Paraiyar

Paraiyar, or Parayar or Maraiyar (formerly anglicised as Pariah and Paree), is a caste group found in the Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala and Sri Lanka. Robert Caldwell, a nineteenth-century missionary and grammarian who worked in South India, was in agreement with some Indian writers of the same period who considered the name to derive from the Tamil word parai (drum). According to this hypothesis, the Paraiyars were originally a community of drummers who performed at auspicious events like weddings and funerals. M. Srinivasa Aiyangar, writing a little later, found this etymology unsatisfactory, arguing that beating of drums could not have been an occupation of so many people. Some other writers, such as Gustav Solomon Oppert, have derived the name from the Tamil word poraian, the name of a regional subdivision mentioned by ancient Tamil grammarians, or the Sanskrit pahariya, meaning "hill man". More recently, George L. Hart's textual analysis of the Sangam literature ( 300 BCE – 300 CE) has led him to favour Caldwell's earlier hypothesis. The literature has references to the Tamil caste system and refers to a number of "low-born" groups variously called Pulaiyar and Kinaiyar. Hart believes that one of the drums called kiṇai in the literature later came to be called paṟai and the people that played the drum were paraiyar (plural of paraiyan). Paraiyar as a word referring to an occupational group first appears in the second century CE writings of Mangudi Kilar. The Purananuru mentions the Tudiyar, the Panar, the Paraiyar and the Kadambar as one of the four tribes of the Tamil world which should be respected. Hart says that the pulaiyar performed a ritual function by composing and singing songs in the king's favour and beating drums, as well as travelling around villages to announce royal decrees. They were divided into subgroups based on the instruments they played and one of these groups the Kinaiyan "was probably the same as the modern Paraiyan".