars would be paid an annual fee to serve the village As such they were responsible for protecting herds and property overseeing the harvesting and distribution of the produce of the land and maintaining law and order If there were thefts under their watch they had to make good for any losses themselves However if a community decided to do without their policing and protective services the Kallars could forcefully seize compensation for themselves leading in part to the colonialistsrsquo view that this policing system was no better than a form of blackmail and that the Kallars were a wild and predatory tribe preying on the hard work of the noble peasants We should be cautious before too quickly endorsing the view that the British had of groups who explicitly contested their ruler-ship Viewed from within local categories and norms the kavalkkarars

3) Along with the two other major warrior castes of Tamil-speaking south India the Maravārs and the Agampātiyārs the Kallars make up the Muvendra (lit ldquothree [from] Indrardquo) or Muppannar Signifi cantly given the fact that they all inhabit dry regions they trace their origins to the rain god Indra king of the gods of the Brahmanical pantheon Th e myth that narrates their origins gives some insight into their morally ambivalent repu-tation as they were descended from the adulterous union of Indra and Ahalya wife of the sage Gautama Indra lusted after Ahalya a wife so chaste she enjoyed the power of scooping water out of the river and carrying it on her head without the need for any vessel One day while her husband was off on business Indra took the form of Gautama and came to her While classical versions of the tale make no mention of off spring Muvendra origin myths relate that ldquoWhen the Rishi returned one of the three hid himself behind a door and he thus acted like a thief he was henceforth called Kallan Another got up a tree and was therefore called Maravan from maram a tree whilst the third brazens it out and stood his ground thus earning for himself the name of Akamudeiyan or the possessor of priderdquo (Th urston and Rangachari sv ldquoKallarsrdquo 3 63)


operated in many ways like kings albeit over diminutive territories they provided protection from harm using their skill at arms and exacted ldquotaxesrdquo for such service

Th is communityrsquos preferred caste title ldquoAmbalakkararrdquo means literally ldquopeople of the ambalamrdquo or village center where aff airs having to do with justice and corporate-decision making are conducted (Th urston and Ran-gachari sv ldquoAmbalakkararrdquo) Rather than being led by a single hereditary chief the Ambalakkakars pride themselves on their ability to make corpo-rate decisions quasi-democratically through the gathering of all the men at an assembly held at the village center Arguably in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was the Ambalakkararsrsquo ability to coordinate their eff orts that allowed some lineages to parlay their hired-gun status as pro-tectors of communities into recognition as the established sovereigns of small kingdoms or pālaiyakkārars (Ludden 1985 Dirks 1987 1982) Palaiyakkarars (known as poligars in British sources and Little Kings in more recent historiography) were drawn from Kallar lineages along with other martial groups and Telegu-speaking ldquonorthernersrdquo and were distrib-uted in a vast network throughout the dry zones of southern India4 When they wished these headstrong independent fi gures could be thorns in the side of other rulers with regional aspirations In one of the earliest pieces of colonial ethnography on the Kallars Th omas Turnball wrote in 1817 ldquoDuring the feudal system that prevailed among these Colleries [Kallars] for a long time they would on no consideration permit the then Govern-ment [the Madurai-based Nayakas] to have any control or authority over them When tribute was demanded the Cullers would answer with con-tempt lsquoTh e heavens supply the earth with rain our cattle plough and we labour to improve and cultivate the land While such is the case we alone ought to enjoy the fruits thereof What reason is there that we should be obedient and pay tribute to our equalrdquo (Th urston sv ldquoKallarsrdquo and Rangachari 3 58-59) Such independence and willingness to defy authority

4) Th e poligar system was probably initiated during the Vijayanagara empire when local chieftains were entrusted with the responsibility to maintain law and order collect revenue and muster troops for the king In return they kept one-quarter to one-third of the statersquos share of the harvest When the Vijayanagar empire weakened their governors in Madurai the Telegu-speaking Nayakas gained control over large tracts of territory in southern Tamil Nadu Th ey too allocated these same responsibilities to local chieftains even formalizing the palayakkarar system by dividing the country into seventy-two pālaiyams (ldquofortifi ed domain camprdquo) each of which was eff ectively ruled by a palaiyakkarar (Dirks 1982 49-50 Subramanyam 2001 170-71)


led to some subcastes of Kallars being classifi ed as a ldquocriminal triberdquo by the British who next sought to subdue this refractory group Under this des-ignation they were subject to a combination of intense police surveillance to contain them and social reform measures designed to civilize and domesticate them (Blackburn 1978 Pandian 2005)

As mentioned previously in addition to their so-called ldquotraditional occupationrdquo as village watchmen the Ambalakkarars were also farmers In the dry villages of the Melur taluk they made their living from vānā pārtta būmi (Tamil lit ldquoland that looks towards the sky [for rain]rdquo) However in 1885 construction was completed on the Periyar Dam located about 90 miles (150 kilometers) away at the headwaters of the Vaigai River in the Western Ghats From that time irrigation water has allowed agriculturalists in the region to boost production substantially (Mohanakrishnan) With the development of agriculture came the conclusion of a centuries-long process of ldquosettlingrdquo for the supposedly criminal Kallars5 According to local residents for many decades farmers in the area mostly grew payir a collective name for crops grown on good soil (rice paddy cotton sugar cane sorgham etc) In the past twenty years many farmers have turned to the more lucrative cultivation of fruit trees and fl owers Many Ambalak-karar villages are now fi lled with jasmine fl ower gardens and mango and coconut orchards the produce of which is exported throughout the region and the world Even though much has changed in the life-worlds of the Ambalakkarars over the last one hundred years one is struck by their attachment to their traditional identity and to the communityrsquos coherence Th e present day corporate solidarity of the caste is refl ected by membersrsquo attention to the innumerable marital kinship and ritual ties that bind together all of the ldquoeighteenrdquo Ambalkkarar villages in the region ldquoeighteenrdquo being less a numerically accurate than an auspicious number

Sacred Groves Shelter and Shade

Th e sacred groves maintained by Ambalakkarar-dominated villages in this region are small in sizemdashranging from one-half to three hectacres in area

5) British historiography tends to represent Indian communities of mountain-dwelling foragers herders and warriors as primitive ldquotribalsrdquo living in complete isolation or in tenu-ous contact with agriculturalists but they have more than likely been involved in a long process of peasantization (S Guha 1999)


While some sacred groves stand out as verdant patches of forest in the midst of dry grazing lands others are nestled in the valleys of the sur-rounding hills Th ese latter groves tend to merge into the Forest Reserve lands that they border although local residents (and Forest Offi cers) know their boundaries very well Typically sacred groves in Tamil Nadu are not marked with fences or clear boundaries nor are there usually clear images in their centers Rather you know you are entering one when people ask you to take off your sandals so you donrsquot pollute the space just as you should take off your shoes in an ordinary Hindu temple or a Hindu home Th e trees typically found in these groves represent a range of species includ-ing kanciramaram (strychnine tree Strychnos nux vomica) veppamaram (neem or margosa tree Azadirachta indica) alamaram (banyan tree Ficus benghalensis) asilamaram (bitter acacia Albizia amara) navalmaram (black plum tree Syzygium cuminii) karpuramaram (eucalyptus Eucalyptus glob-ules) puliyamaram (tamarind tree Tamarindus indica) and karangalima-ram (red cutch Acacia chundra) While some of these trees are useful to humans for their fruit or medicinal qualities and many of them have

Figure 2 Sacred Grove near Sigupati


religious associations most have limited economic utility which could explain why they are not cut down6

In Tamil Nadu a clear and widely recognized reciprocal relationship exists between trees and sacred places Where there are more trees people assume the presence of a god And where people believe a god resides one also fi nds a taboo against cutting his trees Th is is not because the trees themselves are considered sacred but because they belong to the deity and it would be disrespectful to cut them down Stories about the divine pun-ishment meted out to transgressors act as deterrents against casual encroach-

6) Sacred groves are important to botanists and environmentalists as sanctuaries for indig-enous species not found elsewhere but people I spoke with freely mentioned eucalyptus a clear foreign import among those growing in their groves Moreover when I asked if medicinal plants (mulikai) were more likely to grow in sacred groves my informants answered with characteristic pragmatism that it is not necessarily the case that medicinal plants are more plentiful around temples but that in other places they have cut them down to grow plants with economic value In that way the taboos against cutting have allowed medicinal plants to be more abundant in sacred groves (Interview 30 December 2004 Azhagaapuri)

Figure 3 Entrance to Sacred Grove at Valayapatti


ment and enables the community to police the sites more aggressively (cf Gold and Gujar 2007) For example in Usilampatti an older woman named Chinnakkal told a story about a wealthy man who came and cut trees in the sacred grove dedicated to two goddesses who were sisters Th ough his father warned him not to do it he went ahead First he lost his money and then he lost his sight (Interview 15 December 2005 Usilam-patti) In addition the fact that these areas are not normally accessed by people from outside the community makes them easier to police (cf Kalam 2001)

Generally the community (in cooperation with the deity) enforces taboos that limit the use of forest produce within sustainable levels For example communities sometimes auction off the right to collect the fruits of the black plum or tamarind trees with the agreement that a share of the proceeds be used to celebrate the god or goddessesrsquo annual festival Th ese annual festivals are no small aff air but multi-day elaborate and expensive productions with massive displays of electric lights fi reworks and color posters advertising the festival posted far and wide To fund them communities typically collect a certain amount of money (100-500 rupees) from each household in the village and then supplement that fund with any revenue generated by the temple itself or by lands owned by the temple

At the broadest level the forested shrines for Karuppuswami Aiyannar and the occasional village goddess represent a link back to the days of the pre-settled Kallars Taking their imagery and ritual vocabulary from the days of Nayaka kings when the Kallars were at the height of their indepen-dence the groves off er a space where the ldquoKallarrdquo component of Ambalak-karar identity can be remembered and forged anew Th e shrinesrsquo verdant setting with an eerie crepuscular light fi ltering through the trees provides an important backdrop for rituals that narrate the migration into this region of the Ambalakkarars and the gods who protect them It is possible that the groves with their towering trees and dense undergrowth recall elements of the natural landscape that have disappeared along with the rough and tumble lives of the Kallars and may communicate a recognition of what has been lost in the course of the communityrsquos and the regionrsquos material ldquoprogressrdquo

However this interpretation is not one that Ambalakkarar villagers themselves ever articulated to me Rather the reasons they gave for why


they protect the trees within the precincts of forested shrines were much simpler and more direct Yet in order to understand even these reasons and thus the signifi cance of the groves for the Ambalakkarar communities who maintain them one has to consider them in the light of several aspects of Tamil religion and culture In the following paragraphs I describe and explain the most common answers that people gave when I or my fi eld assistants asked them why they did not cut the trees in this areas In the next section I delve deeper into the cultural meanings and social relations embedded in sacred groves through a close examination of four narratives featuring the fi erce forest gods who reside there In both sections when representing the direct speech of the people I interviewed I translate col-loquial spoken Tamil into English Where the signifi cance of a literal trans-lation is not clear I have added words in brackets that attempt to clarify the speakerrsquos meaning

First and foremost the groves are sites where gods reside thus they are temples although they may not contain any structures in them at all7 In the absence of built structures the most straightforward meanings people give to the fl ora of a sacred grove is that the tall trees protect forest-dwell-ing deities from rain and from the heat of the sun just as built temples shelter deities who stay in the village An elder in the village of Azhagapuri said ldquoTh e reason trees are made to grow in the temple is that the temple should be good [healthy] It should be cool inside It should look beauti-ful Itrsquos like a house Because if there is hot sun He will be uncomfort-ablerdquo (interview 12 December 2005) Th is notion that the gods need our care in order to keep cool is widespread in Tamil religiosity as evidenced in Brenda Beckrsquos classic 1969 ethnography on hot and cool themes in Tamil ritual For example the rituals conducted for Lord Murugan a major Tamil deity in the hot season of May and June exhibit this pattern in that devotees ldquotake onrdquo the heat of the season by walking for miles in proces-sions that led to the deityrsquos main shrine Here Sri Murugan is relieved of his

7) One notable trend discernable in forested shrines over time fi rst analyzed by Hughes and Chandran (1997) is that as a temple ldquoSanskritizesrdquo or modernizes the built structures in the grove gain more importance and sacred value than do the surrounding fl ora leading to environmental degradation in those groves that have been built up over time Most of the groves in the Madurai region had no permanent built structures in them in some groves an open-air structure with a tile roof supported by four wooden posts covered the terracotta votive off erings left by devotees but the most common built structure was a temporary shed made from palymra leaves which typically decomposes in two or three years


heat by having buckets and buckets of cool milk poured over his image Were he to become excessively hot his wrathful nature would come to the fore and the results would be terrifying If this is true for a god whose nature is predominately benevolent and protective how much more so for those deities whose nature is not unambiguously gentle and good

A related idea articulated by many informants was that the trees are the alankāram (lit ldquoadornmentsrdquo by extension ldquobeautyrdquo ldquodecorationrdquo) of these outdoor temples or of the gods themselves As suggested by the informant quoted above the beauty of forested shrines is connected to their health-giving properties of being cool and refreshing both for gods and humans As Ann Grodzins Gold and Bhoju Ram Gujar (2007) and Albertina Nug-teren (2005) have explored a recurring theme in the discourse surround-ing trees and forests in India is the connection between beauty and well-being whether interpreted as health or material bounty Trees are gra-cious and generous not only with the fruit of their boughs but also with their shade which in such a hot climate has immeasurable value Other informants seemed to interpret the equation of trees with the deityrsquos alan-karam as signifying that the trees are the godsrsquo tangible wealth Again and again when asked why one could not cut the trees surrounding a deityrsquos temple people answered that it was His the godrsquos property or wealth (con-tam) To the extent that the produce of the trees is used in a limited way to support the temple festival with usufructory rights being given temporar-ily to people who compensate the temple with a portion of the landrsquos pro-duce the trees of a forested shrine do serve as the property of the deity However the rules governing this property are not those of modern private property (with one individual having sole right to use or sell the land) but rather harken back to feudal times when the fruits of property held in the name of the king or a god were distributed among various share-holders after a sizable share was appropriated for the enjoyment of the ldquoownerrdquo Ponukalai an Ambalakkarar resident of the area explained the prohibition against cutting trees in a sacred grove by comparing the trees to the literal alankaram the jewelry and rich saris used to adorn the village goddess (or Amman literally ldquoMotherrdquo)

Even in times of great loss you cannot borrow against the Goddessesrsquo jewels while you can borrow against your wifersquos jewelry Your wifersquos jewelry is for your ldquoown userdquo [using the English phrase] and that of your relations Godrsquos jewelry is diff erent if you steal it or use it you will be punished Apart


from festival times it is kept in a ldquodumrdquo box [chest] that requires three keys to open it (Interview 1 July 2004 Valaya Patti Madurai District)

Like the trees of the fi erce (usually male) deities who reside in sacred groves outside the village center the gold and bejeweled necklaces used to adorn the village goddess during worship are Her contam Her own wealth And just as the chest holding the jewels of the village goddess can only be opened when all the keys held by diff erent members of the community (or lineage) are present so does the disposition of the trees of a temple grove require the collaboration of a complex group of individuals including temple servants (priests etc) prominent village or lineage leaders and the temple management committee8

Moreover at an aesthetic level the identifi cation of the trees as the adornments or jewelry of the temple or the deity makes perfect intuitive sense Th e towering trees do add to the beauty of the spot clothing the space with cool shade and providing a lovely green backdrop for the ter-racotta votive off erings or images of the deity frequently found in sacred groves At another level referring to the trees as alankaram is a reversal of the usual dichotomy in Tamil discourse between nature and civilization or culture Alankaram is typically precisely that which is made (seykai) crafted embellished or deliberately cultivated beyond its natural state not that which appears or grows spontaneously or iyarkai (the Tamil word most frequently used for ldquonaturerdquo) In much Tamil discourse civilization the more highly valued of the pair only arises with the subduing and con-trolling of nature whether embodied in women animals or the lower gods of the pantheon (Hart) Here though the appreciation given to undis-turbed fl ora seems to complicate the usual valuation of the dichotomy

A frequent theme in both folk and classical Indian literature is the oppo-sition between settled and wild space where the wilderness represents an encompassing yet chaotic realm of danger and fertility whose resources can be tapped and transformed into the means of kingshipmdashthe epitome of order Th e groves and the taboos surrounding them gain meaning within the context of this dichotomy articulated within Tamil culture as a tension

8) As I have argued elsewhere the complex nature of ownership of temple forests probably acts as a break on development since so many individuals (including the deity speaking through an oracle) must agree before any large-scale changes can take place (Kent and Ramanujam 2007)


between the ūr and the kātu the inhabited settled center of a community and the wild forbidding but necessary forest that encompasses it Th is is not a duality found only among Indians or Tamils but rather recalls similar patterns found in many cultures around the world the city on the hill in the midst of a wilderness exile in the desert and settled living in Jerusalem or the forest and the village of Grimmrsquos fairy tales But like any archetype the polarity between the settlement and the forest takes shape through the cultural categories and history of this place these people and their progress through timemdashboth recent and long past In Tamil religious culture one fi nds a clear pattern whereby the living space of a village community can be mapped as a series of concentric circles where each circle is associated with deities whose nature and function corresponds to the zone they reside From the civilized heart of the village to the village boundary and from the surrounding agricultural lands with their irrigation tanks to the most encompassing and wild forest zone deities are arranged in a spatial order such that gods with a wilder more dangerous character are found farthest from the settled center (Masilamani-Meyer 2004 55-63 Mines 2005 125-135) It is these fi erce unpredictable even dangerous gods whom Masilamani aptly calls ldquowilderness godsrdquo (perhaps playing off the neolo-gism kātttu-sāmi) that are most frequently found in forested shrines9

In many villages in Tamil Nadu the physical center of the ur is marked by the mantai a rectangular platform of compacted dirt about ten by twenty feet wide and raised about two feet off the ground Usually graced by the supine presence of from one to a dozen men sleeping off the heat of the day in the shade of a tall spreading tree it is the social and ritual heart of the village Th e mantai is also the place where the assembly meets to make important decisionsmdashabout disputes over property and sexual morality about when to plant and harvest and conduct the annual village festival and about what to do as a village about proposals that come from outside It is also known as the ambalam or central meeting place from which the caste of Ambalakkarars get their name In or near the villagersquos mantai one tends to fi nd gods familiar from the pan-Indian pantheonmdasheg forms of Ganesh Vishnu (Perumal) and Shiva along with the village

9) In her marvelously detailed ethnography on the role of religion in village life Fierce Gods Inequality Ritual and the Politics of Dignity in a South Indian Village Diane Mines (2005) investigates the way the pantheon of gods is related to social structure especially in terms of caste relations something which I cannot investigate here for reasons of space


goddess Village goddesses such as Mariyamman and Muttalamman have an ambivalent moral quality with the potential to be either benign or malevolent as has been amply demonstrated (Whitehead 1921 [1916] Mines 2005 Kapadia 1995 Masilamani-Meyer 2004) In her fi erce form an amman (ldquomotherrdquo) goddess is rarely found in the village center how-ever in her ldquosweetenedrdquo forms she is worshipped as the chief protector of the village responsible for its general health fertility and prosperity (Mas-ilamani-Meyer 2004 57)

In Ambalakkarar villages at the time of the annual village festival the community calls the potter to make the fi gure of the village goddess and gives him a handful of earth ( pitiman) from the mantai with which to make the terracotta image used in worship Th e pitiman thus contains the energy or shakti of the whole village indeed it is the village in iconic form (Dirks 1982 221 Mines 2005130-135) In an apt illustration of Emile Durkheimrsquos understanding of religion when Ambalakkarar villagers wor-ship the goddess they really are worshipping a representation of them-selves But it is important to keep in mind that the fi erce gods of the forest are also self- representations While the village mother goddess embodies the values of the settled agriculturalistmdashstability fertility rootednessmdashthe fi erce gods who live in the forest embody the warriorhunter dimension of Ambalakkarar (Kallar) identity

When asked why some deities live in the forest and others prefer the village center peoplersquos fi rst answer is typically that the forest gods are dustadeyvan

kal Th e Tamil lexicon defi nes this term as ldquomalignant deityrdquo

but locals gloss it as referring to gods that are angry arrogant dangerous or short-tempered in contrast to the patient and peaceful deities of the vil-lage center People fi guratively convey this short-tempered quality of fi erce gods by saying that the reason the deity must live outside the village is that He or She ldquoshould not hear the sound of the mortar and pestlerdquo (ural ulak-kai kētta kutātu) (cf Masilamani-Meyer 2004 63-65) A dense signifi er of both domesticity and sexuality this antique tool for pounding the husk off of grains of rice seems to reference the deitiesrsquo aversion to domestic life with all the impurity and drudgery that it entails It makes a loud rhyth-mic noise that is for many Tamils an evocative sound of village life Nowa-days however one hears the ural-ulukkai less frequently since electric kitchen gadgets such as the mixie-grinder have come into vogue10 Th e dei-

10) On a more prosaic level the phrase may refer to a traditional way of measuring or


tiesrsquo dislike of its pounding underscores the opposition of the deities of the forest to domesticity which fi ts their image as unmarried females and malesmdasheither hunters or warriors or both

Th e phrase that the deity should not hear the sound of the mortar and pestle has an unmistakable sexual connotation as wellmdashsomething that informants alluded to when they would follow the almost proverbial phrase ldquoural ulakkai kētta kutāturdquo with descriptions of how angry irritated and possibly aroused forest deitiesrsquo were by pollution known in Tamil as tīttu Tittu comes pre-eminently from things related to sex reproduction and death One should not go to the sacred grove or any temple after having sex without bathing both men and women are saturated with tittu after sexual intercourse On an every day basis however women more than men fi nd their behavior constrained by the taboos governing pollution A woman should not enter the forest during the days of her menses nor for many weeks after giving birth People frequently reported that in the old days when the taboos surrounding pollution were more strictly enforced menstruating women could not even walk past the grove let alone through it Whether grazing goats or collecting wood they had to walk along cir-cuitous paths to avoid the grove and specifi cally the sensitive deities who reside within it

In sum the meanings that village residents directly attribute to the for-ested shrines and the deities who preside over them cluster around the central dichotomy in Tamil culture between the ur and the katu the village center (epitomized by the mantai) and the forest While all gods are upset by exposure to pollution the fi erce gods who inhabit forested temples are particularly quick to react Th e village amman goddess is more patient and tolerant of the errors of her children but hot-tempered deities like Karup-puswami and Aiyannar will severely punish transgressors for even the slightest infraction One avoids sacred groves and strictly observes the taboos against gathering wood in them to avoid angering the reactive fi erce gods whose home or temple they are Additionally Tamil villagers speak about the trees that provide shade and a cool leafy backdrop for rituals as the deityrsquos temple itself or as adornments for the deity Th us to cut them would be tantamount to vandalizing the deityrsquos palace or rob-bing her of her jewels a crime worthy of swift and severe punishment

indicating distancemdashthe gods need to be placed far enough away that they cannot hear this (very loud) sound


Fierce Gods and Dense Forest Th e Poligars Ride Again

More keys to understanding Tamil sacred groves are revealed through deeper investigation into the qualities of the gods who live within them as exhibited through their relationship with other gods and through the mythic narratives that villagers tell about them Th e deities who preside over the groves in this region tend to be the fi erce gods at the lower end of the Hindu pantheon in their local Tamil forms often known as guardian or bodyguard deities (kāvalkkārardeyvam) (Masilamani-Meyer 2004 Hiltebeitel 1989 Mines 2005) Th e very fact that they serve other godsmdashwhether the amman (village goddess) ensconced in the village mantai or a local form of Vishnu presiding over a palatial stone templemdashis a sign of the guardian deityrsquos subordination within the divine hierarchy Deities at the top of the hierarchy are responsible for a larger domain (and thus are recognized by devotees over a wider social and geographical range) their main temples are the traditional political centers of the region they have more power their biographies and exploits are recorded in written sacred texts their worship is more prestigious and often mediated by Brahmans and they generally concern themselves with the larger issues of life death and ultimate salvation (Babb 1975) Gods at the lower end of the hierar-chy have none of these signifi ers of status and power But the sovereignty of gods in this hierarchy is always relative and determined by context So while Sri Azhagar reigns supreme in his own temple across the Vaigai river from Madurai in a larger context he is subordinate to his sister and brother-in-law in the city Sri Meenakshi and Sri Sundareswarar local forms of Parvati and Shiva whose fame draws pilgrims not just from the region but from around the world In turn Sri Azhagar commands and is served by his body-guard deity Sri Karuppuswami who in turn has power over the ghosts demons and disgruntled ancestors who plague villagers with vari-ous affl ictions and menace the high god whose temple gate he guards11

Th is pattern closely mirrors the political sociology of pre-colonial south India Whether their abode is a huge stone edifi ce or a simple road-side shrine the paradigmatic feature of deities in temple-based Hinduism is sovereignty (Appadurai and Breckenridge 1976) Just as the gods and god-desses who reside in the grand temples of Chidambaram and Madurai are

11) For a vivid rendering of the relations between the presiding deities of the Madurai region and their complex internal relations see the classic documentary fi lm Wedding of the Goddess (1976) directed by Mira Reym Binford and Michael Camerini


modeled after pre-modern kings and queens so are forest-dwelling guard-ian deities modeled after the chieftains or poligars (palaiyakkarars) of old As mentioned previously in my discussion of the political pasts of the Kal-larsAmbalakkarars the poligars ruled over considerable territory in seven-teenth- and eighteenth-century south India (Dirks 1982 1987 Ludden 1985) Responsible for restoring lost property settling disputes and met-ing out punishment for crimes the poligars exercised a monopoly over force both the force involved in seizing other peoplersquos property and in protecting communities against such banditry If not well paid for their protective services they could become marauders themselves All of these features are remembered in the mythology and ritual surrounding the gods associated with sacred groves theft protection against theft horses and weapons are all recurring motifs in their iconography and mythology To enter the imaginative realm of these fi erce deities is to enter a world of pre-rogatives jealously guarded and transgressions swiftly and brutally punished

Th e most prominent of these gods in the region North of Madurai is Patinēttāmpati Karuppusāmi (lit ldquothe Dark God of the Eighteen Stepsrdquo) Th e story of how he came to be Sri Azhagarrsquos body guard shares many themes and motifs with the narratives of other village guardian deities including a vaguely seventeenth century setting during the Nayaka period when the poligars enjoyed considerable independence One local resident tells the story of Sri Karuppuswami this way

In Tirumalai Nayakarsquos time the temple had three gatesmdashsouth east and north At that time 18 magicians (māyāvi) from Kerala came to Tamil Nadu Th ey had a special lens looking through which they could see far distances and into anyonersquos house With that lens they could see that there was a lot of gold inside the Azhagar Koyil Th en someone came to know that the magi-cians were planning to rob the temple But he was only one man what could he do against 18 men Nothing He ran up the temple tower and rang the bell When people in the surrounding 18 villages heard that bell they came running to help Seventeen of the magicians tried to hide but they were killed and their bodies interred in the steps leading into the temple Th e eighteenth who was their leader ran away and hid disappearing into a water tank When King Tirumalai Nayaka caught him the magician pleaded for his life saying ldquoIrsquom not to blame someone sent me to do thisrdquo So the King spared him and just cut his throat but kept him with his life He also gave to him the power of the other seventeen magicians and made him the bodyguard (kāvalkkārar) of Azhagarrdquo (Interview 12 December 2006 [see also Whitehead 1921 113-15 Radha Krishna 1942 210-215])


In Ponukalairsquos rendering of this story the mighty Karuppuswami begins his career as the leader of a band of thieves whose ruthlessness and impiety are aided by their magical powers He comes from ldquoMalayalamrdquo present-day Kerala considered a hot-bed of black magic by residents of the villages surrounding Madurai But when confronted by the power of Tirumalai Nayakar here possessing superhuman capacities himself he is reduced to a quivering coward casting blame for his actions on others and begging for his life When we see how prominent and powerful Karuppuswami is in the local imagination his representation in this myth serves to show how powerful King Tirumalai Nayaka is that the king could subdue such a foe with seeming ease Indeed the mutually constitutive nature of the king and the godrsquos power in this relationship is revealed when we consider how the kingrsquos power is in turn enhanced by iconography of Karuppuswami that depicts the latter as a formidable power who wields enormous weap-ons and requires thick chains to keep him in check

Karuppuswamirsquos role as a sovereign who acts independently in his own domain is seen in the custom that people take oaths in front of His main shrine the doors to the Azhagar koyil (Radha Krishna 1942 212) David Shulman sees something ironic in the idea that oaths should be taken in front of a fi erce bandit and interprets this as another facet of Karuppuswa-mirsquos instantiation of the archetype of ldquodangerous watchmanrdquo (1980 348 n 24) Sri Karuppuswamirsquos role as arbiter of truth makes much more sense if we understand him as modeled directly on the palaiyakkarar a deputy sovereign responsible for law and order in his own Lilliputian kingdom He gains his authority from the maharaja above him and as such his pow-ers are dependent on the latter but within his own territory he has all the powers of a king

Th e next type of god commonly associated with Ambalakkarar sacred groves are the vīrans (lit ldquoheroesrdquo) fi erce male warrior gods frequently found as guardian deities or wilderness deities Many of the themes of the Karuppuswami narrative recur in their myths a fi erce god-warrior from ldquooutsiderdquo is enlisted in the service of a semi-divine human king so that his power may be contained and channeled in support of his master However virans are rarely if ever fully subordinated they must be placated subdued and wooed forcefully if necessary In an extension of the relations of dom-ination and subordination that structure the divine hierarchy as Karup-puswami is to Azhagar these virans are to Karuppuswami (or to his


Figure 4 Karuppuswamirsquos weapons at the Azhagar temple


analogue the other major horse-riding warrior deity found throughout villages of Tamil Nadu Sri Aiyannar) Some of these stories can also be read as veiled migration narratives that describe the movement of lineages of Kallars from one part of the region to another a pattern that is con-fi rmed in the conventional historiography of the region In the process they introduce new themes and bring out new emphases Th e story of one of these fi erce virans was told by an old man the descendent of Lakshmana Sundara Dakshinamurthi Chinnaiya Kameswara Naicker the apical ances-tor in a lineage of Little Kings who lived in a dilapidated compound still known for miles around as the ldquopalacerdquo (aranmanai)

300 years ago the viran was living in Kuttiyar Kuttu Kammay near Tirupara-kundram [the site of a major Murugan temple near Madurai and stronghold of the Piramalai branch of Kallars] He used to come to Valayapatti to go hunting Noticing him Sri Aiyannar at Valayapatti wanted to use this fellow as a guard So Aiyannar sent a wild pig to lure him away After following the

Figure 5 Terracotta votive Viran images at Sri Manjalmalaiyandi Grove Valayapatti


pig a long way the viran shot and killed it He then divided it into fi ve pieces which became fi ve villages Lakkampatti Valayapatti Arasapatti Pudur Kotangipatti Suddenly dawn came but the viranrsquos horse had gotten stuck in a muddy pool

Th e viran seeks the aid of the local lord (the Dorai) and in exchange for worship agrees to stay on as the village protector

Th e Dorai then asked the God to tell him His name but the God replied that only after building His temple would he come to know His name Bar-gaining a little harder the Dorai said ldquoWhat will you give the peoplerdquo And the Dorai extracted a promise that He would not punish the people too severely for the mistakes that they made and that He would only use His power over the rain under the strict control of the Dorai ldquoIf I say stop the rainrdquo said the Dorai ldquoYou make it stop You should just strike them in the stomach [that is withhold rain so that they get hungry] Th e animals and people should get sick but without dying Only after I give the sacred ash then You should let the rain come If I think they have repented enough then You can bring the rainrdquo

Th e Dorai then said to the people ldquoYou should worship the Sky God [identifying the viran as a form of Indra]rdquo Finally the God asked the Dorai to build a temple for Him saying ldquoTh ree days after you make the temple you will know what My name isrdquo At that exact time the stream was fl ooded with yellow water as yellow as turmeric water Th e God then came to the Dorai in his dream and said ldquoFrom now on you call me Mantildecalmalaiyānti [lit lsquoGodAscetic of the Yellow Mountainrsquo]rdquo (interview 17 December 2007 Valayapatti Dindigul District)

In this narrative the agonistic relationship between the human ruler and the dangerous deity is even clearer than in the previous myth Th e narra-tive tension of the story inheres in the battle of wills between the two where the viran appears a little like a dim-witted giant physically strong but no match for the cunning and determined Dorai

An interesting motif found in both myths is of the god becoming ldquostuckrdquo whether Karuppuswami in Tirumalai Nayakarsquos temple tank or the horse of the viran here in the muddy pool Th is motif appears frequently in South Indian myths to explain and demonstrate the legitimacy of a divine beingrsquos or a peoplersquos settling in a particular place (Shulman 1980) Here a kind of uncanny supernatural force compels the god to stay in this area presumably the māya or magic of Sri Aiyannar who appears in the


beginning as an advocate for the village but then disappears his authority or power fading into the background as the fi gure of the human Dorai becomes more prominent

Th e mighty hunter is made vulnerable by becoming stuck and this reveals an opportunity for the king to create an advantageous relationship For besides protection this god appears to possess other powersmdashnamely control over the rain obviously a signifi cant resource in this parched region As the relationship between the Dorai and the viran now referred to as a sami (a general term for ldquogodrdquo in Tamil) deepens the Dorai keeps Him on a tight leash titrating out the samirsquos power over the rain to enhance his own leadership so that the people are aff ected but not fatally by the eff ects of drought (just as Tirumalai Nayaka slit Karuppuswamirsquos neck but did not kill him)12 And though Manjalmalaiyandi is well and truly made a servant of the Dorai in this myth He also exercises a certain autonomy as He forestalls His domestication for three days when He fi nally reveals His name to the ruler Th is notion of a power raw and mighty being under control but not completely is a good metaphor for the patterns of kingship during the era of the palaiyakkarars Maharajas like the Nayaka kings in Madurai could only control the palaiyakkarars under them so far just as the palaiyakkarars exercised authority but not completely over the kavalkkarars who collected tribute for them It also evokes vividly how the Kallars may have related to the power of nature especially in the days before the wide availability of irrigation water

Th e force of the gods and indeed of the forces of nature in this harsh landscape can be very raw indeed Some of the gods who preside over Ambalakkarar sacred groves are barely diff erentiated from the wilderness out of which they arise and which they call their home In another village called Valayapatti this one East of Azhagar Koyil a god known as Pillai-Tinni-Vīran (lit ldquothe hero-god who eats childrenrdquo) resides in a densely wooded glen at the border between neatly tended mango orchards and the rocky dry slopes of the state-owned Reserve Forest its boundary marked by a sandy road and by the command that one take off onersquos sandals before

12) Th e association of kings with rain has many sources in Indic thought Certainly the Vedic god Indra king of the gods whose weapon is the thunderbolt establishes a pattern found in many parts of India But Tamil literature composed prior to extensive contact with Indo-European civilization contains its own version of this association See George L Hartrsquos highly suggestive discussion of the ancient Tamil vision of the king as commander of rain (1999 xvii-xx)


entering Pillai-Tinni-Viranrsquos story was told to me in a fragmentary way by an elderly priest who was the fourth generation servant of the deity Like many such priests he claimed not to know the story well Only the ances-tors knew it fully he said its details had been forgotten over time It is also typical of these gods that the rawness of their power is in inverse propor-tion to the clarity of their personality Like Sri Karuppuswami Pillai-tinni-viran comes from Kerala but beyond that we get few details of his life Because of his presence in the community we are told children in the vil-lage kept dying Th ey tried numerous methods of mitigating his malevo-lent power withholding worship from him worshipping him sacrifi cing a child of the priestly lineage and symbolically cutting a fi nger to represent child sacrifi ce Finally they went to the village goddess for advice She took the priest and vanished returning with a child stolen from women working in the fi elds in ldquothe north countryrdquo Henceforth the community faithfully follows the goddessesrsquo instructions to sacrifi ce a goat as a substi-tute for an actual child sacrifi ce in order to obtain heirs ldquoOnce there were only fi ve [families]rdquo concluded the godrsquos present-day priest ldquonow there are 100 familiesrdquo (Interview 30 June 2004 Valayapatti Madurai District)

By ldquocivilizedrdquo standards this god is clearly pretty horrible Th e people cannot live with him but they cannot get rid of him It is only after the intervention of the village goddess that they fi gure out a way to worship him in such a way that their lineage thrives in his presence instead of dying off Th e narrative fl ow here is worth noting the form of worship becomes gradually more mediated as symbolic substitutes are found for the human victim arguably found at the base of all forms of ritual sacrifi ce Does this mean that the people became more ldquocivilizedrdquo as they discovered that symbolic sacrifi ce was more eff ective than the death of an actual child Or does it mean that the god became tamed and pacifi ed over time Or some combination of the two Again and again in the mythology of these fi erce village deities a theme arises of the need to fi gure out how to wor-ship a god Sometimes the god is too dangerous and nothing can be done but to put it in a box and tie it up tightly with chains and throw it into a river in the hopes that some person who can fi gure out the nature of the god will fi nd it and worship it Th is myth is so fragmentary that one must be cautious in advancing an interpretation but I wonder if here too we fi nd an indirect statement about the diffi culties of life in this environmentmdashwhere one has to persevere before fi nding the right combi-nation of techniques to survive


A slightly less raw form of divinity is revealed in the mythology of another sacred-grove deity In this story the god is not a powerful hunter a malevolent child-eater or a thieving magician but a young hot-tempered girl Still one fi nds here too some recurring themes the godrsquos need to prove its divinity by performing some deed the need to get permission to settle to win a place in this crowded land and most of all the complemen-tary relationship between the god and a semi-divine human ruler Th is story was narrated by the elderly hereditary priest of the village of Sigu-patti a powerful old man with a piercing gaze who was regularly possessed by both of the fi gures described in this story Set in the time of the British the narrative begins with Azhaginatchiyamman (whose name was glossed for me as ldquothe Village Goddess who is a pre-pubescent girl related to Azhagarrdquo) migrating from one Ambalakkarar village to another until she fi nds herself in the care of a priest or chieftain named Chinnamannan (lit ldquoLittle Kingrdquo) Challenged by the British to prove the goddessrsquo power Chinnamannan boasts that She can make a lamp burn on the water But as soon as he makes the claim he becomes sick with fear and doubt Th e priest continued

Th e sami came and said ldquoWhy are you not taking any foodrdquo ldquoI told them the fi re would burn [or glow] on the water but if it doesnrsquot happen they will kill merdquo said Chinnamannan Th e goddess told him ldquoIf you are like this [so weak in faith] who will worship me Okay you just go take water from the pot and pour it on the lamp It will burnrdquo So the Britishers came and saw the lamp burning on the water Th is happened at the place Ponamaravati

Th e goddess moves on to Sigupatti where Lord Shiva gives her a place to stay on the outskirts of the village explaining that ldquothey canrsquot have that goddess inside the village because some men will take liquor Both good girls and bad girls would come to this place [suggesting that the bad ones will have sex with the drunk men and the resulting ritual pollution will off end the deity] Th e goddess should not aff ect anyone [adversely]rdquo Lord Azhaga (Vishnu) also gives her a temple on the mountain and Chinna-mannan himself gives her a temple in the village in exchange for the boon of a child

ldquoBoth my wife and I are 100 years oldrdquo said Chinnamannan ldquoIf you give a male child Irsquoll give that child for your service [ie he will become the pujari]rdquo


So the goddess gave a male child After that Chinnamannan asked for another boon ldquoYou have asked for a place in the mantai Irsquoll just go and plant a dry stick on the mantai Let the branches grow all around [so it gives lots of shade]rdquo Th e Britishers saw this also and gave land for the temple [believing in the power of the Goddess] (Interview 18 December 2005 Sigupatti)

Th e hierarchy between deity and human is not as pronounced here as in the previous narratives Rather the myth suggests a more collaborative relationship between gods and their human interlocutors At fi rst the human priest-king Chinnamannan appears as the cowardly one weak in faith and fearing failure But after becoming convinced of the Goddessrsquo power and fi nding a suitable site for the Azhagirsquos worship (with the help of the high gods of the area) Chinnamannan fi nds that the Goddess is a font of fertility who can bestow the boon of children and even persuade the British to give land Th e narrative even suggests that through the give and take between Chinnamannan and Sri Azhagi she becomes so amenable that a temple can be made for her in the village center itself albeit one already equipped with cooling shade to mitigate her fi erce qualities

In the villages that support the two other guardian deities I have consid-ered heremdashManjalmalaiyandi and Pillai-tinni-viranmdashone fi nds a dichot-omy or tension between the male forest gods and the female village goddess who is represented as unambiguously benevolent compared to the fi erce male deities In Sigupatti however that split between kadu and ur (forest and village) occurs within the goddess herself As the priestrsquos narrative indi-cates the goddess has two templesmdashone in the mantai and one on the mountainmdashfor even as she becomes pacifi ed through exchanges and transactions with the community the part of her that continues to live in the dense forested shrine outside the village boundary is still quite fi erce As the priest said of her preference for living in the forest ldquoShe is an angry girl Shersquos very pure [suttamān a deyvam] Some good girls and bad girls may come and She wants to get away from all thatrdquo She is also associated with the communityrsquos tradition of hunting Before the annual festival a [temporary] image of her is brought from the forest temple to the mantai temple while the priest goes out hunting for a rabbit with a party of men from the village When they are successful they roast the rabbit on a spit before her and distribute the meat to all the houses of the village Such a successful hunt is an indication that she is pleased with the community and gives permission for them to hold a festival for her I believe that


here we see a good illustration of the divided nature of Ambalakkarar identitymdashon the one hand they are settled agriculturalists who draw on the Goddessrsquo power to acquire land for cultivation On the other hand though they are hunters and warriors who draw on other aspects of the Goddessesrsquo power to obtain success in the forest Th is powermdashthe power of violencemdashrequires a more cautious approach as instantiated in the taboos surrounding the Goddessesrsquo forest shrine

Th e proliferation of village deities has perplexed many scholars of south Indian popular Hinduism Why are there so many deities some of whom are barely diff erentiated from each other Th ere are no doubt innumerable answers to this question some of which have to do with local power rela-tions and the fact that at festivals the most powerful people in the village serve as the honored vehicles of these deities when the gods descend and speak to their devotees through the entranced village leaders (cf Kapadia 1995 Mines 2005) In addition I would argue that at some level these gods are best understood not as personalities but as powers In what may seem like an unlikely echo of ancient Vedic religion these village deities are like the forces of the natural world they are powers that can be used and should be used but with care Moreover these village deities are portable even malleable Th ey are traded moved from village to village divided into parts and distributed buried moved away from and sometimes locked in chests and thrown into a river in the hopes that someone with the right touch for worshipping them properly can tap into their powers and make them do good

In the layering of meanings associated with the forest deities I think we can fi nd more clues as to why the Ambalakkarars who maintain sacred groves work so hard to do so Th ere is a great deal of demand for the natu-ral resources that are preserved in the forestsmdashfor fi rewood fodder for animals fruits and leaves to use as medicine not to mention the impor-tance of the land itself in a densely-populated area where arable land is the most highly valued form of property Th e Ambalakkararsrsquo willingness to observe the taboos surrounding the forests which protect the forest as the deityrsquos own domain has to do with their commitment to these fi erce gods Th ese gods evoke I would argue two to three hundred year old commu-nity memories of themselves as Kallarsmdashthe guardians of this area who were also thieves alternately protective or vindictive sheltering or terrify-ing Th e rituals of worship involving hunting possession prophecy and


the sacrifi ce of animals allow for a kind of re-enactment and re-instantia-tion of that important aspect of their community identity

Conclusion

In this article I have set forth what I believe is an original interpretation of the meaning and identity of Tamil guardian deities who are closely associ-ated with the phenomena of sacred groves by virtue of their predilection for forested shrines far from the noise and pollution of settled life Vari-ously understood by scholars as demonic beings (Whitehead 1921 [1916]) symbols of caste relations (Mines 2005) and instantiation of the ldquodanger-ous watchmanrdquo archetype (Shulman 1980) no one has to my knowledge explored in depth the many resemblances one fi nds between them and the poligars of old13 But is this argument then purely of antiquarian interest What does it have to do with environmentalism or the intersection between religion nature and culture

As has been well documented among the reasons why people abide by the taboos forbidding the use of forest produce in the godsrsquo sacred pre-cincts is that they are so terrifying Tales of these forest deitiesrsquo capacity to smite down transgressorsmdashquickly without investigating the whys and whereforesmdashcirculate among villagers and provide some protection against over-use of the groves Th ough their reputation for violent aggression is central to their ability to protect one fi nds in discourse about sacred groves produced by middle-class urban Indian environmentalists a striking ambivalence towards the deities who preside over them While the grovesrsquo ecological benefi ts are widely celebrated many people express disapproval and distaste for the intense and sometimes violent forms of worship that surround the deities who reside in the groves I would agree that there are aspects of forest godsrsquo worship that are deeply problematic from an egali-tarian progressive sensibility Because of their fi erce nature and the threat that they will react violently to ritual pollution untouchables (Dalits) are often banned from their groves as are menstruating and post-partum

13) In his ethnography of religion among the Kallars (1986) Louis Dumont does recognize how Karuppuswamirsquos role of watchman ldquocorresponds with great exactness to the traditional social role of the Kallar as watchmanrdquo (408) but his obsession with purity and pollution leads him in other directions and he does not explore this observation in greater depth


women Moreover their myths and worship valorize deeply hierarchical relationships based from one point of view on frank domination

Yet I would argue that far from representing something primitive and in need of reform in Tamil culture one can fi nd a great deal to admire in these deities and in the enduring relationships that communities have formed with them and around them over time As Laurie Patton has argued with respect to the eff ort to mine Vedic thought for the resources for an environmental ethos we should avoid the temptation to whitewash the violence inherent in much thought about nature in the Hindu tradition Th e violence of animal sacrifi ce for example may be seen as a way of embracing onersquos place in the biotic community (not pretending to exist somehow outside of or above it) in a rough and tumble world where as the Upanishadic sages put it everything is either eater or eaten (Brhadāranyaka Upanisad 146) (Patton 2000) Similar relationships of dominance and subordination are vividly described and even valorized in the myths of fi erce forest gods as is animal sacrifi ce Th ese are not ideal ways of relating but it is not clear that human beings can maintain communities for long without them

From a historical point of view the stories surrounding the fi erce forest gods of Tamil Nadu have much to tell us about how communities survived for centuries in an unusually harsh environmental milieu where rain was infrequent and unpredictable and the heat scorched everything Th ough one would never wish it we as a human community may someday once again fi nd ourselves facing similar conditions of scarcity Th ese narratives illustrate the qualities necessary for survival under such conditions which are found in people brave enough to engage with the fi erce and unpredict-able gods of the forest cunning intelligence and the ability to think on onersquos feet improvising solutions and persisting until techniques that lead to human thriving can be found Th ey also teach us about the need for patience to negotiate over the long haul giving and taking in response to forces in the environment both natural and divine What is valued here is not harmony in some fi xed utopian form a peaceful Edenic stasis in which ldquothe lion and the lamb lie down togetherrdquo rather the traditions surrounding the fi erce gods and their human communities envision a dynamic harmony in the form of a balance of powers attained through constant negotiation

Just as the poligars in Kallar country maintained a certain independence while being politically (and sometimes only nominally) dominated by the


kings in Madurai so the forces of nature remain ultimately free even when we think we have them fully under control Indeed if one does take these forest gods as symbols for the ldquoforestrdquo itselfmdashthe wild untouched forces of naturemdashtheir subjugation to the limited extent possible is frankly neces-sary for human survival And yet what the narratives also affi rm in diverse ways is that total subjugation is neither possible nor desirable because our own survival depends on the continued existence of the forest and the wellsprings of vitality it stores

Acknowledgements

For their helpful comments on earlier drafts I would like to thank Whitney Sanford Ann Grodzins Gold and Christopher Key Chapple Generous funding from the American Institute for Indian Studies the Colgate Research Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities has helped support this project at various stages and is gratefully acknowl-edged Finally many thanks are also due to M Th avamani and J Arun Selva for their indefatigable assistance conducting the fi eldwork for this article

References

Apff el-Marglin Frederique and Pramod Parajuli 2000 ldquolsquoSacred Groversquo and Ecology Rit-ual and Sciencerdquo in Hinduism and Ecology Th e Intersection of Earth Sky and Water ed by Christopher Key Chapple and Mary Evelyn Tucker Cambridge Mass Harvard Uni-versity Press 291-316

Amrithalingam M 1998 Sacred Groves of Tamilnadu A Survey Chennai CPR Environ-mental Education Center

Appadurai Arjun and Carol A Breckenridge 1976 ldquoTh e South Indian Temple Authority Honour and Redistributionrdquo Contributions to Indian Sociology (ns) 10 (2)187-211

Babb Lawrence A 1975 Th e Divine Hierarchy Popular Hinduism in Central India New York Columbia University Press

Baviskar Amita 1999 ldquoVanishing Forests Sacred Trees A Hindu Perspective on Eco-Consciousnessrdquo Asian Geographer 18 (1-2)21-31

Beck Brenda 1969 ldquoColour and Heat in South Indian Ritualrdquo Man ns 4 (4)553-572Binford Mira Reym and Michael Camerini directors 1976 Wedding of the Goddess Pts 1

and 2 Madison Wis South Asian Area CenterBlackburn Stuart H 1978 ldquoTh e Kallars A Tamil lsquoCriminal Tribersquo Reconsideredrdquo South

Asia ns 138-51Daniel E Valentine 1984 Fluid Signs Being a Person the Tamil Way Berkeley University

of California Press


Dirks Nicholas B 1982 ldquoTh e Pasts of a Palaiyakkarar Th e Ethnohistory of a South Indian Little Kingrdquo Th e Journal of Asian Studies 41 (4)655-683

mdashmdash 1987 Th e Hollow Crown Ethnohistory of a Little Kingdom in South India Cam-bridge Cambridge University Press

Dumont Louis 1986 A South Indian Subcaste Social Organization and Religion of the Pramalai Kallar Translated by Micheal Moff att Delhi Oxford University Press

Durkheim Emile 1995 [1915] Elementary Forms of the Religious Life Translated by Karen E Fields New York Th e Free Press

Francis W 1914 Madras District Gazetteers Madura Vol 1 Madras Madras Government Press

Freeman JR 1999 ldquoGods Groves and the Culture of Nature in Keralardquo Modern Asian Studies 33 (2)257-302

Gadgil Madhav and Ramachandra Guha 1999 Th is Fissured Land An Ecological History of India New Delhi Oxford University Press

Gadgil Madhav and Vartak VD 1975 ldquoSacred Groves of India A Plea for Continued Conservationrdquo Journal of Bombay Natural History Society 72 314-320

Gajula Gautam 2007 ldquoSacred Grove Lore and Laws On the Beliefs of Ecologists Envi-ronmentalist-Historians and Othersrdquo Indian Folklife 26 (July 2007)19-24

Garcia Claude and J-P Pascal 2006 ldquoSacred Forests of Kodagu Ecological Value and Social Rolerdquo in Ecological Nationalisms Nature Livelihoods and Identities in South Asia edited by Gunnel Cederlof and K Sivaramakrishna 198-229 Seattle University of Washington

Gold Ann Grodzins nd ldquoWhy Sacred Groves Matter Post-Romantic Claimsrdquo in Do Villages Matter edited by Diane Mines and Nicolas Yazgi Unpublished manuscript under review by Oxford University Press

Gold Ann Grodzins and Bhoju Ram Gujar 1989 ldquoOf Gods Trees and Boundaries Divine Conservation in Rajasthanrdquo Asian Folklore Studies 48211-229

mdashmdash 2007 ldquoMalajirsquos Hill Divine Sanction Community Actionrdquo Indian Folklife 26 (July) 9-14

Guha Sumit 1999 Ecology and Ethnicity in India c 1200-1991 Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Hart George L 1999 ldquoIntroductionrdquo in Th e Four Hundred Songs of War and Wisdom An Anthology of Poems from Classical Tamil Th e Purunanuru ed and trans by George L Hart and Hank Heifetz New York Columbia University Press

Hiltebeitel Alf ed 1989 Criminal Gods and Demon Devotees Essays on the Guardians of Popular Hinduism Albany NY State University of New York Press

Hughes J Donald and MD Subhash Chandran 1997 ldquoTh e Sacred Groves of India Ecology Traditional Communities and Religious Changerdquo Social Compass 44 (3)413-427

Kalam MA 2001 Sacred Groves in Kodagu District of Karnataka (South India) a Socio-Historical Study Vol 21 Pondy Papers in Social Sciences Pondicherry Institut Francais de Pondichery

Kapadia Karin 1995 Siva and Her Sisters Gender Caste and Class in Rural South India Boulder CO Westview Press

Kent Eliza F and MP Ramanujam 2007 ldquoFierce Gods and Dense Forest Sacred Groves in Coromandelrdquo Indian Folklife 26 (July)14-19

Ludden David 1985 Peasant History in South India Princeton Princeton University Press

Masilamani-Meyer Eveline 2004 Guardians of Tamilnadu Folk Deities Folk Religion Hindu Th emes Vol 5 Neue Hallesche Berichte Halle Germany Franckesche Stiftungen zu Halle


Mawdsley Emma 2006 ldquoHindu Nationalism Neo-Traditionalism and Environmental Discourses in Indiardquo Geoforum 27 (3) 380-390

Mines Diane P 2005 Fierce Gods Inequality Ritual and the Politics of Dignity in a South Indian Village Bloomington Indiana University Press

Mohanakrishnan A 1997 History of the Periyar Dam with Century Long Performance New Delhi Central Board of Irrigation amp Power

Nanda Meera 2005 Wrongs of the Religious Right Refl ections on Science Secularism and Hindutva Delhi Th ree Essays Press

Nugteren Albertina 2005 Belief Beauty and Bounty Rituals around Sacred Trees in India Leiden Brill

Pandian Anand 2005 ldquoSecuring the Rural Citizen Th e Anti-Kallar Movement of 1896rdquo Indian Economic and Social History Review 42 (1)1-39

Parthasarathy R ed and trans 1993 Th e Cilapatikāram of Ilankō Atikal An Epic of South

India New York Columbia University PressPatton Laurie L 2000 ldquoNature Romanticism and Sacrifi ce in Rgvedic Interpretationrdquo in

Hinduism and Ecology Th e Intersection of Earth Sky and Water edited by Christopher Key Chapple and Mary Evelyn Tucker Cambridge Mass Harvard University Press

Radha Krishna KN (1942) Th irumalinrunjolai Sri Alagar Koil Stala Purana Madurai Sri Kallalagar Devastanam

Ramakrishnan PS KG Saxena and UM Chandrashekara eds 1998 Conserving the Sacred For Biodiversity Management Enfi eld NH Science Publishers Inc

Ramanujam MP and D Kadamban ldquoPlant Biodiversity of Two Tropical Dry Evergreen Forests in the Pondicherry Region of South India and the Role of Belief Systems in their Conservationrdquo Biodiversity and Conservation 10 (2001)1203-1217

Shulman David Dean 1980 Tamil Temple Myths Sacrifi ce and Divine Marriage in the South Indian Saiva Tradition Princeton N J Princeton University Press

Stuckrad Kocku von 2007 ldquoFinding Data Some Refl ections on Ontologies and Norma-tivitiesrdquo Journal for the Study of Religion and Culture 1 (1)39-46

Subramanyam Sanjay 2001 Penumbral Visions Making Polities in Early Modern South India Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press

Tomalin Emma 2004 ldquoBio-Divinity and Biodiversity Perspectives on Religion and Envi-ronmental Conservation in Indiardquo Numen 51265-295

Th urston Edgar and K Rangachari 1909 Castes and Tribes of Southern India Vol 1-7 Madras Government of Madras

Whitehead Rev Henry 1921 [1916] Th e Village Gods of South India Calcutta Associa-tion Press

Visalakshi N ldquoVegetation Analysis of Two Tropical Dry Evergreen Forests in Southern Indiardquo Tropical Ecology 361 (1995) 117-27

Zimmerman Francis 1988 Th e Jungle and the Aroma of Meats An Ecological Th eme in Hindu Medicine Comparative Studies of Health Systems and Medical Care Berkeley University of California Press


trees whose produce is set aside for the exclusive use of a deity With the deepening of the global environmental crisis many Indians concerned about the eff ects of deforestation have claimed the sacred groves of India as an ancient indigenous ecological tradition Known by a variety of diff erent names in diff erent parts of Indiamdashin Tamil they are called kōyilkātu (liter-ally ldquotemple-forestrdquo) and sāmitōp (lit ldquogod groverdquo) or are referred to more simply in spoken Tamil as kāttle irukka kōyil (ldquothe temple that is in the forestrdquo)mdashthe beliefs and practices surrounding forested shrines also show considerable variation as does their fl oral composition their size and their embeddedness in concrete relations of property and patronage1 Indeed when one closely examines the phenomena across India it seems ldquosacred grovesrdquo in diff erent regions share little in common beyond the fact that their maintenance leads to the conservation of pockets of abundant and diverse fl ora and fauna in areas otherwise denuded by deforestation

Village dwellers in India rely on the natural resources of forests for their everyday subsistence Th e trunks branches and leaves of trees are used for fi rewood medicine animal fodder and housing materials In addition one must consider the value of the land itself in a densely-populated area where every small tract of potentially arable land is put under the plow What beliefs or values motivate people to sacrifi ce such benefi ts in order to main-tain these diminutive scraps of undeveloped forest In this article I pro-vide two diff erent ways of considering the meanings that people in villages in one region of Tamil Nadu attach to these forested shrines First I describe the answers that people whom I have interviewed in villages north of the great Tamil pilgrimage center of Madurai provide when asked why they do not cut the trees in sacred groves Th eir answers are direct and quite straightforward when regarded from the perspective of local cultural and religious assumptions In addition though I believe there are subtler less easily articulable reasons why it is important to maintain forested shrines While the fi rst approach adopts an emic point of view the second takes a more critical perspective contextualizing discourse about sacred groves in the history of the region to uncover very old paradigms that inform present-day beliefs and practices

1) For an overview of sacred groves around India see Ramakrishnan et al (1998) For per-ceptive analyses of sacred groves in particular regions of India see Amrithalingam (1998 [Tamil Nadu]) Apfel-Marglin and Parajuli (2000 [Orissa]) Freeman (1999 [Kerala]) Gold and Gujar (1989 amp 2007 [Rajasthan]) and Kalam (2001 [Karnataka])
















































































































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press




























































































































































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press
























































































































































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press





















































































































































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press
















































































































































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press












































































































































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press






































































































































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press



































































































































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press
































































































































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press




























































































































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press






















































































































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press



















































































































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press















































































































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press









































































































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press






































































































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press

































































































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press




























































































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press
























































































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press




















































































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press














































































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press










































































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press



































































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press






























































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press

























































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press





















































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press

















































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press















































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press











































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press




































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press































































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press




























































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press























































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press



















































Conclusion











Acknowledgements


References









of California Press















































Conclusion











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Acknowledgements


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Documents

Sacred Groves and Local Gods: Religion and Environmentalism in South India