September 11, 2008

All in the Iyer's culture of Tamil Brahmins.

Tamil brahmin mamis don't pronounce tamil as the majority of the Tamilians do.The Brahmin tamil has some intonations and words which are from old tamil literature and some are laced with sanskrit words and intonation. This separates many brahmins from non-brahmins.....

Those brahmins who live in rural areas and interact with non-brahmins in the market and profession turn into half non-brahmin way of pronouncing tamil. Slang of the brahmins are different from that of the local non-brahmin tamils.

The carnatic music has been the preserve of the brahmins in the south of all sountern languages.Here also they use some intonation not acceptable to the non-brahmin majority. Even referring to an elderly female they say "Mami" while the non-brahmins say "AAtha" or "Amma".

These differences and many habits like shunning non-vegetarian way of cooking and eating has created cultural delineations which distinguish the minority.

Even amongst brahmins Iyengars preach one thing and practise another.They say that their way of worship is superior. Shiva has united Iyers with all castes in Tamil Nadu.Historically looking at this Ramanuja converted even several dalits into Vaishnavites.this shows the color difference in Iyengars which is highly prominent. If you look into the history of Iyengars toying with chrisitians during British period in India some more strands of evidences arise on color differences

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1 Comments:

Blogger Gayu Venkat said...

nice one :)
good to use our slang :)

2:34 PM  

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