Tamil American Folklore and Proverbs

Tamil Nadu, a state in southeast India, is renowned for various genres of folklore such as terukkuttu (street folk theater), vilpattu (“bow songs,” songs about local deified legends), udukkai pattu (legends or local epics performed along with a hand drum and few other musical instruments), Katai (imaginative folktales), aideegam (traditional tales, songs, and beliefs about deities, religious rituals, and rites) and memorates (legends). Folk stories pervade every aspect of Tamil life in India; however, in the United States, these are shared mostly as bedtime stories. The folklore represents a diverse population of Hindus, Christians, Jains, and Muslims, although Hindus are the majority group. Tamil, an ancient classical Dravidian language, is the language chiefly spoken in this part of India. With the passage of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, many people from Tamil Nadu emigrated from India hoping for opportunities in the United States. As they came to the United States, they brought with them their language, culture, folktales, and proverbs. First-generation Tamil Americans not only speak Tamil in the United States, but also regularly reference their literature, folklore, folktales, and proverbs in their day-to-day lives.

Folklore and folktales act as a mirror to the society and culture to which they belong. They are the treasure trove depicting societal norms, cultural practices, and moral values. They are used to educate, entertain, and warn people in their daily activities. One of the Tamil folk stories popular among Tamil Americans is the story of King Sibi. This story is taken from Sangam Tamil literature, a poetry collection more than two thousand years old. It is also found in Mahabharata, a Sanskrit text written in the first millennium BCE. In the story, King Sibi, the son of King Usinara and Queen Madhavi, was a great king famous for his philanthropic endeavors. One day the god Indra and the god Agni decided to test King Sibi and the extent of his generosity. Indra disguised himself as a hawk and Agni as a dove and the former started chasing the latter. After running away from the hawk for quite some time, the terrified dove fell on the lap of King Sibi and requested him to save its life. The hawk demanded that the king surrender the dove, but the king refused, saying that as the dove had come to his protection, he would go to great lengths to protect it. After much argument, the hawk agreed to let go of the dove in exchange for flesh from the king’s body equivalent to the dove’s weight. King Sibi agreed to this proposal and started cutting flesh from his body and placed it on the scale. No amount of flesh could equal the weight of the dove. Seeing this, the king decided to throw his entire body on the scale; even then he could not match the weight of the dove. At this point, the hawk and the dove revealed their true identity and praised the king for his unbounded charity and generosity. There is another version of this story where the god Indra comes as a blind person and asks for the king’s eye. King Sibi immediately agrees to sacrifice both of his eyes, which earns him Lord Indra’s blessings.

The primary motif of the above story is generosity. In addition to generosity, there are several other motifs popular in Tamil and Tamil American folktales, including a strong desire for a particular type of food, daydreaming and building castles in the air, deceit, and marriage. Some stories serve as warnings, while others act as instructions or moral lessons. Although these stories are didactic in nature, most of them have humorous content. The humor is based on role reversal in which the socially inferior wins over the superior. For example, women, who are considered socially inferior to men, outdo not only men, but also demons in these folktales. The humor is also added by the use of language, including double-meaning words, misuse of words, and other word misappropriations. Standing in stark contrast to these, however, are certain folk stories that are sad or serious.

Supernatural themes play an important role in Tamil American folktales. Much like Hindu deities, supernatural beings, especially demons, have different names and forms. There are some common characteristics of demons, including being allergic to light, shape-shifting, and defying time and space.

The length of Tamil American folktales depends heavily upon when and how they are told. As parents tell most of these stories to their children as bedtime stories, they are usually quite short. On the other hand, when the same stories are narrated during festivals or ceremonies, or in print versions, the narrator adds more details based on his or her skills and taste. Second-generation Tamil Americans have learned many Tamil folk stories from their parents, but they seldom use the stories to the same extent in their everyday American life. Tamil proverbs, on the other hand, are heavily used by both first- and second-generation Tamil Americans.

Proverbs, unlike folktales, are concise statements of folk wisdom. Proverbs summarize human experiences and observations and present them as timeless statements. A mammoth collection of Tamil proverbs entitled A Classified Collection of Tamil Proverbs was published by Reverend Herman Jensen, a Danish missionary in Madras, India, in 1897. This book is considered to be one of the first documented sources of Tamil proverbs. Although many proverbs in the collection are presented as fixed texts, in usage proverbs sometimes change with the second part of the proverb coming before the first, which, in turn, gives rise to two proverbs from the original.

Jensen collected a total of 3,644 proverbs of which 21 percent are dedicated to the human body, 15 percent to animals, 27 percent to negative aspects of human character, 10 percent to positive human traits, and the remaining 27 percent to sociocultural aspects of human life. There are very few Tamil and Tamil American proverbs on weather or seasons, criticism of superstition, ceremonies, gods, and temples; or in other words, all that refer to climactic changes or religious life are surprisingly missing.

Another significant characteristic of Tamil or Dravidian proverbs (proverbs of southern India) is that animals are always used as dumb figures and only for the sake of illustration. For example, “He who has a milk cow will not fear to give a feast” (animal used in human context). On the other hand, Aryan proverbs (proverbs of northern India) have animals with intellect and strong character. For example, in the Panchatantra, a collection of eighty-four animal fables divided into five books, the animals can think, talk, and behave like humans. There are only a few animals that have been characterized with some human-like trait in Tamil and Tamil American proverbs. For example, elephants represent greatness; sheep are stupid; dogs, pigs, and cows are dirty and greedy. The faithfulness of dogs, however, is completely missing. Animal images are also mostly used to suggest human parallels. For example, “All small fish are food for big ones.” At the same time, all Tamil and Tamil American proverbs are comments on human conditions. For example, “A top without a string” implies the condition of a person who lacks a master or a leader.

Moreover, whatever is considered superior in Tamil culture is not always associated with superiority in proverbs. For example, socially the “head” is always considered superior to the “feet,” but in Tamil and Tamil American proverbs, “head” carries a negative connotation and is described as being crushed or severed. Similar inversions exist in proverbs portraying motherhood. For example, in one proverb, the son is said to find poison in his mother’s milk; in another, the mother is said to spoil a married daughter’s happiness (“Like a mother spoiling her married daughter’s happiness”). Therefore, it is very important to be aware of the culture and know the context, sex, and age of the speaker to understand the complete meaning of a proverb.

Semontee Mitra

See also South Asian American Folklore and Folktales; Storytelling

Further Reading

Beck, Brenda E. F. 1979. “Body Imagery in the Tamil Proverbs of South India.” Western Folklore 38: 21–41.

Ferro-Luzzi, Gabriella Eichinger. 1997. “The Polythetic Network of Tamil Folk Stories.” Asian Folklore Studies 56: 109–128.

Ferro-Luzzi, Gabriella Eichinger. 1998. “Demonology in Tamil Folktales.” Anthropos 93: 405–415.

Jensen, Herman. 1897. A Classified Collection of Tamil Proverbs. Madras: Methodist Episcopal Publishing House.

Ramaswamy, Vijaya. 2010. “Chaste Widows, Cunning Wives, and Amazonian Warriors: Imaging of Women in Tamil Oral Traditions.” Asian Ethnology 69: 129–157.

Valk, Ulo, and S. Lourdusamy. 2007. “Village Deities of Tamil Nadu in Myths and Legends: The Narrated Experience.” Asian Folklore Studies 66: 179–199.

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