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The Irulas 2 are a tribal complex of four tribes inhabiting the lower slopes of the northern, eastern and southern parts of the Nilgiri mountains of South India. They speak a tribal language of their own—the ërla na:ya—in four dialects; it belongs, historically, to the Tamil-Malayalam group of South Dravidian.3 Two of the tribes intermarry, so that the Irula complex forms a tribal group of three endogamous units. Linguistically and from the point of social organization, the Irula situation may be thus symbolized as
The creativity of Irula-speaking tribes finds expression mostly in music,4 dance, and above all, in verbal art.5 They have a wealth of oral traditions characteristic for most pre-literary cultures; though modernization—thus far mostly in the socio-economic sphere—has had its impact on the Irula-speaking tribes, the absolute majority of the Irulas are still illiterate. Hence storytelling, oral rendering of myths, legends and genealogies, and other forms of verbal art are still very much alive.
This paper is offered to Professor Thomas Burrow, one of the great discoverers of hitherto unknown or undescribed Dravidian languages.
2 The Irulas call themselves ërla, pi.ërlaru; in some dialects, ïṟla/ïṟḽa.
3 cf. Zvelebil, K. V., ‘Irula—a South Dravidian language,’ New Orient Bimonthly, III, Prague, 1968, 94–5Google Scholar; Zvelebil, K. V., The Irula language, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 1973 Google Scholar. During my last field-trip to the Nilgiris, it was established beyond doubt that the Irula language has four main dialects: Vëtte Kādu, Mele Nādu, Urāli and Kasava. The first of these (VK) is spoken by Vétte Kādaru, on the southern lower slopes of the Nilgiris, and in a few valleys of the Kerala part of the Nilgiri mountains, notably the Attapadi Valley. The second (MN), probably the most prestigious, dialect, is spoken by the Mele Nadaru, on the north-eastern, eastern and south-eastern slopes of the mountains. tJrali Irula is spoken by the tribe of the Ürālis north of Satyamangalam in the Coimbatore district, towards the Karnataka border. Kasava is spoken by the Kasavas, a small tribe on the northern and north-western lower Nilgiri plateau, next to the Wynad area.
4 The Irulas use three wind instruments: the ko:lu / koalu / kogalu (cf. Ta.kujal, DED 1511), a kind of oboe made of wood with sonorous higher tone; bugari (DED 3482), a thin bamboo flute with very deep sound, and a smaller bamboo flute with higher sound with five plus one holes. They also use a variety of drums, the main among them the pore, the davifu, the ta:la and the calange; alsotambotte and mattalä drums.
5 Different Nilgiri tribes manifest their creativity in different ways and through different channels. Thus e.g. whereas the creativity of the Todas is manifested mostly in the high skill of ad hoc composition of songs, in dance, and, above all, in the famous Toda embroidery (but not in any outstanding narrative skill or composition of stories), in contrast the Irulas do not have any outstanding material culture of their own or any great skills in manufacturing objects, but manifest high creativity in the narrative art, story telling, playing of flutes and oboes and drams, and dancing.
6 In February-April 1978.
7 A very interesting and linguistically important article on the riddles of another Nilgiri Hill tribe, the Pālu Kurumbas, was prepared by Kapp, Dieter B. (BSOAS, XLI, 3, 1978, 512–22)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I herewith express my thanks to the author for enabling me to read his paper in the manuscript form.
8 An alternative answer was rallu huyi ‘the mortar-pit’ (i.e. the central depression in the mortar).
9 An alternative form quoted by a different informant: ne:luga.
10 An alternative answer was te:nu ‘honey-comb’.
11 Another version of the same riddle: a:yira korangeku ore:va;lu (MN) ‘a thousand monkeys [have] one single tail’.
12 The very unusual word-order of this utterance (the ‘regular’, statistically absolutely prevalent WO would be 12534) is most probably due to the fact that it is a riddle, with specific emphatic relationships.
13 Another reading: cuttivarugudu ‘comes roaming’; yet another version: a:dugudu ‘moves about, dances’.
14 I suspect that the loss of initial vowel accompanied by the appearance in the initial position of the cacuminal-retroflex plosive must point to some rules of accentuation different from those of Tamil-Malayalam, and probably connected with the Nilgiri areal linguistic features (in some Kuruinba languages one may observe accentuation definitely different from the regular ‘primary stress on the first syllable’). It is striking that Irula should go in some items as far as Telugu, and some Central Dravidian languages even further: e.g. DED 78 Ta. ataikküy ‘areca-nut’ Ir. dakke; DED 799 Ta. utai ‘to break’: Ir. depisu ‘to cause to break’; DED 426 Ta. ili, Te. digu, Kui diva, etc.: Ir. dir: ‘to drop down, etc’.
Cf. further cases such as Ir. ra:ngu: Ta. iranku (DED 439) ‘to descend’, Ir. ronga: Ta.uraiiku (DED 606) ‘to sleep’, Ir. le:: Ta. alai (DED 191) ‘to grind’, Ir. la:ru: Ta. alaru (DED 211) ‘to shout’, Ir. le:: Ta. alai (DED 203) ‘to roam, wander’. These cases prove that the Irula development of the loss of the initial vowel and the subsequent changes (occurrence in initial position of consonants which do not regularly occur initially in Dravidian, i.e. d-, r-, I-; lengthening of the vowel, like Ta. ili: Ir. di:, Ta. alaru: Ir. la:ru; change in vowel-quality, like in Ta. urańku: Ir. roiigu) are of general and far-reaching nature, and can only be explained by strong accentuation of the second syllable. We may probably symbolize the process by the following tentative ordered rules (e.g.): (1) Pre-Ta. *‘alay- → pre-Irula *‘ale-. (2) *‘ale→* *a'le- (change of accent). (3) Proto-Irula *a'le→ Ir. le:- ‘to roam’ (DED 203).