1. Weber, of course, nowhere considers such a paradox and proposes instead a contrast between what he terms rational individualism and traditional egocentricism as an apparently exhaustive dichotomy. Thus, in at least one place, he contrasts wealth accumulated unselfishly by a Protestant's pursuit of his calling with wealth accumulated by a pre-Protestant merchant for the sake of his family. The former he attributes to an individualistic effort to avoid worldly contamination of actions undertaken solely for the glory of God. The latter he attributes to an egocentric extension of the family founder's personality (1958: 276). Whatever may have been the case for the pre-Protestant Europeans that Weber had in mind, for the Nakarattars, just the opposite seems to have been the case. That is, familial goals were internalized and projected onto individuals, rather than the other way around.

2. Mahadevan (1976) provides the best documentation of the shift of Nakarattar investment into capitalized industry.

3. The functional equivalents of these parent bankers performed similar roles in the seventeenth century, although they did so under a different title: ettis .

4. I make use of three primary sources of information in my analysis. These consist of notes for an unpublished book on the Nakarattars written by a retired Nakarattar banker and caste historian, Somalay (a nom de plume derived from S. M. Lakshmanan Chettiar), interviews with Somalay and other Nakarattars conducted as part of my field research in Tamil Nadu in 1981, and a sample of a Nakarattar firm's account books from its agency house in Burma for the period from 1912 to 1915. These various primary oral and written sources are used to flesh out, verify, and refine more general accounts of the system available in already published work by Krishnan (1959), Mahadevan (1976), Naidu (1941), Pillai (1930), Siegelman (1962), Tun Wai (1962), and Weersooria (1973). The triangulation of several different sources permits one to be reasonably confident of the reconstruction of the Nakarattar banking system at its chronological

and spatial peak, before the community shifted massively from mercantile and financial to industrial ventures.

5. This practice has not been followed consistently since the 1930s. In the postwar period, many men have simply indicated their father's name and their village name when establishing their own firm; for example, P. Ct. Allagappa signifies ''Palattur village, Chidambaram Allagappa." Occasionally one also finds the occupational title "Chettiar," but no indication of natal village, as with Ct. C. Allagappa for Chidambaram Chettiar Allagappa. But this last practice has lost popularity since the 1960s (this illustration as well as those provided in the text are taken from Lakshmanan Chettiar 1953).

6. In this case, "Tevar" designates the employee's caste affiliation.

7. " Pulli parkka = to conjecture how much a sum may be; to estimate" (Fabricius 1972: 727).

8. As an example of their use of pullis as units, I obtained figures from the Madurai Nakarattar Sangam for the total number of pullis presently registered in all nine Nakarattar clan temples (about 20,000) and hence, even in the absence of government census figures indexed by caste, feel relatively confident in accepting their estimate for the contemporary Nakarattar population at about 100,000. This coincides with Chandrasekhar's (1980) estimate, which was probably derived in the same fashion. It differs from recent estimates by Moreno (1981) and Timberg (1978).

9. A considerable body of case law has been generated specifically in reference to estate and income taxes levied against Nakarattar individuals outside of India. In these cases, there was no question of refusing to grant jural status to the Nakarattar valavu . These and other Hindu joint families were legally recognized as juristic individuals similar to corporations and subject to the application of Hindu Mitakshara law (cf. Kane 1946 III; Tambiah 1973a). Litigation arose only in determining whether some body of assessed property belonged to an individual or to the joint family of which he or she was a member. See Weersooria (1973: 110-116) for a review of the issues and the relevant cases in Ceylon.

10. The large family houses shared by a valavu may be responsible for the popular name of the Nakarattars: the Nattukottai Chettiar ("Country Fort Chettiar"). Alternatively, it is sometimes speculated that the name represents an abbreviation of Nattarasankottai, a town within Chettinad thought to be one of the Nakarattars' earliest residences.

11. Nakarattars also employ the common Tamil term kutumpam , marked by an emphatic article: ore kutumpam "one (same) family."

12. A passing comment by Evers (1972: 637) apparently supports my interpretation. There, he mentions that Nakarattar "spheres of accumulation," in contrast to "spheres of consumption," were administered by the heads of Nakarattar joint families. But he does not elaborate on the issue.

13. For further discussion of Nakarattar marriage alliances, see Chapter 8.

14. See Chapter 5, note 2 on kandu kisti loans.

15. I am not able to confirm at the present time that the twelve largest landowners represent all the adathis in Burma. Nor am I able to speculate about the presence or absence of adathi status among other Nakarattars outside this group. Further investigation could be carried out by querying surviving Nakarattar bankers from the period or by locating copies of the adathi lists maintained by the Imperial Bank of India.

16. A list of the Nakarattar firms represented on the Burma Indian Chamber of Commerce in 1925-26 gives the following firms: A. K. A. Ct. V., A. A. Krm. M. Ct., A. K. Rm. M. K., P. K. N., Rm. P., S. A. A., S. A. Rm., S. K. R. S. K. R., S. M. A. Ra., S. Rm. M. A., S. Rm. M. Ct. Sir., S. Rm. M. Rm., and T. S. N. From the Burma Indian Chamber of Commerce (1929: v), cited in Mahadevan (1976: 187).

17. See also the evidence of a Ceylon bank shroff —a semi-independent loan guarantee officer—presented to the Ceylon Banking Enquiry Committee in 1934 (quoted in Chapter 6).

18. Nakaravitutis should not be confused with the headquarters for Hindu sectarian orders, also called matams or atinams .

19. For a cultural account of the differing ritual roles of Nakarattars and Kongu Goundar Vellalars in Palani, see Marriott and Moreno (1990).

20. The "information transfer" function of these ritual events continued even when the rituals were augmented in this respect by the publication of caste journals sponsored by local caste associations. Such journals included Dhanavanikan (a monthly journal published from Kottaiyur in Chettinad and Rangoon, ed. A. K. Chettiar), Dhana Vysia Ooliyan (a weekly journal published from Karaikudi in Chettinad, ed. S. Mooragappa Chettiar), Kumari Malar (a monthly journal published from Madras, ed. A. K. Chettiar), Ooliyan (a weekly journal published from Karaikudi in Chettinad, ed. Rai Chokalingam), Vysiamitran (published from Devakottai in Chettinad, ed. S. T. Ramanathan Chettiar), and Nakarattar Malar (published from Madurai).

21. The elder mediators or arbitrators of a panchayat were conventionally five in number ( panch means "five"), although reality often deviated from this ideal. The difference between a panchayat that resolved a dispute through mediation and one that resolved a dispute through arbitration is formal. In the latter case, both parties agreed in advance to abide by the decision by signing a legal document called a muchalika , which could be used as evidence in a civil suit if either party found it necessary to go to court. Muchalikas (from a Persian term) were broadly used in similar contexts throughout colonial India. However, it is not clear when this practice was adopted by the Nakarattars. According to Thurston (1909 V: 263),

agreements were not made in writing as recently as 1909. The presumption, then, is that muchalikas were a recent response to the colonial legal system.

22. As discussed in note 18, Saivite matams or atinams should not be confused with Nakaravitutis , which were sometimes called Nakarattar matams. Matam panchayats were apparently receding into the background by the end of the nineteenth century (Thurston 1909). None of my informants remember them in operation, although the palm-leaf manuscripts from Palani temple (Chapter 7) offer a glimpse of conditions in which they would have played an important role during the seventeenth century. Kovil (temple) panchayats (see Chapter 9), however, continued until at least the 1940s, although much of their role was taken over by caste associations and by the court system of colonial India during the course of the twentieth century.

23. Thurston (1909: 263) mentions a panchayat held for a dispute between two families from the same clan that arose over adoption.

24. I am aware of a 1940s example of a temple clan panchayat meeting in which a wealthy member was denied permission to marry his daughter to any family within the community until he had paid his temple dues. I am also aware of several outcaste marriages (albeit among extremely wealthy, Westernized, and modern Nakarattars) that brought no sanction from any community institution.

25. Outsiders sometimes mistake a line of the S. Rm. family for a royal Nakarattar lineage because it was represented by Raja Sir Annamalai Chettiar and his son, Raja Sir Muthia Chettiar. But Nakarattars have no royal lineages. The title "Raja Sir" was conferred by the British on Raja Sir Annamalai in the twentieth century and gives him superior, zamindar -like land rights over a village also created at that time. It was Annamalai's idea to name his village by the same name as the entire territory comprising the Nakarattar homeland of Chettinad—no doubt precisely in order to play on uninformed British sentiments about royalty.

26. Among works that continue to view individualism as essential to capitalism I include not only historical studies such as Shoji Ito's (1966) essay about the Nakarattar, discussed at the beginning of this chapter, but also general theoretical works, from the classic sociological theories of Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, and Mauss, through the modernization theorists of the 1960s, to recent studies in the culture of capitalism such as those by Dumont (1977, 1986) and Macfarlane (1987). For recent critical evaluations of these tendencies see Carrithers, Collins, and Lukes (1986).

27. Caste studies by Conlon (1977), Dirks (1987), Leonard (1978), and Mines (1984) do consider some of the corporate functions of caste.

28. This would be consistent with application of Weber's Jewish "double ethic" (1958: 271) to Hinduism.