Influence of Non-Tribal Religions
As in the case of any other tribal community, the belief system of the Kurichiyan is part of their culture with its own characteristics. Some of its elements havesimilarities with other religious traditions prevailed in the wider cultural context of Kerala.
The concept of untouchability restricted the Kurichiyan from making close interactions with other belief systems in their neighbourhood and even today they continue to follow at least some of the traditional traits in beliefs and practices without much change. This adherence is more visible in the traits associated with life cycle rituals. In Kerala, Brahmanical influence is larger in the rituals and practices associated with the belief system, but until recently this has not affected the local beliefs of the tribal communities, and the Kurichiyan is also not an exemption. Aiyappan wrote, “except getting the sacralised purificatory (punyaha) water prepared by the Brahman ritualist to cleanse their shrines ritually, the Kurichiya have no other transactions with the Brahmans” (Aiyappan 1990:78-79). At the time of rituals to remove pollution, they collect punyaha (sacred water) from the Brahman (also spelt Brahmin elsewhere) priest. They believe that punyaha has greater purificatory powers for ritual cleansing. During other occasions in life cycle rituals, they use coconut water for sprinkling and it was done by their religious functionaries.The Kurichiyan consider Brahmins as superior to them and even today sacred water from no other Hindu castes will be accepted for purificatory rites. In the case when settlements have been polluted due to the entry of persons from lower castes and communities, they sprinkle sacred water prepared by a Brahman priest. If the Brahman priest visits the house for doing purificatory ceremonies, the Kurichiyan invite their relatives and clan heads to participate in the ceremony.
Since it is a costly ritual, only economically well off families conducted it. Otherwise, they are satisfied with sprinkling sacred water collected from the Brahmin priests. Now it is significant that the elaborate kinds of purificatory rituals associated with pollution are not in function because of many reasons as reported by the younger generation. They said that the pollution related purificatory rites will distance them from other castes and communities of their area in the middle of subsistence issues. The younger generation is not interested in continuing with the tradition of purity and pollution and they do not want it to become institutionalised in the present Kurichiyan society. The Kurichiya have not fully adopted ritual traditions and ceremonies from the Brahmanical traditions as other castes of Kerala have. Other traditions in their area have notinfluenced them much until recently as they tightly hold their own religious traditions and belief system.The process of ostracism or excommunication due to various reasons was practised by the Kurichiyan. Adultery and breach of incest taboo are considered some of the crimes charged for excommunication from the territory. They performed rituals such as cutting a banana tree into two pieces symbolise the detachment of a woman from her natal family as punishment towards breach of taboo or adultery. The victim was considered as dead and some funerary rituals were also conducted to symbolise the death of that woman. At present the excommunicated persons live in the same area or a place away from the original settlement and some of them were converted to Christianity. It is important to see that this type of excommunication locally called bhrashtu also prevailed among the Namboothiri Brahman9 families in Kerala in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This was done after a trial of caste offence conducted according to Vedic traditions. The difference is that in a matrilineal society like the Kurichiyan, both the accused were ostracised but among patrilineal Namboothiri, only woman was subjected to such an excommunication.
In Kerala, apart from a few tribal groups like the Cholanaickan (whose traditional settlements are in the reserve forest and have less interaction with other communities), other tribal families established relationships with neighbouring10 religions such as Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity. However, they very often interact with local Hindu castes and their traditions. It is seen that tribal religion has similarities with certain traits in Hinduism such as the worship of flora and fauna, worship of mother goddesses, and worship of environmental factors such as wind and fire. This made them believe that tribal religion is not far from Hinduism and the diffusion of religious traits happened in very little time (Srinivas & Shah 1968). Srivastava wrote,
Tribes that had more Hindu traits and any who called themselves so were categorised as ‘Hindu’. It is quite likely that tribes without a name for their indigeneous religion called themselves Hindu, since it was the easiest category with which they could identify, and also, it was considered to be respectful.
(Srivastava 2010:9)
The Jain11 society contributes a major share in the socio-cultural and economic life of Wayanad. The belief system based on Jain philosophy was opposed to the heterogeneous sects of society including the caste system and domination of Brahmanical traditions based on elaborate and expensive religious rites. Like Hinduism and Jainism, Buddhism is also focussed on the law of Karma and believes in the theory of rebirth. The belief in transmigration of the soul is prevalent in Hinduism and Jainism and the Kurichiyan believe that the soul which revitalises the human body and leaves the body after death is immortal and acts as the same way as they did in mortal life. The spirit of the dead is called nizhal, which literally means shadow and the Kurichiyan believe that the connection between the dead and the living is symbolically represented through the worship of this nizhal. Van Gennep (1960) stated that the ritual acts not only shift the individual or group from one category to another, but they are expressive symbolic enactments of the transformations. These kinds of rituals act as a meta-social form for highlighting the social relationships of the key actors, or participants in the shape of concrete images or symbols. It should be viewed as a generalised medium of
Issues of Institutionalisation among the Kurichiyan interaction in most instances linking every individual to his own culture or other cultures through significant and shared life meanings. These shared life meanings support a system or a trait to institutionalise in a structure which is exposed to the process of transformations.
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