9
Temple Control and Cross-Cut Segmentation in Chettinad

Introduction

The importance of Nakarattar kinship, residence, and temple affiliation for Nakarattar banking organization has already been suggested by our analysis of the account books and ledgers from a Nakarattar agency in Burma (Chapter 5). Those books and ledgers revealed substantial deposit accounts invested by the proprietor's kin groups and temples located in Chettinad. Similar practices extend back in time to twelfth-century merchant guilds, who also staged wide-ranging commercial activities from narrowly circumscribed residential bases (Abraham 1988; Hall 1980). Itinerant Nakarattar salt traders had adopted the practice by the seventeenth century (Chapter 7). Nakarattar banking in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries only continued this pattern.

By the twentieth century—the earliest period for which we can form estimates of Nakarattar business volume—Nakarattars' investments in Chettinad made up only a small percentage of their total assets: less than 1 percent. But these investments served as a kind of monetary reserve, complementing the loans available to elite Nakarattar adathis through the Imperial Bank and European banks. When the Asian economy was inflationary, Nakarattars remitted huge amounts of money back to their homeland and invested it in relatively nonliquid assets: temples, houses, jewelry, and the like. When money was tight overseas, a portion of these assets was used to maintain the liquid capital required to continue with business as usual. By the 1930s, however, the world economy had become so bad that the reserve ratio of liquid Nakarattar investments in Chettinad to overseas investments was simply inadequate to meet the demand for cash.

In country after country, Nakarattar bankers found it necessary to stop lending money, to refuse further loan extensions, and to foreclose on mortgages and other securities. Even the relatively few Nakarattars whose assets remained liquid and ample in the wake of the depression cut back substantially on their money-lending activities and invested their money in industries, mines, and plantations. Yet, prior to this time and (largely as a reflex) afterwards, the Chettinad deposits—however small relative to total Nakarattar assets—were jealously guarded and carefully controlled by a tightly knit form of caste organization specifically adapted to the needs of accumulating capital and controlling the supply of investment funds to its members. Not surprisingly, Chettinad holds a special importance for Nakarattars that far transcends its status as a residential territory. This chapter looks at two key institutions in the control of economic and political resources in Chettinad: (1) the Hindu temple, whose role in commerce and politics outside of Chettinad we have already explored (Chapter 7), and (2) the Nakarattar caste itself, considered as a network of kinship relationships that tied control of temples in Chettinad by individual kin groups into a single, segmentary system.

Nakarattar Settlement and Dominance in Chettinad: The Historical Charter

Traditional caste histories published from 1895 up to the present portray the Nakarattar as useful and valued (if sometimes victimized) citizens of their society and as possessing a special political status in the traditional, medieval kingdoms of Tamil Nadu.^[1] Nakarattars employed these histories to justify what, for them, was a continuation of their special role during the colonial period, not just as bankers and merchants, but as essential supporters of legitimate government and even as a branch of the government itself. In one special context, however—namely, in their Chettinad homeland—Nakarattars used their histories to define themselves as legitimate governmental authority.

The story of Nakarattar settlement in Chettinad has it that a Pandyan king invited 502 Nakarattars, belonging to seven families, to migrate to his own kingdom in order to carry out trading activities vital to the health of his realm. As an inducement and, it is implied in the histories, as their right, he gave them collectively the land of Chettinad, and he gave each of nine subgroups derived from the seven families a centrally located temple.^[2] The descendants of these nine groups are said to form the exogamous dispersed clans of the Nakarattar jati that can be documented from the seventeenth century to the present.

By asserting that the Pandyan king gave them the temples and lands of Chettinad, the Nakarattars claim that they should be regarded as the king's surrogate protectors and rulers in Chettinad—or, simply, as local kings of Chettinad. Paraphrasing Neale's (1969) formulation, "To be given ownership is to rule." And indeed Nakarattars wielded authority and justified political action in Chettinad by reference to their historical charter. They acted as kings by seeking and attaining political authority as trustees for the kingdomlike territories that colonial authorities designated as zamins , by obtaining title to zamins in their own right, and, as the colonial system evolved, by gaining seats on governmental bodies such as municipal and district boards. In these capacities, they conducted themselves as kings by overseeing the majority of endowment and managerial tasks for temples, roads, markets, and other public facilities.

Religious Endowment

Motifs in the Nakarattar varalaru that depict superior Nakarattar status support their claims that they are legitimate surrogate kings of Chettinad as a whole. Nakarattars appealed to these motifs to argue that their position in colonial Chettinad society was a legitimate continuation of traditional precedent. The most dramatic Nakarattar expression of this role was large-scale religious endowment of Chettinad temples. Indeed, they were prodigious temple endowers wherever they did business. But their involvement with the temples of Chettinad has many qualities that are of special concern.

At least four kinds of temples were recipients of Nakarattar largess. There were major Saivite temples throughout South India and in important places of pilgrimage in North India as well (e.g., Kasi). Nakarattars not only gave generously to such temples, but also frequently served on their boards of trustees. There were temples in foreign (business station) lands for which, in addition to the just-mentioned activities, Nakarattar bankers met to discuss community matters, set interest rates, and so on (see Chapter 6). There were the nine clan temples of Chettinad, which, in addition to satisfying the above conditions, also housed the administration for gotra -like, exogamous clans (called kovils or "temples" themselves) that legitimized marriages and adoptions and that traditionally settled all kinds of intraclan disputes. Finally, there were temples for village goddesses and guardian gods of Chettinad which were funded largely by Nakarattar funds even though they might have been administered by and served non-Nakarattar communities, collectively called the Nattar, "people of the country."

A. V. Ramanathan Chettiar (1953), a Nakarattar caste historian, provides a cumulative estimate of the locations and amounts of Nakarattar religious endowment throughout India as of the year 1930 (see below).^[3] His calculations indicate that between 1850 and 1930, Nakarattars donated Rs. 106,441,000 in temple endowments, not including their extensive endowments outside of India—a sum roughly equal to their commercial investments in India.

Apart from the information about the size of Nakarattar endowments, one interesting artifact of Ramanathan Chettiar's tabulations stands out. In preparing his tables, Ramanathan classified Nakarattar endowments according to their location in medieval Chola territorial zones. The implication—especially in a publication that represents the Nakarattar traditional history as accurate—is that Nakarattar involvement in Tamil temples reflects a continuation of ancient practice. A further noteworthy feature of Ramanathan's table is that more than half of the reported Nakarattar endowments (the first three categories of the table) are concentrated in their Chettinad homeland: about 10 percent (Rs. 10,500,000) went to their clan temples, 36 percent (Rs. 38,315,000) went to their village temples, and 6 percent (Rs. 6,493,000) went to non-Chettiar temples in Chettinad. In addition, the endowments recorded by Ramanathan include only exceptional donations by relatively elite and wealthy Chettiars. They do not take into account periodic tithes levied by the Chettinad clan and village temples, both on a per capita basis (pulli vari ) and also on the most wealthy members of a clan or village temple's congregation (asti vari ).

The coincidence of reference to medieval territorial boundaries in classifying different temples and the concentration of Chettiar endowment in the temples of Chettinad is no accident. As we have already seen (Chapter 7), religious endowment could be translated into control of specific religious trusts or even into control of the entire financial resources of a temple. The translation operated through processes of redistributive exchange

extending back to medieval times in South India and unaltered by otherwise significant changes in temple organization from 1817 on.^[4]

In general, leaders of donative groups ranging in size from individual families to business corporations, caste associations, and finally chambers of commerce gave endowments (kattalai ) to the deity of a temple in return for ritual honors (maryatai ). Honors, in turn, publically defined various forms of power held both by leaders of local donative groups and by kings or representatives of the state. The nature of honors received depended upon the generosity (vallanmai ) of the donor. Important honors consisted, for example, of the right to receive prasad and holy ash before anybody else in the donative group. Higher honors consisted of control (trusteeship) over all donations designated for a specific ritual trust fund. The highest honor consisted not only of control of the specific endowment in question, but of a position as trustee or karyakkarar ("doer") on the temple's board of trustees.^[5]

This ultimate honor was really a relatively recent development. It is not clear that it was possible for anyone to control an entire temple prior to the nineteenth-century introduction of legal distinctions between public and private interests (see Chapter 7) and the legal definition of large Hindu temples that were the focus of collective pilgrimage and festivals (tiruvila temples) as public temples, subject to control by a board of trustees. Authors of the growing body of temple studies have focused attention on the causes and consequences of colonial redefinition of these temples as public institutions (Appadurai 1981; Breckenridge 1976; Mudaliar 1973).

Less attention has been paid to an accompanying side effect: namely, institutionalization of and legal status for the privately owned temple. In Chettinad, at least, Nakarattars made use of this development to reinforce their claims to traditional kingly status, effectively excluding other castes from trusteeship (and lesser forms of worship) in the largest temples associated with their clans and residential villages. They were so effective in this game of ritual political power that, by 1926 (immediately after the enabling legislation of 1925), they had won legal recognition of private status for clan and village temples and hereditary rights as trustees to these temples for Nakarattar families. In this position, they have continued, in many cases, to direct temple-based ritual, political, and commercial processes up to the present day.

Nakarattars won their legal battles by appealing to their traditional caste history and to other, less prejudicial evidence as proof that specific Nakarattar subdivisions were historically legitimate collective owners of their respective temples.^[6] An illustration is provided by an administrative

report prepared for the Board of Trustees of the Ilayathakudi clan temple in 1939 (Ilayathakudi Devasthanam 1939). In its account of the history of the temple, the report pointed to 1801 articles in the newspaper Hindubhi describing Nakarattar management of the temple and its inam (tax-free, income-earning) villages. The report noted that Nakarattar rights to management were recognized by the Madras Inams Register of 1864. It cited a "poll tax" (pulli vari , see below) in 1877 of all Nakarattar hearthholds (conjugal families, pullis ) in the clan. All of these "proofs" of continuous Nakarattar involvement in the temple were used to validate a 1926 ruling by the Madras High Court in which Nakarattar trustees were confirmed as hereditary officers of the temple.^[7]

Temple trusteeship was an office worth fighting for. Although trustees did not take part in decisions about day-to-day temple operations, they did make all significant policy decisions about uses of temple funds for worship, charity, salaries for temple functionaries, the sale of temple property, the rent of temple lands, and the management of temple funds for investment (often as monetary loans to individuals and business firms).

I have no good estimate for the total assets owned by Nakarattar-controlled temples between 1870 and 1930. But we can begin to speculate about the magnitude of capital involved by considering the cumulative financial power of temples across South India. According to David Washbrook (1976: 183–184),

In 1879, the capital of the temples [in the Madras Presidency] was estimated officially at [Rs. 297,500,000], which yielded an annual income of [Rs. 17,500,000]. But these figures excluded the capital value and income of land which was held on tenures other than inam and whose worth may have been as high as half as much again.... Besides possessing land, major temples drew pilgrims from across the whole of India, whose purchasing power supported entire local economies; they controlled legal monopolies over the sale of many sacred commodities; they organized huge markets and fairs to coincide with their principle festivals. They represented important sources of wealth and political power in themselves.

Washbrook's figures, moreover, apply to the early part of the period under review in this paper, before a major rise in land values and other opportunities for investment that lasted up until the 1920s (Washbrook 1973).

A partial breakdown of the assets and expenditures of a single Nakarattar clan temple illustrates more precisely what was at stake for specifically Nakarattar-owned temples. My information is obtained from an administrative report by the trustees of Ilayathakudi Temple Devastanam in 1939.

The report apparently covers the last eight months of temple operations in 1939, during which time the temple employed over 16,700 workers in various maintenance and construction jobs. Table 13 lists expenditures totaling approximately Rs. 115,500 that were incurred on these different jobs and are described in the report.

The administrative report by no means represents a complete account of all temple assets, investments, or expenditures. In particular—as with the government report cited by Washbrook—the report contains no mention of non-inam landholdings, including probable ownership of urban property within cities in Madras or of deposits kept with Nakarattar firms in Southeast Asia.^[8] Such investments were, nevertheless, an important part of temple income, and their history and future prospects were subject to considerable discussion by temple members, especially the pros and cons of investment strategies pursued by trustees from different temples. Moreover, while the overwhelming concern of a temple congregation was surely the welfare of its temple and temple deity, individual members of the congregation also benefited from temple investment policies. A set of account books for a Nakarattar agency house in Burma, for example, recorded a deposit of Rs. 70,000 from the clan temple of the agency's proprietor (see Chapter 5). In other words, whatever else they were, the temples of Chettinad were capital accumulators and distributors. In the following discussion, I describe how Nakarattar politico-territorial organization, cult membership, and descent group structure provided a framework for understanding and controlling the ritual and financial resources of Chettinad temples.

Descent and the Temple Cults of Chettinad

From the Nakarattar point of view, superior political authorities granted and confirmed their rights of ownership over Chettinad lands and temples,

both in their legendary past and in the recent colonial period. Nakarattars renewed these ritual and political rights over the centuries by their faithful discharge of kingly responsibilities for temple endowment, maintenance, management, and protection. Beyond this, however, Nakarattars believed that recruitment into temple-centered cults, collective (but segmented) ownership of temples, and succession to the office of temple trustee were all based primarily on rules of agnatic transmission across generations. They drew on their beliefs about agnatic descent, inheritance, and succession when using their traditional history as a charter to guide and justify behavior.^[9]

Few Nakarattar businessmen had studied systematic Hindu theories of descent and heritability. Moreover, Nakarattars employed a non-

Brahmanic, nontextual vocabulary for naming their descent groups. But, in spite of terminological differences from Vedic texts and Brahmanical teachings, Nakarattar beliefs generally coincided with classical textual doctrine about substantive and moral inheritance. In particular, Nakarattars employed ideas about descent through the male line to assign membership in four distinct kin groups, and membership in each group carried with it a set of moral rights and obligations. These groups—referred to as pullis, valavus, pirivus, kuttikkira pankalis , and kovils (see Chapter 8)—formed a nested taxonomy corresponding roughly to Brahmanic groups identified in the Dharmasastras as parivara, kula , and gotra . They also corresponded to anthropological analytic concepts of conjugal family, joint family or minimal lineage segment, localized lineage segment, maximal lineage segment, and nonlocalized clan (see Figure 14).^[10]

The important property that all of these kin groups shared was that characteristic rights and duties at each level of Nakarattar kinship structure were transmitted through the male line, even if the group in question was not defined solely in terms of a descent group (e.g., the pulli or the village-based lineage segment). To be a Nakarattar, then, was to inherit the substantive and moral qualities of the kin groups to which one belonged. In the context of these beliefs, the initial Pandyan grant of the rights and obligations of Chettinad rulership to immigrant Nakarattar ancestors constituted a heritable moral code that devolved upon subsequent generations of Nakarattars.^[11]

The issue is not straightforward. There exist apparent discrepancies between Nakarattar social organization as depicted in traditional caste histories and Nakarattar social organization as seen during the colonial period. It is true that both legendary and colonial Nakarattars were segmented into nine descent groups that were indexed by membership in an identical set of temple cults. But temple cult membership among ancestral descent groups was determined by village residence. By contrast, few colonial Nakarattars resided in the villages of their nine clan temples. In fact, the majority dwelt in ninety-six (now seventy-eight) Nakarattar residential villages throughout Chettinad.^[12] More fundamentally, settlement in a residential village during the colonial past and membership in the cult of that village's temple did not require Nakarattars to relinquish membership in the clan temple from which they ultimately were descended. On the contrary, Nakarattars during the colonial period exhibited what can be idealized as a two-tier organization, in which every individual was simultaneously a member in the temple cults of both his clan and his village.

The two kinds of temples shared many similarities and a few notable differences beyond those already indicated. Both generated income by

Figure 14.
Nakarattar descent-based cults.

attracting endowments from their members, by tithing their members annually with a nominal head tax per family (pulli vari ), and by tithing their richest members with occasional taxes called asti vari . Both kinds of temples received additional income from productive devastanam property such as the tax-free agricultural estates called inams . The largest clan temples had huge memberships that extended throughout the villages of Chettinad. All but one of the clan temples spread its congregation among from fifteen to fifty-four villages (see Figure 15). Conversely, village temple memberships were confined, by definition, to a single village. In the larger towns such as Devakottai or Karaikudi, there might be more than one residential temple; the congregation of each temple corresponded to a section or neighborhood of the town.

There were qualitative and quantitative differences in the kinds of worship that occurred in clan and village temples. Clan temples celebrated one or two collective festivals each year and played a ceremonial role in the marriages of their members. But they were not the primary focus of wor-

Figure 15.
Representation of Nakarattar temple clans in Chettinad villages, ca. 1930.
Source: Temple census in Ramanathan Chettiar (1953).

ship for rites concerning the welfare of the village, as was the village Siva temple. Consequently, they were not a frequent focus of worship for their members. In contrast, village temples staged six or seven seasonal festivals that also served as occasions for celebrating their members' life-cycle ceremonies.^[13] In other words, village temples were more intimately bound up in the lives of their members than were clan temples.

Despite these differences, and despite my characterization of clan temples and village temples as two distinct institutions, they are best viewed as distinct only on an idealized or structural level. From a processual or diachronic point of view, they emerge as extreme ends on a continuum of descent-based cults that reflect an inverse relationship between the genealogical depth of a descent group and the presence or absence of common residence as criteria for participation. These processes can be observed in examples of the evolution of such cults from their beginnings as family rites of ghost propitiation and ancestor worship.

Among the Nakarattar, women seem particularly prone to processes of deification. If they die before their husbands, and especially if they die before giving birth to children, their ghosts (peys ) are regarded as potential sources of both supernatural danger and supernatural blessings. In the case of one family whom I came to know, my informant's father's sister had died thirty days after her wedding at the age of twelve. The family now refer to her as their kula teyvam (family deity) and address her as teyvata (goddess), not pey (ghost). Following her death, she appeared nightly to her natal family in their dreams and asked for homage in return for protection. As part of the cult of their kula teyvam , the family maintains a special box containing saris, jewels, or other articles that once

belonged to the dead girl or that were subsequently given to her spirit (avi ).^[14] For example, my informant's father promised his sister's spirit a diamond necklace in return for a son. When my informant was born, his father kept his word. The box for the family's kula teyvam is kept in a special room called a sami arai ("god room" or shrine) belonging to my informant's father's hearthhold (pulli ) in the house of his joint family (valavu ). The family worships their kula teyvam in a ceremonial rite called a pataippu at least once a year and sometimes as frequently as four times a year. Pataippus are not performed on any regularly marked occasion, but are carried out as part of important life-cycle ceremonies undergone by members of the family (e.g., on the birth of a son or the marriage of a daughter). Paitaippus may also be performed before any family member undertakes a major business venture or travels abroad. When a pataippu is performed, the kula teyvam's possessions are cleaned and displayed before her portrait in the sami arai . New gifts are offered and foods including kanji (a ground rice porridge), fruit, and betel are given. Afterwards, prasad (the sacramental food and betel) is distributed to the assembled family and invited relatives, who consume it.

In another case, four dead women of previous generations are worshipped collectively in a pataippu ceremony by the lineage segment into which the women had married. This lineage segment included several valavus comprising all of the lineage members in a single village (pirivu ). It did not include members from valavus residing in other villages, who nevertheless shared membership in their maximal lineage segment, the kuttikkira pankali . The separate identities of the deceased women are largely fused in the minds of their descendants, whose offerings are made simply to a single kula teyvam referred to, again, as teyvata . In still other cases, family kula teyvams have entirely lost their identities as ancestors and are worshipped in discrete shrines or at their own temples as local village goddesses. Finally, in another case (described below), a large kuttikkira pankali had segmented into several subdivisions (pirivus ) distributed among three different villages. Each subdivision worships the deity of its residential village. But members of all the subdivisions celebrate their common descent once a year by returning to their ancestral village for collective worship of their kula teyvam .

Taken together, these cases illustrate a general process by which rites of ancestor worship have evolved into regional cults of major deities. Pulli -based ancestor cults grew organically with their pulli as the husband claimed his inheritance, partitioned the valavu into which he had been born, and formed an independent valavu with himself as senior male. Where such valavus were influential and wealthy members of their resi-

dential village, they often endowed a shrine in a local temple or endowed a completely new temple to house the cult of their ancestor and to serve as a place for its worship. In some cases, other villagers (both Nakarattar and non-Nakarattar) took an increasingly large part in rites of worship, especially if the deity gained a reputation for granting boons and causing or averting suffering. If valavus from the village moved to a new residential village, they retained ties with their ancestral village by continued participation in major rites at the temple of their kula teyvam . Meanwhile, as descendants of the founding family, they retained a special position in the management of the temple's endowment (kattalai ) and in the offering of continuing gifts to the deity and receipt of honors from the deity. Eventually, the ancestral ghost of many families assumed the trappings of a non-Brahmanic village deity: a guardian god or goddess.^[15] Ultimately, what was once a private deity might become "sanskritized" (Srinivas 1952), assuming more and more of the traits associated with Brahmanical deities.

As cults underwent this gradual evolutionary process, their membership also changed, from the single pulli that began the cult as a rite of ancestor worship, to all the valavu of a single village who propitiated the ancestor of one of their members as a village deity, to, finally, a multivillage cult whose members saw the efficacy of their worship as confirmation that their kula teyvam was a high Hindu deity to which they had particular claim as an hereditary right. The difference between the cult's early stages and its later stages lies in the number of families that recognized the deity as their kula teyvam , and in the multiplication of residential villages to which these families had migrated.

This scenario represents an admittedly speculative account. But it is based on processes that have been observed in Chettinad during the last hundred years. I offer it as a plausible theory for the formation of clan and village cults observable throughout Nakarattar history and as a link between Nakarattar social organization during the colonial period and Nakarattar social organization as depicted in the story of their migration to Chettinad. If I am correct, it should be possible to identify transitional cults between the clan and village cults that characterize Nakarattar two-tier social structure.^[16]

This is precisely what we do find in Chettinad. On one hand, the cults of widely dispersed Nakarattar clans are constituted of very old descent groups, whose constituent lineage groups live in multiple villages, who no longer maintain memories of consanguineal connections, and who do not collectively observe the rituals that would therefore apply. On the other hand, members of cults for Nakarattar village deities are constituted of younger descent groups, whose members reside in the same village and

who maintain consanguineal relationships through the observance of ritual obligations tied to village residence and to mutual observance of each other's life-cycle ceremonies. In addition, however, it is possible to find descent-based cults that fall structurally midway between clan and village temples. Their members reside in multiple villages, but their subdivisions retain consanguineal relationships and some common ritual observances in the village of their apical ancestor. In other words, the two-tier idealization of Nakarattar social structure marks the polar ends of a culturally recognized continuum of descent-based cults of worship that vary along the inverted axes of genealogical depth and residential requirements for membership. The following two sections of this chapter explore in more detail differences in the membership, organization, and management of each of these two types of cults and their intermediate variants.

Clan Temples and Temple-Clans

Nakarattars referred both to their clan temples and to the clans themselves as "nakarakkovils ." For the sake of clarity, I shall diverge slightly from this usage and distinguish between temple-clans and clan temples. During the colonial period, the temple-clan was a set of otherwise unrelated lineage segments (kuttikkira pankali , see below) who shared hereditary cult membership in a common clan temple. Membership of individual Nakarattars in a temple-clan was determined agnatically but indirectly by membership in a lineage segment that belonged to the clan. Although every lineage segment of a Nakarattar temple-clan claimed descent from the founders of the clan's temple, and although consanguinity was presumed and intermarriage prohibited, different lineage segments from the same temple-clan did not, in general, exhibit demonstrable consanguineal ties. In other words, colonial Nakarattar clans were quite similar to the better-known clan groups represented by Brahmanic gotras (Khare 1970; Madan 1962). The substantive difference is that, whereas Nakarattar temple-clans trace their descent from ancestral members of specific temple cults, Brahman gotras trace their membership from ancestral disciples of mythical gurus called rishis .

The temple-clans varied in size (see Figure 16 for 1930 estimates), and some were divided into subclans (see Table 14). These two traits—their uneven population distribution and their differential segmentation—suggest a long-term historical process of sequential fission and migration, thereby lending support to the sequence described in their caste history (if not its telescoped time frame, cf. Rudner 1985). But this is a topic that requires further investigation.

Nakarattar clan temples were owned jointly by their clan members,

Figure 16.
Nakarattar temple clans by population, ca. 1930.
Source: Temple census in Ramanathan Chettiar (1953). Population
figures were calculated as five times the number of pullis in a clan.

who were called kovil pankalis "temple shareholders". Representatives from each clan made up the executive officers and boards of trustees (karyakkarars ) for their respective clan temple. They directed the construction and operation of the temple. They also allocated expenditures and investment of considerable sums of money. In the colonial period, the businesses of kovil pankalis were the primary beneficiaries of temple investments. For example, kovil panam deposits from a clan temple made up almost half the liabilities of a major banking agency in Burma during the colonial period from 1912 to 1915 (see Chapter 5). In addition, as illustrated earlier in this chapter by the case of Ilayathakudi Temple, temple funds were frequently spent on devastanam properties or on local civic improvements, such as roads or tanks for the villages of Chettinad.

Nakarattar clans supported their temples by a variety of means. Every Nakarattar household or pulli was tithed a nominal amount each year in a tax called a pulli vari . In addition, a wealth tax or asti vari was charged on exceptional occasions, as temple needs demanded. These contributions were taken seriously (though less so today), and individuals and their kin could be excommunicated from the community for failing to meet their contributions. This was an important sanction, for clan temples legitimized Nakarattar marriages, and without clan temple sanction no marriage could occur. Finally, clan temples received a major portion of their funding through endowments of land or money or both. Only Nakarattars belonging to the temple clan were permitted to endow the clan temple.^[17]

(table continued on next page)

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Clan temples served local political functions by integrating the Nakarattar community with other individuals and groups who participated in temple rites of worship, including members from non-Nakarattar jatis residing in Chettinad. Like any village temple, inhabitants from the surrounding villages might worship there as part of the regular round of daily worship (naivettiyam ) maintained at any Siva temple; they might worship on an occasional basis (arccanai ) to satisfy a vow (nerttikkatan ) or to ask a boon and make a promise in return (ventutal ), or they might take part in one of the few yearly rituals (utsavam ) staged by a Nakarattar clan temple. In the last case, Nakarattars received first honors before any other caste, even Brahmans.

Members from non-Nakarattar castes also served special roles in temple rituals, including rituals peculiar to Nakarattar clan temples. In particular, clan temple vairavis , or "temple messengers," were traditionally drawn from the Pandaram caste. Their special role concerned rites of Nakarattar marriages and funerals pertaining to the clan temple. At marriages, vairavis brought a garland to the bride's house, signifying her official transfer to her husband's clan. At funerals they brought a large torch to the top of the temple tower (kopuram ) to guide the dead person's spirit (avi ). Vairavis also invited Nakarattar and non-Nakarattar notables to important temple functions. Besides these official duties, however, vairavis also acted in an unofficial capacity as a kind of middleman employment service between Nakarattars and non-Nakarattar employees. If labor (skilled or unskilled) was needed for constructing a house, if cooks or gardeners were required, if a new maidservant had to be found, very often it was the temple vairavi who learned of the need while carrying out his official duties and who brought together the potential employees and employers. In this way, activities oriented around the rituals of Nakarattar clan temples extended to and tied together people from all over Chettinad, not just those who dwelled in the immediate temple neighborhood.

For all of these reasons, Nakarattar clan temples were—with village temples—one of the primary instruments of political integration for the people of Chettinad generally, and for the Nakarattar caste in particular. This is less true today than it was before the colonial creation of novel institutions of government following the Morley-Minto and Chelmsford reforms of 1909 and 1919 and the District Board elections of 1937. During the colonial and precolonial periods, the Nakarattar village and clan temples must have played a very important role, indeed, and the Nakarattar system of decision making within clan temples tells us a good deal about their political organization.

As already noted, trustees were recruited on a hereditary basis. But, over the course of time, many Nakarattar families made substantial endowments to their clan temples, and the descendants of these families all had claims to the honors and obligations of trusteeship. In principle, Nakarattars dealt with the plethora of candidates having claims to trusteeship by rotating the office in a regular fashion between selected small groups of prominent families from throughout Chettinad (Periakarrapan 1976).

Village Temples and Dominant Lineage Segments

Almost every village of Chettinad housed a variety of temples, including a major Siva temple, a goddess temple, a village guardian temple, and a secondary goddess temple for an associated hamlet of untouchables. Members of non-Nakarattar castes such as Kallars or Konars managed the guardian god's temple (normally a temple for Ayyanar). Nakarattars referred to members of all such castes as the Nattar , the "people of the country." Only they had the right to open up the hundial (a special strongbox) into which devotees put contributions for festivals held to worship the deity of the temple. Management of the goddess temple varied. In some cases she was considered a manifestation of Parvati (the wife of Siva), and her temple was managed by Nakarattars. In other cases, she was considered as one or another amman (a goddess such as Mariamman). In this case, her temple was more likely managed by important members of the local Nattar community. The untouchable castes managed their own temples. Nakarattars contributed heavily to the financial costs of all of the temples in their village, but normally exercised managerial control only over the main Siva temple, which they considered their own property. In the following discussion, the phrase village temple refers just to these Nakarattar-controlled Siva temples.

Nakarattar village temples contrasted with clan temples in that membership in their cults was determined by the intersection of principles of descent and residence, not by descent alone. A Nakarattar was a temple cult member of the village, where a localized lineage segment—into which he had been born or adopted—maintained a common house and participated in a local temple cult. As a consequence, village temple membership was not confined to a single lineage or even a single clan, but extended to members from different lineages of different clans who shared common residence in their natal village.

Traditionally, Nakarattars lived in the same village as other members of a common lineage segment. Both male and female members of these village-bounded descent groups visited other villages in Chettinad for cere-

monial purposes or made an occasional pilgrimage to a major temple outside of Chettinad. Only Nakarattar men ventured forth widely on business trips. In more recent times, Nakarattars have held their residence outside their lineage village and even outside Chettinad. But they maintained their membership in the village temple cult so long as they continued to participate in the ceremonial life of their ancestral house and the village temple.

An important variation on this theme is exemplified by the relatively large lineage segments of some of the Nakarattars whom I came to know during my field work. In one case, a Nakarattar joint family (valavu ) had moved their residence from their ancestral village of Kattupattu to Athekkur before the turn of the century. Nevertheless, they maintained their participation in the cult of the deity in Kattupattu. They also participated in the cult of the village deity in Athekkur, along with other branches of their lineage who had moved with them. But the entire set of lineage members—those in Kattupattu, those in Athekkur, and those in still other villages and towns—retained the solidarity of the lineage by participation in the cult at Kattupattu. In another case, a set of thirty-five different families maintained records of descent from a common ancestor who lived over two hundred years ago. The thirty-five families were split into five branches, with four residing in one town, and one residing in another town. No descendants of the original ancestor lived in the tiny hamlet of his birth (which, I understand, had been abandoned).

The Nakarattar term for all of these essentially cult-based, sometimes coresidential lineage segments was kuttikkira pankali , "shareholders who come together" (i.e., to perform ritual ceremonies). They were constituted by members of a lineage segment whose ancestors had partitioned the common estate once held by their deceased (fore)fathers, but who retained responsibility for attending and conducting all important life-cycle rituals of their members. Their size was variable and depended on how long ago the first partition had taken place. The largest such groups that I came across resided in Devakottai. They numbered their families in the hundreds and subdivided them into segments termed vattakais (circles) and pirivus (divisions).

Tension between different subdivisions of kuttikkira pankali could arise after difficult and bitter partitions or in the event of political competition between previously partitioned lines.^[18] In such cases, the feuding pankalis might express the tension between them by refusing to attend certain ceremonies, especially marriages that established affinal alliances at the expense of collateral cooperation. However, all pankalis tried to attend the funerals of respected elders, thus signifying their common line of descent. Many kuttikkira pankali maintained a common share in an

ancestral house in their respective residential villages (urs ) in Chettinad. There they retreated to perform their own life-cycle rituals. Alternatively, component joint families (valavus ) maintained their own houses, but these houses remained in the native village, often side by side on the same street. Despite occasional strains, kuttikkira pankalis normally combined to assert their solidarity, especially in establishing dominance within their residential village.

For example, in one (not atypical) Chettinad village, six families were regarded as wealthy and important inhabitants. Individually, each family had assets of between one and two million rupees. But three families together formed a kuttikkira pankali worth about four million rupees and exercised their influence by heavily endowing the village temple and serving as its hereditary trustees. The wealthiest of these families had paid for a kumpapisekam (temple renewal festival) as recently as the early 1960s.

Up until 1948 and the Zamindari Abolition Act, the temple had been entitled to 50 percent of the melvaram of the village (literally, the "upper share"—that is, the king's or government's share—roughly 30 to 45 percent of the gross produce of the village). During the time of my field work it was almost totally dependent on Nakarattars, who contributed perhaps 75 percent to the cost of new construction, renovations, and special events. My principal informant, Lakshmanan Chettiar, provided me with a remarkably clear general description of the contemporary system of contributions to village temples:

The contribution is a fixed amount of rice plus cash in each village. It varies according to the requirements of the temple and the size of the Nakarattar population in the village. After 1945, many villages have revised the rates. In Devakottai and some other places, no contribution is collected. The expenses of the temple are met just from the donation [asti vari ] of the well-to-do. In some other villages, the levy [pulli vari ] is a nominal one of 25 paise [1/4 rupee] or so and is paid by all Nakarattar. In about a third of the villages, the levy varies from five to 10 rupees of cash contributions and one to seven measures [kalams ] of rice. If any family is unable to pay either rice or cash, the entire amount may be paid either in cash or kind at rates fixed by the temple trustees each year [i.e., the amount is debited to the pulli's account with the temple, and interest is charged]. The rice is used to cook offering of food to the Deities. Later the cooked food is distributed to temple staff.

Many young Nakarattars have no idea of the amount of the levy. Either they do not pay regularly or they confuse it with the levy they must pay to their clan temple.... In case the earning member of the family is dead, the widow, together with her unmarried sons

constitute a half-pulli and are entitled to a 50% concession. As and when each son gets married, a new pulli comes into being and the temple gains a new assessee. After all the sons are married, the widow is not assessable.

For some reason or other, some families pay the dues irregularly. They may pay the arrears too. During the twenty or thirty years, regular collections have not been possible in many villages. The arrears are debited to each family in the books of the temple on the last day of the Tamil year and the outstandings are liable for payment or such interest as the general body may decide. Also, it happens that some rich person offers to deposit their moneys with the temple or to advance loans to the temple when it is in distress. Thus in each village, a few families have considerable moneys to their credit in local temples. Such families can, if they so desire, offset their annual cash dues by book adjustment. But, the rice must be delivered or paid for in cash.

You ask what happens to poor or indigent people who owe money to the temple. A marriage takes place in that family. Or, unfortunately, someone in the family is dead. At once, the general body or its committee meet and decide the amount to be collected from the family on that day. All factors are taken into sympathetic consideration and a liberal decision is made. Only after such clearance by the Temple Authority, the other Nakarattars of the village can attend the marriage or funeral. This system is still in vogue. (Personal communication, March 1981)

In addition to the pulli vari levies described above, village temples also collected an asti vari , or wealth tax, from the wealthiest members of the village. According to Lakshmanan Chettiar, the traditional method for arriving at asti vari assessments was as follows:

First the temple board of trustees would determine that funds from other sources were not adequate for planned expenses. Then the vairavi [temple messenger] would send out notices to every pulli in the village to attend a nakarakkutomb [a Nakarattar meeting, nakarakkutam ]. The people would nominate about 15 representatives from a cross-section of pankalis [here, local lineage groups] and kovils [temple clans] to form an asti vari kutomb [wealth tax meeting, asti vari kuttam ]. This group would then meet and decide the general principles for assessment, the specific individuals who would be taxed, the wealth of these individuals and the amount of asti vari each would be charged.

The sanctions operating on wealthy villagers to pay their asti vari were similar to those operating on temple clan members. In one case from the

1930s, the richest man in a village refused to pay his asti vari assessment, claiming that everyone else had conspired against him. The rest of his kuttikkira pankali supported him and also refused to pay. The entire group was boycotted by the village temple committee. The act of withholding their tithe from the village temple did not affect the group's status in their clan temple. They were still entitled to receive a garland to sanctify any marriage that might take place within their families. But they were prevented from performing those parts of the marriage ceremony that required blessings from the deity of the village temple. Nor were they permitted to enjoy the services of nakaswaram musicians, who were temple servants and who had personal inams carved out of the village temple's inam property. In the end, the rich man and his pankali paid their asti vari , after several years had passed, along with a charge for the accumulated interest.

As far as I could determine, the practice of assessing an asti vari has diminished or died out during the last forty years. As Lakshmanan Chettiar noted, the asti vari kuttams had made their assessments on the basis of community knowledge of individual wealth. As Nakarattars increasingly shifted their residences outside of Chettinad and their occupations to nonbanking jobs that did not require public knowledge of their personal wealth, it became extremely difficult to arrive at fair assessments. Moreover, Nakarattars are no longer so committed to orthodox ritual observances, and consequently they are less open to communal sanction. Thus, with asti vari gone as a source of income, with income from a general pulli vari similarly in decline, and with income from temple inam lands largely abolished by law, temples must rely more than ever on endowments from the wealthiest members of their villages. It is not clear if this change has brought any alteration to the politics of temple control. But Nakarattars have so far resisted every effort by non-Nakarattars to endow the major Siva temples in their residential villages, and in some cases the temple has been closed down as a result of litigation between Nakarattar and non-Nakarattar factions.

In the village with six wealthy families described above, temple control has been vested in the dominant family of the dominant lineage of the village, who have jealously guarded their trusteeship as an hereditary right since at least the turn of the century. However, as the incident concerning disputed asti vari assessments indicated, not all Chettinad villages were unambiguously controlled by a single dominant lineage or a family within that lineage. Where power was divided, so was temple control. In some cases, both factions were harmoniously represented on the temple's board of trustees. In other cases, conflict erupted, leading to a stoppage of

temple functions. In still other cases—and this was especially likely in the largest towns, such as Devakottai or Karaikudi—the different factions constructed and maintained separate temples, effectively splitting the village into subvillages, each with its own descent-based cult. But in no case were any of these simultaneously descent-cum-residential-cum-cult groups in any way ranked above any other such group. Individuals within each group—particularly those who served as hereditary trustees—might be ritually recognized by the receipt of special honors. But in principle any group of persons had the option in harmonious situations to endow the village temple and obtain rights to their own special honors in return, or even, perhaps, to obtain a hereditary trusteeship for their representative. In nonharmonious situations, they could effectively close the temple so that nobody had any special status, they could build their own temples, or they could move and try their luck elsewhere.

As we have seen, this structural equality was also evident in the organization of the nine Nakarattar clan temples. There, as with the village temples, trustees were recruited on a hereditary basis. Among clan temples (especially the largest), however, the possibilities for conflict between major Nakarattar families were multiplied. The Nakarattars minimized the potential for conflict and maintained equality among structurally equivalent groups by rotating the trusteeship in a regular fashion between selected prominent families from throughout Chettinad. In the concluding chapter, I will compare the two-tier political organization manifest in Nakarattar control of both village and clan temples with forms of political organization exhibited by dominant nonmercantile castes in South India.