Tondamān

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This article is an excerpt from Castes and Tribes of Southern India By Edgar Thurston, C.I.E., Superintendent, Madras Government Museum; Correspondant Étranger, Société d’Anthropologie de Paris; Socio Corrispondante, Societa,Romana di Anthropologia. Assisted by K. Rangachari, M.A., of the Madras Government Museum. Government Press, Madras 1909.

Tondamān

It is stated, in the Madras Census Report, 1901, that the Tondamāns are “also called Sunnāmbukkāran (q.v.), a Tamil caste of lime (chunam) burners found only in the Tinnevelly district. They are said to be a branch of the Kallans who migrated to Tinnevelly from Pudukkōttai, or the Tondamān’s country. Its members are now drummers and pipers as well as lime-burners. Brāhmans are their purōhits, but they are not allowed to go into Hindu temples. They will eat in the houses of Maravans. Their title is Sōlagan.” It is noted, in the same report, that the Semmān caste “has two sub-divisions, Tondamān and Tōl-mēstri, and men of the former take wives from the latter, but men of the latter may not marry girls of the former.” Tondamān is the family name of the Rāja of Pudukkōttai, a Native State surrounded by the British districts of Tanjore, Madura, and Trichinopoly. The Rāja is the head of the Kallan caste. Copper coins, called amman kāsu, are current only within the State, and their greatest distribution is during Navarātri or Dusserah, when they are issued to the people with a dole of rice every day during the nine days of the festival. They bear on one side the word “Vijaya,” meaning victory, or more probably having reference to our faithful ally Vijaya Ragunātha Tondamān, in whose reign they were first struck, it is said in 1761, after the surrender of Pondicherry to the British.