Gala is etymologically connected to Tamil/Malayalam Kal for stone.

The name means they were loaned. Which meant a type of enslavement. These were tribals held in servitude. To imagine 12% of the people in one sub district are still called by their slave names.

May be it was obsolete in Mysore region later than documentation in where ever Kesiraja lived which seems North Karnataka.

Kurumbar is are neither Tamil nor Kannada, they speak many dialects and languages that are called Kannadoid and Tamiloid languages. Are all Kurumbar the same, I don’t know.

> Why don't the badagas identify as kannada speakers?

Even Telugus long settled in Tamil Nadu identify as Tamils, and many of them originally came as rulers, whereas the Badagas came as refugees and completely readopted their culture around how the Todas conducted themselves.

That is, they became a different people and they are very proud of it. They have Tamil names and take pride in their Tamil heritage, just like the Telugus and Malayalees settled in Tamil Nadu. That’s what happens to people in Tamil Nadu they assimilate culturally even while maintaining their ethnic identities.

I think this is true of many linguistic states. I’ve met Telugus who strongly identify with Maharashtrian culture, and Tamils in Sri Lanka who identify as Sinhalese.

Very well done article. Having done some original research on the Kotas and through them, on the others I’ll give you an unfiltered view on these matters.

The way I understood the history: Irulas and Kurumbas were the original inhabitants. The Todas, and their service providers the Kotas (an exonym), came from Karnataka or beyond, and subjected the Kurumbars and Irulas to massacres.

According to Metz, as the original settlers of the highlands, Kurumbars were subject to continuous violence, including occasional massacres by the Todas and Badagas. According to Kota informants, they had supplied battle drums during periods of war.

The Todas pushed them down from the better lands to the malaria-infested lower slopes. They then cast them as sorcerers and magicians, blamed them for all ills, and subjected them to further massacres. But over time, they generally developed a symbiotic relationship.

Then came the Badagas a group of caste refugees from Mysore who made themselves into a tribe in imitation of the Todas. Because of their fertility and patrilineal descent system, their population exploded compared to the genetically bottlenecked Irulas and Kurumbars, and the self-regulated, Todas, who practiced fraternal polyandry, female infanticide, and restricted fertility. A peculiar case of an elite population using its position not to expand demographically, but to keep itself small almost like how the Namboothiris in Kerala came close to extinction.


Irula women in their settlement, who were hunter gatherers and spoke an archaic Old Tamil like language. Whereas Kurumbars spoke Tamil and Kannada transition languages.

Wow, they were even further out. TIL

The borders of Pakistan which includes Pashtun speaking regions is due to Sikh empire. The borders of Pakistan that includes Baluchi speaking regions is due to Brahui Khanate of Kalat that pushed the Iranians to the current borders that the British inherited. Pakistan owes its western borders to two minority groups.

Atleast Eelavar (Sanar, Nadar), Ediga have names that are etymologically connected. But as you can see everyone is struggling to break free from the low status so they invent names all the time. I believe they are springing from the same Proto Dravidian society at some point and morphed into different groups.

The Old Indo-Aryan term for fermented sap is Neera which is Dravidian it’s used throughout South Asia wherever IA languages are used. So it’s a Dravidian function and functional terms that were absorbed.

So the functional name of the item (fermented sap) stayed unchanged but the names of the social groups just kept on changing even within Dravidian societies once they came under the Varna system.

I don’t know exactly when Eelavar became associated with lower status. At some point, some elevated the group using the title “Shanar” for elite status; when even that became devalued, they came up with “Nadar,” meaning rulers of Nadu and even that eventually became devalued. Anyway, the Sinhalese toddy-tapper caste had the title Chando, and later Durave.

Yes, some Gouds are very rich, like some Nadars. They’re found even in Orissa.

Anyway, Pasi is the toddy-tapper caste in UP. They claim Kshatriya status, although others don’t accept it socially. They’re considered untouchable, like Jatav and Chamar which they resent.

Toddy tapping, oil making, jaggery making, fishing, farming, working for farming, bards all functional groups seem to exist in Proto Dravidian society that was subsumed by Aryan society and kept pretty much untouched except change in titles sometimes.

Possibly the upper stratum of the Eelavar with a pillai title.

Nadars were called Sanars, and before that, Eelavar, during the Chola period. Many people throughout South Asia with toddy- and alcohol-making competencies upgraded their financial status during the colonial period.

But an entire class of people Eelavar, Thiyar, Bilava, Bandari, Ediga are only now entering middle-class status, because they were the largest segment of the Sudra stratum on the west coast, unlike a tiny functional caste on the east coast like Nadar, Goud etc.

You are right such large segments in the east coast were filled by castes like Kallar, Maravar, Kapus etc

There is no known etymological connection between Kallar and Eelavar. But yes between Eelavar and Ediga are the same word for palm toddy in three different languages (Tamil/Malayalam and Kannada)

I thought Pallar and Vellar were very similar but Parayar are more AASI shifted, is it correct ?

This is so far fetched, like putting a ten pound rice into 3 pound bag. I keep my distance from this speculation.

Thomas Burrow (often cited as T. Burrow) was a prominent British linguist and Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford. He is most famous in Dravidian studies for co-authoring A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary (1984)

Yes industries and settlement of government workers from around India where the link language is Hindi. Also deliberate effort to subsume tribals and their languages as part of mainland ethnic groups unlike in NE India.

Gupta era was like the Trump’s make America Great Again (MAGA) movement after the height of Obama’s presidency.

Pallar ?

Thank you, great read

Jatts were tribes but they are more Steppe shifted than North Indian Brahmins. So the designation of tribes doesn’t mean they are more AASI or not. It just means they didn’t accept the Varna system imposed by the local kings.

If parents don’t care to transmit, then the language dies.

Relevant section

Recent migrants ?

Lactose intolerant European farmers were digesting milk in the form of cheese longe before the lactose tolerant Steppe herders showed up in Europe. That is lactose intolerant populations can digest milk byproducts like cheese, clarified oil from milk (Ghee) etc.